Uncle Walt [Walt Mason] Part 13

We're making laws, with lots of noise, to keep from harm our precious boys. The curfew bell booms out at eight, and warns the lads to pull their freight for home and bed and balmy sleep, while wary cops their vigils keep. The cheap toy pistol's down and out; we won't have things like that about; and boys who'd hear the pistol's toot must sit and watch their parents shoot. The cigarette at last is canned; the children of this happy land can buy such coffin-nails no more, which sometimes makes the darlings sore. Each year new laws and statutes brings, to s.h.i.+eld them from corrupting things. It's strange that we should overlook the screaming blood-and-thunder book, the wild and wooly, red-hot yarn, that Johnnie reads behind the barn. The tales of bandits who have slain a cord of men, and robbed a train; of thieves who break away from jail, with punk detectives on their trail; of long haired scouts and men of wrath who nothing fear--except a bath. Such yarns as these our Johnnie reads; they brace him up for b.l.o.o.d.y deeds; and when he can he takes the trail, and ends his bright career in jail. So, while we're swatting evil things, and putting little boys on wings, let's swat the book that leaves a stain upon the reader's soul and brain.

_The Traveler_

He had journeyed, sore and weary, over deserts wide and dreary; through the snows of far Sibery he had dragged his frozen form; he had searched the site of Eden, been through Kansas, wild and bleedin'; in the far-off hills of Sweden he had faced the winter storm. In the vain pursuit of glory, hoping he would live in story, he had hoofed it to Empory, from Toronto on the lake; he had heard land agents rattle through the suburbs of Seattle, he had seen the Creek of Battle, where they live on sawdust cake. Fate was kind, and just to prove her he had journeyed to Vancouver, where the emigrant and mover pitch their tents upon the street; he had roamed the broad Savannah, he had voted in Montana; hunting with the mighty Bwana, Afric's jungles knew his feet. He had sung the boomer's ditty down in Oklahoma City, thinking it a blooming pity that the town had such a name; he had mined in cold Alaska, farmed with Bryan in Nebraska, and was never known to ask a least advantage in the game. To his native town returning, all reporters there were yearning to receive a statement burning, from this calm intrepid soul; not of fights or sieges gory was the hero's simple story; "I have but one claim to glory--I have never found the Pole!"

_Sat.u.r.day Night_

Sat.u.r.day night, and the week's work done, and the Old Man home with a bunch of mon'! You see him sit on the cottage porch, and he puffs away at a five-cent torch, while the good wife sings at her evening ch.o.r.es, and the children gambol around outdoors. The Old Man sits on his work-day hat, and he doesn't envy the plutocrat; his debts are paid and he owns his place, and he'll look a king in the blooming face; his hands are hard with the brick and loam, but his heart is soft with the love of home! Sat.u.r.day night, and it's time for bed! And the kids come in with a buoyant tread; and they hush their noise at the mother's look, as she slowly opens a heavy book, and reads the tale of the stormy sea, and the voice that quieted Galilee. Then away to bed and the calm repose that only honesty ever knows. Sat.u.r.day night, and the world is still, and it's only the erring who finds things ill; there is sweet content and a sweeter rest, where a good heart beats in a brave man's breast.

_Lady Nicotine_

Smoking is a filthy habit, and a big, fat, black cigar advertises that you're straying from the Higher Life afar. I have walked in summer meadows where the sunbeams flashed and broke, and I never saw the horses or the sheep or cattle smoke; I have watched the birds, with wonder, when the world with dew was wet, and I never saw a robin puffing at a cigarette; I have fished in many rivers when the sucker crop was ripe, and I never saw a catfish pulling at a briar pipe. Man's the only living creature that parades this vale of tears, like a blooming traction engine, blowing smoke from mouth and ears. If Dame Nature had intended, when she first invented man, that he'd smoke, she would have built him on a widely diff'rent plan; she'd have fixed him with a damper and a stovepipe and a grate; he'd have had a smoke consumer that was strictly up-to-date. Therefore, let the erring mortal put his noisome pipe in soak--he can always get a new one if he feels he needs a smoke.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_O come, my love, from your bower in haste, let us trim our sails for the ether waste, away, away!_"]

_Up-to-Date Serenade_

O come, my love, for the world's at rest, and the sun's asleep in the curtained West, and the night breeze sighs from between the stars, and my air-s.h.i.+p waits by your window bars! We'll sail the sea of the waveless wind, we'll leave the earth and its dross behind, and watch its lights from the cloudy heights--O come, my love, on this best of nights!

O come, my love, from your bower in haste, let us trim our sails for the ether waste, away, away, where the weary moan of the workday world is never known; where the only track is the track of wings that the skylark leaves when it soars and sings! So come, my love ere the night is old, and the stars have paled, and the dawn is cold; the s.h.i.+p can't wait for its precious freight, for it's costing a dollar a minute, straight.

_The Consumer_

They will tinker with the tariff till the rivers are gone dry, they will wrestle with the subject night and day; they'll be piling up the language when the snow begins to fly, they'll be riddling in the same old weary way. O the grand old windy wonders who adorn the senate floor, till the windup of the world will be on deck; and there's just one thing that's certain, that is sure for ever more; the consumer always gets it in the neck. There is talk of hides and leather, and there's talk of nails and glue, there are weary wads of twaddle on cement; and the man from Buncombe Corners stands and toots his loud bazoo, till his language in the ceiling makes a dent; no one in this martyred country knows how long this will endure, and there isn't any way the flood to check; and there's just one thing about it that is reasonably sure; the consumer always gets it in the neck.

