Uncle Walt [Walt Mason] Part 10

She called upon her lawyer, and said to him: "Of course this visit will surprise you--I want a nice divorce." "Why, madam," cried the lawyer, "you're talking through your hat; your husband just adores you, and all the town knows that." "Of course I know he loves me," she answered, with a smile, "but that will cut no figure--divorces are in style. Decrees were won in triumph by friends of mine, of late, and every time I meet them I feel so out of date! I've just come from a party--the swellest of the town; I felt like some old woman who wears a last year's gown; and all the ladies chattered of husbands in their string, decrees of separation, and all that sort of thing." "But, madam," said the lawyer, "what reasons can you give? For better, finer husbands than yours, I think, don't live." "What do I want with reasons?" she answered, in a huff; "I want a separation, and that should be enough; I want the rare distinction a court of justice lends; I'm feeling too old-fas.h.i.+oned among my lady friends. I must have some good reasons? I do not think you're nice; his name is William Henry--that surely will suffice?"

_Christmas_

The Christmas bells again ring out a message sweet and clear; and harmony is round about, and happiness is near; so let us all sing, once again, as on an elder day: "G.o.d rest you, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay!" Forget the office and the mart, the week-day hook and crook, and loosen up your withered heart, as well as pocketbook; forget the ledger and the pen, and watch the children play; G.o.d rest you, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay! The Christmas time with peace is fraught, from strife and sorrow free; and every wish and every thought should kind and gentle be; in worlds beyond our mortal ken this is a holy day; G.o.d rest you, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay! Today, from Eden's plains afar, the shepherds converse hold, and watch again the risen star, as in the days of old; and as those shepherds watched it then, so may we watch today; G.o.d rest you, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay!

_The Tightwad_

The Tightwad is a pleasant soul who freezes strongly to his roll, until he hasn't any; his bundle colors all his dreams, and when awake he's full of schemes to nail another penny. He counts his roubles day by day, and when a nickel gets away, it nearly drives him dotty; he grovels to the man of biz who has a bigger roll than his, and to the poor he's haughty. All things upon this earth are trash that can't be bought or sold for cash, in Tightwad's estimation; the summer breeze, because it turns the cranks of mills and pumps and churns, receives his toleration; the sun is useful in its way; it nourishes the wheat and hay--so let the world be sunny; he likes to hear the raindrops slosh; they help the pumpkin, beet and squash, and such things sell for money. The tightwad often is a bear around his home, and everywhere, and people hate or fear him; since kindness has no market price, it's waste of effort to be nice to victims who are near him. Methinks that when the tightwad dies, and to his retribution flies, his sentence will be funny; they'll load him with a silver hat, and boil him in a golden vat, and feed him red-hot money!

_Blue Blood_

My sires were strong, heroic men, who fought on many a crimson field; and none could better cut a throat, or batter down a foeman's s.h.i.+eld; and some were knighted by the king, and went around with golden spurs, which must have been a nuisance when they walked among the c.o.c.kleburs.

Their sires were barons of the Rhine, who worked a now historic graft; they held up travelers by day, and quaffed their sack at night, and laughed; they always slept upon the floor, and never shaved or cut their hair; they pawed their victuals with their hands, and never heard of underwear. Their sires, some centuries before, ran naked through the virgin vales, distinguished from the other apes because they hadn't any tails. And they had sires, still farther back, but that dim past is veiled to me, and so I fear I cannot claim a really flawless pedigree.

_The Cave Man_

When the cave man found that he needed grub to fill out the bill of fare, he went out doors with his trusty club, and slaughtered the nearest bear; and thus he avoided the butcher's fake of selling a pound of bone, and charging it up as the sirloin steak that you ordered by telephone. The cave man wore, as his Sunday best, the skin of a sheep or goat, and a peck of whiskers on his breast, in lieu of a vest or coat; so he nothing knew of the tailor's knack of sewing a vest all wrong, and making a coat with a crooked back, and the pants half a foot too long.

The cave man swallowed his victuals raw, as he sat on his nice mud floor; and his only tool was his faithful jaw, and he wanted for nothing more. He took his drinks at the babbling brook, and healthy and gay was he; and he never swore at the bungling cook for spoiling the pie or tea.

_Rudyard Kipling_

Alas for R. Kipling! When he was a stripling, and filled with the fire of his age, he looked like a dinger--the all-firedest singer that ever wrote rhymes by the page. His harpstrings he pounded with vim till they sounded like strains of a Homeric brand, and people, in wonder, inquired who in thunder was filling with music the land. "At last--now we know it--the world has a poet, who'll set all the rivers afire," in this way we hailed him, when critics a.s.sailed him, and knocked on his bargain sale lyre. The years have been flying, and old bards are dying, and some of the young have been called; and Rudyard the rhymer is now an old timer, string-halted and painfully bald. And harder and harder, with counterfeit ardor, he whangs at his l.u.s.ty old lyre; it's kept caterwauling and wailing and squalling, when it ought to be flung in the fire. O hush up its clangor! In sorrow, not anger, we proffer this little request; let's think of the stripling--the long vanished Kipling, and let the old man take a rest.

