WHEN I was as poor as Job, and monkeyed around the globe in indolent
vagrant style, my life was a joyous thing, devoid of a smart or sting,
and everything seemed to smile. I hadn’t a bundle then; I herded with
homeless men, and padded the highway dust; and care was a thing unknown,
as scarce as the silver bone, in days of the wanderlust. But now I am
settled down, a prop to this growing town, respectable till it hurts;
and I have a bundle fat, and I have a stovepipe hat, and all kinds of
scrambled shirts. I puff at a rich cigar, and ride in a motor car, and I
have a spacious lawn; and diamonds upon me shine; my credit is simply
fine, the newspapers call me Hon. But Worry is always near, a-whispering
in my ear—I’m tired of her morbid talks: “Suppose that the bank should
bust in which you have placed your dust, how then would you feel, Old
Sox? Suppose that the cyclones swat the farms you have lately bought and
blow them clear off the map? Suppose that your mills should fail, and
you were locked up in jail, how then would you feel, old chap?” Dame
Worry is always there; she’s whitened my scanty hair, she’s cankered my
weary breast; she never goes far away; she tortures me all the day and
ruins my nightly rest. And often at night I sigh for a couch ’neath the
open sky and the long white road again; for the march through the
sifting dust, and the lure of the wanderlust and the camp of the
homeless men.
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