MAN toils at his appointed task till hair is gray and teeth are loose,
and pauses now and then to ask, in tones despondent, “What’s the use?”
We have distempers of the mind when we are tired and sorely tried; we’d
like to quit the beastly grind, and let the tail go with the hide. The
money goes for shoes and pie, for hats and pork and dairy juice; to get
ahead we strive and try, and still are broke, so what’s the use? Then,
gazing round us, we behold the down-and-outers in the street; they
shiver in the biting cold, they trudge along on weary feet. They have no
home, they have no bed, no shelter neath the wintry sky; they’ll have no
peace till they are dead, and planted where the paupers lie. No comfort
theirs till in the cell that has a clammy earthen lid; yet some of them
deserve as well of Fortune as we ever did. And, having seen the hungry
throng, if we’re good sports we cease to sigh; we go to work with cheery
song, and make the fur and feathers fly.
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