OLD Kink’s always willing to preach, and hand out wise counsel and
teach; but ask him for aid when you’re hungry and frayed, and he’ll
stick to his wad like a leech. He’s handy with proverb and text to
comfort the needy and vexed; but when there’s a plan to feed indigent
man, old Kink never seems to get next. He’ll help out the widow with
psalms, and pray for her fatherless lambs; but he never would try to
bring joy to her eye with codfish and sauerkraut and hams. On Sunday he
joins in the hymn, and makes the responses with vim; when they pass
round the box for the worshipers’ rocks, his gift is exceedingly slim.
He thinks he is fooling the Lord and is sure of a princely reward when
to heaven he goes at this life’s journey’s close—with which view I am
not in accord. For the Lord, he is wise to gold bricks, and the humbug
who crosses the Styx will have to be sharp if he captures a harp; St.
Peter will say to him, “Nix!” They size up a man nearly right when he
comes to the portals of light; and no stingy old fraud ever hornswoggled
God or put on a robe snowy white.
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