Rippling Rhymes Part 3

"Look pleasant, please!" the photo expert told me, for I had pulled a long and gloomy face; and then I let a wide, glad smile enfold me and hold my features in its warm embrace.

"Look pleasant, please!" My friends, we really ought to cut out these words and put them in a frame; long, long we'd search to find a better motto to guide and help us while we play the game. Look pleasant, please, when you have met reverses, when you beneath misfortune's stroke are bent, when all your hopes seem riding round in hea.r.s.es--a scowling brow won't help you worth a cent. Look pleasant, please, when days are dark and dismal and all the world seems in a hopeless fix; the clouds won't go because your grief's abysmal, the sun won't s.h.i.+ne the sooner for your kicks. Look pleasant, please, when Grip--King of diseases, has filled your system with his microbes vile; I know it's hard, but still, between your sneezes, you may be able to produce a smile. Look pleasant, please, whatever trouble galls you; a gloomy face won't cure a single pain. Look pleasant, please, whatever ill befalls you, for gnas.h.i.+ng teeth is weary work and vain.

Look pleasant, please, and thus inspire your brothers to raise a smile and pa.s.s the same along; forget yourself and think a while of others, and do your stunt with gladsome whoop and song.

COURAGE

Brave men are they who set their faces toward the polar bergs and floes, who roam the wild, unpeopled places, perchance to find among the snows a resting-place remote and lonely; a winding-sheet of deathless white, where elemental voices only disturb the brooding year-long night.

Brave souls are they whose man-made pinions have borne them over plains and seas, who conquered wide and new dominions, and strapped a saddle on the breeze. Their engine-driven wings are wearing new pathways through the realm of clouds; they play with death, with dauntless daring, to please the breathless, fickle crowds.

Brave men go forth to distant regions, forsaking luxury and ease; through all the years they've gone in legions, to unknown lands, o'er stormy seas; and when, by sword or fever smitten, they blithely journeyed to the grave, full well they knew their names were written down in the annals of the brave.

I am as brave as any rover described in gay, romantic screeds, but, when my fitful life is over, no epic will narrate my deeds. Condemned to silent heroism, I go my unmarked way alone, and no one hands me prune or prism, as token that my deeds are known. But yesterday my teeth were aching, and to the painless dentist's lair I took my way, unawed, unquaking, and sat down in the fatal chair. He dug around my rumbling molars with drawing-knives and burglars' tools, and cross-cut saws and patent rollers, and marlinspikes and two-foot rules. He climbed upon my lap and prodded with crowbar and with garden spade, to see that I was not defrauded of all the agony that's made. He pulled and yanked and pried and twisted, and uttered oft his battle shout, and now and then his wife a.s.sisted--till finally the teeth came out. And never once while thus he pottered around my torn and mangled jowl--not once, while I was being slaughtered, did I let out a single howl! No bra.s.s-bands played, none sang a ditty of triumph as I took my way; no signs of "Welcome to Our City" were hung across the street that day!

Thus you and I and plain, plug mortals may show a courage high and fine, and be obscure, while some jay chortles in triumph where the limelights s.h.i.+ne.

PLAY BALL

"Play ball!" you hear the fans exclaim, when weary of a dragging game, when all the players pause to state their theories in a joint debate, or when they go about their biz as though they had the rheumatiz. And if they do not heed the hunch that's given by the bleachers bunch, they find, when next they start to play, that all the fans have stayed away.

The talking graft is all in vain, and loafers give the world a pain.

The fans who watch the game of life despise the sluggard in the strife.

They'll have but little use for you, who tell what you intend to do, and hand out promises galore, but, somehow, never seem to score. No matter what your stunt may be, in this the country of the free, you'll find that loafing never pays; cut out the flossy grand stand plays; put in your hardest licks and whacks, and get right down to Old Bra.s.s Tacks, and, undismayed by bruise or fall, go right ahead--in short, play ball!

THE OLD SONGS

The modern airs are cheerful, melodious and sweet; we hear them sung and whistled all day upon the street. Some lilting ragtime ditty that's rollicking and gay will gain the public favor and hold it--for a day. But when the day is ended, and we are tired and worn, and more than half persuaded that man was made to mourn, how soothing then the music our fathers used to know! The songs of sense and feeling, the songs of long ago! The "Jungle Joe" effusions and kindred roundelays will do to hum and whistle throughout our busy days; and in the garish limelight the yodelers may yell, and Injun songs may flourish--and all is pa.s.sing well, but when to light the heavens the s.h.i.+ning stars return, and in the cottage windows the lights begin to burn, when parents and their children are seated by the fire, remote from worldly clamor and all the world's desire, when eyes are soft and s.h.i.+ning, and hearths with love aglow, how pleasant is the singing of songs of long ago!

GUESSING VS. KNOWING

If I were selling nails or gla.s.s, or pills or shoes or garden sa.s.s, or honey from the bee--whatever line of goods were mine, I'd study up that special line and know its history.

