forth a wireless message and would otherwise be lost. It would join the
ghostly squadrons in the realm beneath the wave, were it not for modern
science, which can rob the ocean grave. Vainly of such mighty
marvels--all in vain the poet sings! They would need another Homer and a
harp with cast-iron strings! We can only pause in wonder, as we read
these thrilling tales of the mystic spark that carries news of shipwreck
through the gales. We can only take our lids off to the noble master
mind that achieved this latest triumph over fog and wave and wind. Yet,
to show appreciation, we might buy some shares of stock in the Wireless
Corporation office, just around the block. With each share we'll get a
picture of a Hero--maybe twins--and, in time, in every parlor there will
hang a Johnnie Binns; there will be so many Binnses, coming from the
rescued ships, that they'll form a secret order, with its passwords,
signs and grips.
_Helpful Mr. Bok_
I owe so much to Mr. Bok that language fails me when I try about his
kindnesses to talk, and briny tears bedim my eye. I owe it to that
gifted man that I can take ten yards of string, and decorate a frying
pan until it is a beauteous thing. He taught me how to paint a brick and
hang it on the parlor wall, which made the blamed room look so slick
that callers cry: "It does beat all!" 'Twas Mr. Bok who taught me how to
tie pink ribbons on my corns, and when I bought a muley cow, he showed
me how to gild her horns. I made a cupboard from a trunk, directed by
his kindly charts; a cart-load of hand-painted junk to my poor home a
charm imparts. When Arctic stories stirred the soul, his enterprise was
just immense; he showed me how to make a pole complete for ninety-seven
cents. And when B. Tumbo sailed away, among the roaring beasts to rush,
Bok pictured, in his L. H. J., a jungle made of yellow plush. And when I
face the tyrant Death, may Bok be with me in the gloom, to decorate my
final breath, with tassels and an ostrich plume.
_Beryl's Boudoir_
She is a vain and foolish lass; she stands before her looking-glass, and
fusses with her pins and rats, and tries on half a dozen hats, and fixes
doodads in her hair, and tints her cheeks, already fair. And when she's
fooled three hours away, and she appears, in glad array, she isn't half
as nice and neat, she isn't half as slick and sweet as she appeared,
four hours ago, when she was wearing calico. If she would take the time
she fools away with paints and curling tools, and read some books, of
prose or rhyme, she'd get some value for her time. She pads her head
outside with rats, machine made hair and monster hats; and gladness
might with her abide, if she would pad her head inside. For beauty is a
transient thing; the hurried years are on the wing; the dazzling maiden
of today will soon be haggard, worn and gray; and in life's winter, when
she sits beside her lonely hearth and knits, it will not lessen her
despair, to think of rats she used to wear. But if her mind is stored
with gold from books the sages wrote of old, with ancient lore or modern
song, the days will not seem drear and long; life's twilight will be
calm and fair, and loneliness will not be there.
[Illustration: "_Honors do not count for much with people
underground_"]
_Post-Mortem Honors_
When you are dead, my weary friend--and some day you must die--the
crowds will stand along the curb to see the hearse go by; and at the
church the folks will stand and raise a mournful din, and pile a lot of
roses on the box that you are in. And people then will shake their heads
and say it is a shame, that such a honeybird as you should have to quit
the game; and when beneath the sod you rest in your mail order gown,
you'll have a big fat monument that's sure to hold you down. But little
will it all avail, for you'll be sleeping sound, and honors do not count
for much with people underground. You'd rather have some kindness while
you tread this vale of tears, than have your dust lamented o'er for
fifty million years.
_After A While_
The mother, tired, with aching head, from sweeping floors and baking
bread, called to her daughter: "Susan, dear, I wish you'd help a little
here." Fair Susan, in the parlor dim, was playing o'er a tender hymn;
methinks it was "The Maiden's Prayer"--a melody beyond compare. She
cried, while playing on, in style: "I'll help you in a little while."
Her lover blew in unawares--a fine young man with princely airs. His
heart was free from sordid stains; his head was full of high-class
brains; most any girl would give her eyes to gather in so big a prize.
He heard the mother's weary cry; he heard the damsel's flip reply. His
bosom swelled with noble ire! His tawny eyes flashed streaks of fire! He
cried: "Miss Susan Sarah Brown, it's up to me to turn you down! While
groundhogs live and comets shine, you'll be no blushing bride of mine!
The healthy girl who doesn't jump, and on her system get a hump, when
mother calls, I do not want; so get thee hence! Aroint! Avaunt! I'll
hunt me up a damsel fair who passes up 'The Maiden's Prayer' when she
has got a chance to chase the troubles from her mother's face!"