_Advice To A Damsel_

When a damsel has a steady who's a pretty decent man, and who shows a disposition to perform the best he can; who is shy of sinful habits, and whose bosom holds no guile, and who labors in the vineyard with a gay and cheerful smile, then she shouldn't make him promise that he'll do a seraph stunt, when they've stood up at the altar with the preacher-man in front; and she shouldn't spring a lecture when he comes around to court, for a man is only human, and his wings are pretty short. When a maiden has a lover who is surely making good, who is winning admiration, who is sawing lots of wood, then she shouldn't make him promise that he'll be an angel boy when the wedding ceremony ushers in a life of joy; she should murmur: "He's a daisy, and we'll take things as they come; for a man is only human, and his halo's on the b.u.m."

_A New Year Vow_

I don't go much on gilded vows, for I have made them in the past, and they are with the bow-wow-wows--they were too all-fired good to last.

And so I'll make one vow today: I'll simply try to do my best; that vow should help me on my way, for it embraces all the rest. I'll take the middle of the road, and always do the best I can, and pack along my little load, and try to be a manly man. A man may end his journey here too poor to buy a decent shroud, and planted be without a tear of mourning from the worldly crowd; but when he's in the judgment scale, he'll come triumphant from the test; no man has failed, no man can fail, who always, always does his best. And though my pathway be obscure, and void of honor and applause, and though the lean wolf of the moor to my cheap doorway nearer draws, I'll keep a stout heart in my breast, and follow up this simple plan; I'll always do my very best, and try to be a manly man.

_The Stricken Toiler_

He labored on the railway track; his task would break a horse's back; he tugged at things that weighed a ton, and all the time the summer sun blazed down and cooked him where he toiled, and still he worked, though fried and broiled. I grieved for this poor section man, who drank warm water from a can, and ate rye bread and greenish cheese, and had big blisters on his knees. "Ods fis.h.!.+" quoth I, "when day is dead, methinks you straightway go to bed, too labor-worn to heave a sigh, as wounded soldiers go to die." "That's where you're off," the toiler said; "I'm in no rush to go to bed; you must be talking in a trance--tonight I'm going to a dance!" "Gadzooks!" thought I, "and eke ods blood! My tears have streamed, a briny flood, because of all the cares and woes the h.o.r.n.y-handed toiler knows! And it would seem, from what I learn, that he has fun, and some to burn. Gadzooks again! It seemeth plain, that weeping in this world is vain!"

_The Lawbooks_

The laws are numerous as flies upon a summer day; at making laws the statesmen wise still pound and pound away. No man on earth could recollect a list of all the laws; I tried it once--my mind is wrecked, and now you know the cause. Some gents who are in prison yet proclaim with angry shout that they are so with laws beset, they really can't stay out. "A man can't walk around a block," I heard a sad man wail, "but what the cops will round him flock, and chuck him into jail." I heard the butcher man repine, and weep, and rail at fate, because he had to pay a fine for being short on weight. I heard the corner grocer snort, and use some language sour, because they yanked him into court for selling moldy flour. The milkman bottled half the creek, and sold it on his route; he said: "The law just makes me sick," when friends had bailed him out. The laws are numerous as scales upon a fish, no doubt; and so some people are in jails, and simply can't stay out; but all the time and everywhere one great truth stands out clear: The man who acts upon the square, has nothing much to fear.

_Sleuths of Fiction_

I'm weary now of Sherlock Holmes, and all the imitative crew; I'm tired of triumphs built upon a collar b.u.t.ton, as a clew. The sleuth is always tall and thin, with nervous hands and hawk-like face; he scours the slums or moves around in marble halls, with equal grace; he always takes some kind of dope or plays the flute or violin, and when he's billed for active work he glues false whiskers on his chin. He always has a Watson near, a tiresome chump, who sits and broods, the while the selling-plater sleuth reels off a string of plat.i.tudes. Detective yarns are all so stale! The plot is evermore the same; we always have the murdered man, with knives or bullets in his frame; the pantry window is unlocked; the safe's been opened with a file; suspicion s.h.i.+fts until it rests on every man within a mile; the local peelers blunder round, and ball things up in frightful shape, and then the Great Detective comes, with lens and rule and meas'ring tape; he crawls around upon the floor, examines all the water mains, and tastes the ashes in the stove, and sticks his nose into the drains, and then he says the problem's solved; forthwith he spends two weeks or more in showing Watson and the world how easy 'tis to be a bore!

_Put It On Ice_

When you have written a letter red hot, roasting some chap in his tenderest spot--some one who's done you an underhand trick, some one who's wounded your pride to the quick; try to remember that writing abuse does no more good than the hiss of a goose; this is the meaning of all of your sa.s.s: "You are a villain--and I am an a.s.s." Take up your letter and read it through thrice; put it on ice awhile, put it on ice!

Maybe your wife isn't much of a cook; maybe she'd rather sit down with a book, than to go fussing around making pies, doughnuts and cakes and things good to your eyes; you are preparing a withering speech, you are preparing to rear up and preach, telling your wife of the beautiful things cooked by your granny before she had wings; telling your wife that her duty's to stuff things in your tummy till it has enough. When you went courting that hausfrau of yours, swearing you'd love her while nature endures, did you get down on your knee-bones and rave: "Dearest, I'm needing a drudge and a slave! Come to my cottage and sweep, cook and scrub! Clean up the dishes and sweat at the tub!" Can the reproaches you're planning to make; go to a baker when spoiling for cake. Cut out the sermon you think is so nice--put it on ice awhile, put it on ice!

_The Philanthropist_