If I a stock of rags should keep, I'd read up sundry books on sheep and wool and how it grows. Beneath my old bald, freckled roof, I'd store some facts on warp and woof and other things like those. I'd try to know a spinning-jack from patent churn or wagon rack, a loom from hog-tight fence; and if a man came in to buy, and asked some leading question, I could answer with some sense.

If I were selling books, I'd know a Shakespeare from an Edgar Poe, a Carlyle from a Pope; and I would know Fitzgerald's rhymes from Laura Libbey's brand of crimes, or Lillian Russell's dope.

If I were selling shoes, I'd seize the fact that on gooseberry trees, good leather doesn't grow; that shoe pegs do not grow like oats, that cowhide doesn't come from goats--such things I'd surely know.

And if I were a grocer man, I'd open now and then a can to see what stuff it held; 'twere better than to writhe in woe and make reply, "I didn't know," when some mad patron yelled.

I hate to hear a merchant say: "I think that this is splendid hay," "I guess it's first cla.s.s tea." He ought to know how good things are, if he would sell his silk or tar or other goods to me. Oh, knowledge is the stuff that wins; the man without it soon begins to get his trade in kinks. No matter where a fellow goes, he's valued for the things he knows, not for the things he thinks.

WHEN WOMEN VOTE

"Jane Samantha," said the husband, as he donned his hat and coat, "I would offer a suggestion ere you go to cast your vote. We have had a bitter struggle through this strenuous campaign, and the issues are important, and they stand out clear and plain. Colonel Whitehead stands for progress--for the uplift that we need: he invites investigation of his every word and deed. He's opposed to all the ringsters and to graft of every kind; he's a man of spotless record, clean and pure in heart and mind. His opponent, Major Bounder, stands for all that I abhor; plunder, ring rule and corruption you will see him working for; all the pluggers and the heelers stood by him in this campaign--so I ask your vote for Whitehead and the uplift, dearest Jane."

"William Henry," said the housewife, "I am sorry to decline, but the wife of Colonel Whitehead never was a friend of mine. Last July she gave a party--you recall her Purple Tea?--and invited all the neighbors, but she said no word to me. I don't care about your issues or your uplift or your ring, but I won't support the husband of that silly, stuck-up thing!"

Major Bounder was the victor on that day of stress and strife, for it seemed that many women didn't like the Colonel's wife.

THE AGENT AT THE DOOR

"Away with you, stranger!" exclaimed Mrs. Granger, "avaunt and skedaddle! Come here never more! You agents are making me crazy and breaking my heart, and I beg that you'll trot from my door! I've bought nutmeg graters, shoelaces and gaiters, I've bought everything from a lamp to a lyre; I've bought patent heaters and saws and egg beaters and stoves that exploded and set me afire."

"You're laboring under a curious blunder," the stranger protested; "I know very well that agents are trying, and dames tired of buying; but be not uneasy--I've nothing to sell."

"I'm used to that story--it's whiskered and h.o.a.ry," replied Mrs.

Granger, "you want to come in, and then when you enter, in tones of a Stentor you'll brag of your polish for silver and tin. Or maybe you're dealing in unguents healing, or dye for the whiskers, or salve for the corns, or something that quickens egg-laying in chickens, or k.n.o.bs for the cattle to wear on their horns. It's no use your talking, you'd better be walking, and let me go on with my housework, I think; you look dissipated, if truth must be stated, and if you had money you'd spend it for drink."

"My name," said the stranger, who backed out of danger--the woman had reached for the broom by the wall--"is Septimus Beecher; I am the new preacher; I just dropped around for a pastoral call."

GOOD AND BAD TIMES

"Times are so bad I have the blues," says Bilderbeck, who deals in shoes. "All day I loaf around my store, and folks don't come here any more; I reckon they have barely cash to buy cigars and corn beef hash, and when they've bought the grub to eat, they can't afford to clothe their feet.

"There's something wrong when trade's thus pinched," says he, "and someone should be lynched. The cost of living is so high that it's economy to die; and death is so expensive, then, that corpses want to live again. The trusts have robbed us left and right, and there's no remedy in sight; the government is out of plumb and should be knocked to Kingdom Come."

And Ganderson, across the street, is selling furniture for feet. "All day he hands out boots and shoes with cheerful c.o.c.kadoodledoos. I have no reason to complain," says Ganderson; all kicks are vain; my customers don't come to hear me raising thunder by the year.

"They have some troubles of their own, and do not care to hear me groan. And so I beam around my place, and wear a smile that splits my face, and gather in the s.h.i.+ning dime--trade's getting better all the time!"

Though days be dark and trade be tough, it's always well to make a bluff, to face the world with cheerful eye, as though the goose were hanging high. No merchant ever made a friend by dire complainings without end. And people never seek a store to hear a grouchy merchant roar; they'll patronize the wiser gent who doesn't air his discontent.

BUCCANEERS