_Pretty Good Schemes_
It's a pretty good scheme to be cheery, and sing as you follow the road,
for a good many pilgrims are weary, and hopelessly carry the load; their
hearts from the journey are breaking, and a rod seems to them like a
mile; and it may be the noise you are making will hearten them up for a
while. It's a pretty good scheme in your joking, to cut out the jest
that's unkind, for the barbed kind of fun you are poking, some fellow
may carry in mind; and a good many hearts have been broken, a good many
hearts fond and true, by words that were carelessly spoken by alecky
fellows like you. It's a pretty good scheme to be doing some choring
around while you can; for the gods with their gifts are pursuing the
earnest industrious man; and those gods, in their own El Dorado, are
laying up wrath for the one who loafs all the day in the shadow, while
others toil, out in the sun.
_Knowledge By Mail_
When I was young and fresh and ruddy, and full of snap and vim, my
parents used to make me study until my head would swim. I sat upon the
schoolhouse bleachers, with pencil, book and slate, while sundry bald
and weary teachers drilled knowledge through my pate. For some quick
method I was yearning, some easy path to tread; "there is no royal road
to learning," the bald old teachers said; "stick closely to the printed
pages, all idleness eschew, and then, perhaps, in future ages, you'll
know a thing or two." And when I left the school and college, to climb
life's toilsome hill, I found my little store of knowledge would barely
fill the bill. But nowadays the world moves quicker than in the long
ago; old-fashioned methods make us snicker, they were so crude and slow.
By sending seven wooden dollars to Messrs. Freaks and Freaks, they'll
make our children finished scholars, and do it in three weeks. So let us
close the schools and leave 'em to ruin and decay, and take the books
and maps and heave 'em a million miles away; for now the kids take
erudition in three-grain capsule form; the teacher loses the position
that he so long kept warm.
_Duke and Plumber_
Samantha Arabella Luke has gone abroad and caught a duke--a nobleman of
gilded ease, who has a standard blood disease. She'll build again his
stately halls, and pay for papering the walls; she'll straighten up his
park and grounds, and buy him nags to ride to hounds; she'll tear the
checks from out her book, to pay the butler and the cook, whose wages
have been in arrears for maybe twenty-seven years. In fifty ways she'll
spend the scads, the good old rocks that were her dad's; and all the
nobles in the land will greet her with the arctic hand, and snub her in
her husband's lair, and pass her up with stony stare. And ere a year has
run its course, the duke will hustle for divorce, and Arabella's tears
will drop upon the marble floors, kerflop! Samantha's cousin, Mary Ann,
has hooked up with the plumber man, a gent of industry and peace, whose
face is often black with grease. They dwell together in a cot surrounded
by a garden plot, and there she raises beans and tripe, while he is
fixing valve and pipe. He takes his money, like a man, and hands it o'er
to Mary Ann, and she is salting down his wage where it will help them in
old age. O reader, who has made a fluke? Samantha with her pallid duke,
or fat and sassy Mary Ann, who gathered in the plumber man?
_Human Hands_
There's the man whose hand is clammy as a fish that lately died, and to
grasp it sends a shudder percolating through your hide, and you feel its
cold impression in your muscles and your glands, and you wish he'd wear
an oven on his blamed antarctic hands. There's the man with hands so
horny that they feel like chunks of slate, and when he is shaking with
you, you can feel them grind and grate; and he nearly breaks your
fingers, and you mutter through your hat: "I would run them through a
smelter if my hands were hard as that!" There's the man whose hands are
always pawing, pawing while he talks; they are fussing with your
whiskers, they are reaching for your socks; they are patting on your
bosom, they are clawing on your arm, and you'd like to meet their owner
on the Mrs. Gunness farm. There's the man whose hands are always sliding
down into his jeans, to relieve some broken pilgrims of their miseries
and pains; and such hands, that in their giving, never falter, never
tire, in the golden time a-coming will be twanging at a lyre!