_In Indiana_

That Hoosier country's most prolific of folks who scale the heights of fame; excelling in the arts pacific, they give their state a l.u.s.trous name. There old Jim Riley writes his verses, and wears, without dispute, the bays; George Ade must pack around six purses to hold the dough he gets for plays. Booth Tarkington is fat and wheezy, from dining on the market's best; he's living on the street called Easy, and gives his faculties a rest. Abe Martin also is a Hoosier, and hands out capsules good to see; and when you take 'em you will lose your suspender b.u.t.tons in your glee. And Nicholson and many others are writing stuff that hits the spot; O, surely Indiana mothers a most unique and gifted lot! And I've received a little volume, concerning Indiana's crops; it gives the figures, page and column, and rambles on and never stops. It gives the yield of sweet potatoes, and corn and wheat and pigs and eggs, and cabbages and green tomatoes, and sauer kraut packed in wooden kegs. And never once in all the story are any of those writers named; poor Indiana's truest glory is missed--she ought to be ashamed.

_The Colonel at Home_

Oh, Tumbo, Bwana Tumbo, we are glad you're back again, with the lion that you slaughtered in its cheap but useful den; with your crates of anacondas and your sack of crocodiles--we are glad indeed to see you, and the land is wreathed in smiles! For we missed you, Bwana Tumbo, when you roamed the distant field, killing camels with the weapon that no other man could wield; and the rust of peace was on us, and our martial spirits fell, and our lives grew stale and stagnant, and we got too fat to yell. Oh, the land was like a homestead when the boss is gone away, when the women sit and mumble and the kids refuse to play. But you're with us now, B. Tumbo, with the skins of beasts you slew, with the bones of bear and walrus and the stately kangaroo, and the gloom has left the shanty, and we moon around no more, for the colonel's quit his hunting, and his face is at the door!

_The June Bride_

Here she comes, and she's a sight, in her gown of snowy white, thing of beauty and of charm, leaning on her lover's arm! Bright her eyes as summer skies, and a glory in them lies, borrowed from the realms above, where the only light is love. And her lover looks serene, shaven, perfumed, groomed and clean; pride is glowing in his eyes, that he's won so fair a prize. Lover, lover, do your best, ne'er to wound that gentle breast; lover, never bring a smart, to that true and trusting heart!

Strive to earn the love you've won, as the years their courses run, knowing ever, as you strive, that no man who is alive, and no man since Adam died, e'er deserved a fair June bride!

_At The Theatre_

I went last night to see the play--a drama of the modern kind; and I am feeling tired today; I'd like to fumigate my mind. I'd hate to always recollect those tawdry jokes and vicious cracks; for I would fain be circ.u.mspect, and keep my brain as clean as wax. The playwright did his best to show that married life is flat and stale; that homely virtues are too slow to prosper in this earthly vale; he put Deceit on dress parade, and put a laurel crown on Vice; and Honor saw her trophies fade, and Truth was laid upon the ice. "It held the mirror up to life," and I, who saw it, homeward went, and got a club and beat my wife, and robbed an orphan of a cent. If I saw many plays so rank, so full of dark and evil thought, I'd steal a blind man's savings bank, or swipe a widow's house and lot. You may be l.u.s.trous as a star, with all the virtues in you canned, but if you fool around with tar you'll blacken up to beat the band. You may be wholesome as the breeze that chortles through a country lane, but if you eat Limburger cheese, your friends will pa.s.s you with disdain. And every time you see a play, or read a book that makes a jest of love and home you throw away some part of you that was the best.

_Club Day Dirge_

Now my wife is reading papers on the Fall of Ancient Rome, and I find myself, her husband, doing all the work at home; I have washed the dinner dishes, I have swept the kitchen floor, and I've pretty near decided that I'll do it never more. For the soap gets in my whiskers and the grease gets on my clothes, and I'm always dropping dishes and big sadirons on my toes; and I cannot herd the children while I'm scrubbing, very well, two have vanished in the distance, three have fallen in the well; and I'm always using coal oil where I should use gasoline, so the stove is blown to pieces, and the roof has holes, I ween. And the neighbors come and chaff me, laugh like horses at the door, as I slop around in sorrow, wiping gravy from the floor. So methinks I'll ask the missus after this to run our home, and I'll do a stunt of reading papers on the Fall of Rome.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_Like some lone mountain in the starry night._"]

_Was.h.i.+ngton_

Like some lone mountain in the starry night, lifting its head snow-capped, severely white, into the silence of the upper air, serene, remote, and always changeless there! Firm as that mountain in the day of dread, when Freedom wept, and pointed to her dead; grim as that mountain to the ruthless foe, wasting the land that wearied of its woe; strong as that mountain, 'neath his load of care, when brave men faltered in a sick despair. So does his fame, like that lone mountain, rise, cleaving the mists and reaching to the skies; bright as the beams that on its summit glow, firm as its rocks and stainless as its snow!

_Hours and Ponies_