_The Lost Pipe_
Upon the joyous New Year's day I threw my briar pipe away. I said, with
conscious rectitude: "The smoking habit's base and lewd; it taints the
breath and soils the teeth, and often stains the chin beneath; the
smoker's tongue is badly seared, and he has clinkers in his beard; of
nicotine he is so full no self-respecting cannibull would eat him raw,
well done or rare; and e'en his neckties and his hair, his hat, his
breath, and trouserloons, suggest plug-cut and cuspitoons. And so I
throw my pipe away, upon this gladsome New Year's day; my friends no
more will have to choke and wheeze in my tobacco smoke." Since then the
days drag slowly on; it seems as though ten years have gone; I walk the
floor the long night through, and, jealous, watch the kitchen flue--for
it can smoke and hold carouse, and not bust forty-seven vows; the
cookstove makes my vitals gripe, for it can use its trusty pipe. Thus
far I've kept the vow I swore, but do not tempt me any more; don't talk
of cabbage on the place, or flaunt alfalfa in my face!
_Thanksgiving_
This one day let us forget all the little things that fret, all the
little griefs and cares which are bringing us gray hairs; let's forget
the evil thought, and the ill that others wrought; thinking only of the
hand that has led us through a land smiling with a richer store than
fair Canaan knew of yore. Let's forget to jeer and rail at the men who
fight and fail; let's forget to criticise motes within our neighbors'
eyes; thinking only of the hand that has led us through a land where the
toiler gets reward; where no grasping overlord harries men with lash or
chain, robbing them of brawn and brain. Let's forget malicious things;
better is the heart that sings than the one that harbors hate, which is
aye a killing weight. Let's forget the scowling brow; it's the time for
gladness now! It's the time for well-stuffed birds, kindly smiles and
cheerful words; it's a time to try to rise somewhat nearer to the skies,
thinking only of a hand that will lead us to a land in the distances
above, where the countersign is love.
_Sir Walter Raleigh_
Sir Walter Raleigh sat in jail, removed from strife and flurry; the
light was dim, his bread was stale, and yet he didn't worry. He knew the
headsman, grim and dour, with sleeves up-rolled and frock off, might
come to him at any hour, and cut his blooming block off. He knew that he
would evermore with dismal chains be laden, till he had traveled through
the door that opens into Aidenn. To have his name wiped off the map King
James was in a hurry; and yet--he was a dauntless chap!--he still
refused to worry. Serenely he pursued his work, and wrote his lustrous
pages, serenely as a smiling clerk who writes for weekly wages. And when
the headsman came and said: "I hate the job, Sir Walter, but I must ask
you for your head," the great man did not falter. "Gadzooks," quoth he,
"and eke odsfish! Thou art a courteous shaver! Take off my head! I only
wish I might return the favor!" And so the headsman swung the axe,
beneath the sky of Surrey; Sir Walter died beneath his whacks, but still
refused to worry!
_The Country Editor_
"O Come," I said, to the Printer Man, who edits the Weekly Swish, "a
rest will do you a lot of good--so come to the creek and fish." "If
you'll wait a while," said the Printer Man, "I'll toddle along, I think;
but first I must write up some local dope, and open a can of ink, and
carry in coal for the office stove, and mix up a lot of paste, and clean
the grease from the printing press with a bushel of cotton waste, and
set up an ad for the auctioneer, and throw in a lot of type, and hunt up
a plumber and have him see what's clogging the waterpipe, and call on
the doctor to have him soak the swellings upon my head, for I had it
punched but an hour ago, for something the paper said--" "I fear," I
said to the Printer Man, "if I wait till your chore list fails, the
minnows that frolic along the creek will all be as large as whales!"
_Useless Griefs_
A hundred years ago and more, men wrung their hands, and walked the
floor, and worried over this or that, and thought their cares would
squash them flat. Where are those worried beings now? The bearded goat
and festive cow eat grass above their mouldered bones, and jay birds
call, in strident tones. And where the ills they worried o'er? Forgotten
all, for ever more. Gone all the sorrow and the woe, that lived a
hundred years ago! The grief that makes you scream today, like other
griefs, will pass away; and when you've cashed your little string, and
jay birds o'er your bosom sing, the stranger pausing there to view the
marble works that cover you, will think upon the uselessness of human
worry and distress. So let the worry business slide; live while you
live, and when you've died, the folks will say, around your bier: "He
made a hit while he was here!"
_Fairbanks' Whiskers_
Well may a startled nation mourn, with wailings greet the dawn, for
Charlie's whiskers have been shorn--another landmark gone! No more, no
more will robins nest within their lilac shade, for they are folded now
and pressed, and with the mothballs laid. The zephyrs that have sobbed
and sighed athwart that hangdown bunch, through other whiskers now must
glide; they'll doubtless take the hunch. Vain world! This life's an
empty boast, and gods have feet of clay; the things we love and honor
most, are first to pass away. The world seems new at every dawn, seems
new and queer, and strange; and we can scarce keep tab upon the ringing
grooves of change. The changing sea, the changing land, are speaking of
decay; "but Charlie's whiskers still will stand," we used to fondly say;
"long may they dodge the glinting shears, and shining snickersnees, and
may they brave a thousand years, the battle and the breeze! With
Charlie's whiskers in the van, we'll fight and conquer yet, and show the
world that there's one man, who's not a suffragette!" Vain dreams! Vain
hopes! We now repine, and snort, and sweat, and swear; for Charlie's
sluggers are in brine, and Charlie's chin is bare.
_Letting It Alone_
He used to take a flowing bowl perhaps three times a day; he needed it
to brace his nerves, or drive the blues away, but as for chaps who drank
too much, they simply made him tired; "a drink," he said, "when feeling
tough, is much to be desired; some men will never quit the game while
they can raise a bone, but I can drink the old red booze, or let the
stuff alone." He toddled on the downward path, and seedy grew his
clothes, and like a beacon in the night flamed forth his bulbous nose;
he lived on slaw and sweitzer cheese, the free lunch brand of fruits,
and when he sought his downy couch he always wore his boots; "some day
I'll cut it out," he said; "my will is still my own, and I can hit the
old red booze, or let the stuff alone." One night a prison surgeon sat
by this poor pilgrim's side, and told him that his time had come to
cross the great divide. "I've known you since you were a lad," the stern
physician said, "and I have watched you as you tried to paint the whole
world red, and if you wish, I'll have engraved upon your churchyard
stone: 'He, dying, proved that he could let the old red booze alone.'"
_End of The Road_
Some day this heart will cease to beat; some day these worn and weary
feet will tread the road no more; some day this hand will drop the pen,
and never never write again those rhymes which are a bore. And
sometimes, when the stars swing low, and mystic breezes come and go,
with music in their breath, I think of Destiny and Fate, and try to
calmly contemplate this bogie men call Death. Such thinking does not
raise my hair; my cheerful heart declines to scare or thump against my
vest; for Death, when all is said and done, is but the dusk, at set of
sun, the interval of rest. But lines of sorrow mark my brow when I
consider that my frau, when I have ceased to wink, will have to face a
crowd of gents who're selling cheap tin monuments, and headstones made
of zinc. And crayon portrait sharks will come, and make the house with
language hum, and ply their deadly game; they will enlarge my
photograph, attach a hand-made epitaph, and put it in a frame. They'll
hang that horror on the wall, and then, when neighbors come to call,
they'll view my crayon head, and wipe sad tears from either eye, and
lean against the chairs, and cry: "How fortunate he's dead!"
_The Dying Fisherman_
Once a fisherman was dying in his humble, lowly cot, and the pastor sat
beside him saying things that hit the spot, so that all his futile
terrors left the dying sinner's heart, and he said: "The journey's
lonely, but I'm ready for the start. There is just one little matter
that is fretting me," he sighed, "and perhaps I'd better tell it ere I
cross the Great Divide. I have got a string of stories that I've told
from day to day; stories of the fish I've captured, and the ones that
got away, and I fear that when I tell them they are apt to stretch a
mile; and I wonder when I'm wafted to that land that's free from guile,
if they'll let me tell my stories if I try to tell them straight, or
will angels lose their tempers then, and chase me through the gate?"
Then the pastor sat and pondered, for the question vexed him sore; never
such a weird conundrum had been sprung on him before. Yet the courage of
conviction moved him soon to a reply, and he wished to fill the fisher
with fair visions of the sky: "You can doubtless tell fish stories,"
said the clergyman, aloud, "but I'd stretch them very little if old
Jonah's in the crowd."
_George Meredith_
He wrote good books, and wrote in vain, and writing, wore out heart and
brain. The few would buy his latest tome, and, filled with gladness,
take it home, and read it through, from end to end, and lend it to some
high-browed friend. The few would say it was a shame that George was
scarcely in the game; that grocers, butlers, clerks and cooks would
never read his helpful books, but blew themselves for "Deadwood Dick,"
and "Howling Hank from Bitter Creek," "The Bandit That Nick Carter
Caught," and Laura Libbey's tommyrot. Alas! It is a bitter thing! We'd
rather have a Zenda king, or hold, with Sinclair, coarse carouse, in
some Chicago packing house, or wade, with Weyman, to our knees, in yarns
of swords and snickersnees, or trek with Haggard to the veldt, where
Zulus seek each other's pelt, than buy a volume, learned and deep, and
o'er it yawn ourselves to sleep!
_The Smart Children_
The other night I took a walk, and called on Jinx, across the block. The
home of Jinx was full of boys and girls and forty kinds of noise. Dad
Jinx was good, and kind, and straight; he let the children go their
gait; he never spoke a sentence cross, he never showed that he was boss,
and so his home, as neighbors know, was like the Ringling wild beast
show. We tried to talk about the crops; the children raised their
fiendish yawps; they hunted up a Thomas cat, and placed it in my
stovepipe hat; they jarred me with a carpet tack, and poured ice water
down my back; my long coat tails they set afire, and this aroused my
slumb'ring ire. I rose, majestic in my wrath, and through those children
mowed a path, I smote them sorely, hip and thigh, and piled them in the
woodshed nigh; I threw their father in the well, and fired his cottage,
with a yell. Some rigid moralists, I hear, have said my course was too
severe, but their rebukes can not affright--my conscience tells me I was
right.
[Illustration: "_A little resting in the shadow, a struggle to the
height, a futile search for El Dorado, and then we say good night._"]
_The Journey_
A little work, a little sweating, a few brief, flying years; a little
joy, a little fretting, some smiles and then some tears; a little
resting in the shadow, a struggle to the height, a futile search for El
Dorado, and then we say Good Night. Some moiling in the strife and
clangor, some years of doubt and debt, some words we spoke in foolish
anger that we would fain forget; some cheery words we said unthinking,
that made a sad heart light; the banquet, with its feast and
drinking--and then we say Good Night. Some questioning of creeds and
theories, and judgment of the dead, while God, who never sleeps or
wearies, is watching overhead; some little laughing and some sighing,
some sorrow, some delight; a little music for the dying, and then we say
Good Night.
_Times Have Changed_
The maiden lingered in her bower, within her fathers stately tower--it
was four hundred years ago--her lover came, o'er cliff and scar, and
twanged the strings of his guitar, and sang his love songs, soft and
low. He said her breath was like the breeze that wandered over flowery
leas, her cheeks were lovely as the rose; her eyes were stars, from
heaven torn, and she was guiltless of a corn upon her sweet angelic
toes. For hours and hours his songs were sung, until a puncture spoiled
a lung, and then of course he had to quit; but Arabella from her room
would shoot a smile that lit the gloom, and gave him a conniption fit.
Then homeward would the lover hie, as happy as an August fly upon a bald
man's shining head; and Arabella's heart would swell with happiness too
great to tell; ah me, those good old times are dead! Just let a modern
lover scheme to win the damsel of his dream by punching tunes from his
guitar! In silver tones she'd jeer and scoff; she'd call to him: "Come
off! come off! where is your blooming motor car?"
_My Little Dog_
My little dog dot is a sassy pup, and I scold him in savage tones, for
he keeps the garden all littered up with feathers and rags and bones. He
drags dead cats for a half a mile, and sometimes a long-dead hen; and
when I have carted away the pile, he builds it all up again. He howls
for hours at the beaming moon, and thinks it a Melba chore; and
neighbors who list to his throbbing tune, rear up in the air and roar.
And often I hand down this stern decree: "This critter will have to
die." And he puts his paws on my old fat knee, and turns up a loving
eye; and he wags his tail, and he seems to say: "You're almost too fat
to walk, and your knees are sprung and your whiskers gray, and your
picture would stop a clock; some other doggies might turn you down--some
dogs that are proud and grand, but you are the best old boss in town; I
love you to beat the band!" And he bats his eye and he wags his tail,
conveying this kindly thought; and I'd rather live out my days in jail,
than injure that derned dog Dot!
_Harry Thurston Peck_
He's so familiar with the great, this Harry Thurston Peck, that every
man of high estate has wept upon his neck. The poet Browning pondered
deep the things that Harry said; Lord Tennyson was wont to sleep in
Harry's cattle-shed. When Ibsen wrote, he wildly cried: "My life will be
a wreck, if this, my drama, is denied, the praise of Thurston Peck!"
Said Kipling, in his better days: "What use is my renown, since Harry
scans my blooming lays, and blights them with a frown?" The poet, when
his end draws near, cries: "Death brings no alarms, if I, in that grim
hour of fear, may die in Harry's arms." And, being dead, his spirit
knows no shade of doubt or gloom, if Harry plants a little rose upon his
humble tomb. Poor Shakespeare and those elder bards, who haunt the
blessed isles, were born too soon for such rewards as Harry Thurston's
smiles. But joy will lighten their despair, and flood the realms of
space, for Harry Peck will join them there--they'll see him face to
face!
_Tired Man's Sleep_