SUNDAY AND MONDAY.
"As Tommy Snooks and Bessy Brooks
Were walking out one Sunday,
Says Tommy Snooks to Bessy Brooks,
To-morrow will be Monday."
No doubt you are smiling at such a remark.
And thinking poor Snooks but a pitiful
spark;
But the words have a meaning, worth look-
ing for, too,
As I'll presently try and demonstrate for you.
'Twas a pity, indeed, in that moment of
leisure,
To dampen poor Bessy's hebdomadal pleas-
ure,
Suggesting that close on the beautiful Sun-
day
Must come all the common-place horrors
of Monday;
That he to his toiling, and she to her
tub,
Must turn, and take up with another week's
rub;
Yet a truth for us all, since the shade of
the real
Follows fast on the track of each sunny
ideal.
Now and then we may pause on Life's
pleasant oases;
But between lie the desert's grim, desolate
spaces;
And our feet, with all patience, must trav-
erse them still,
Reaching forward to blessing, through
bearing of ill.
Yet for Snooks and his Bessy,—for me
and for you,—
Comes a Saturday night when the wage
will be due;
And we'll say to each other, in ecstasy,
one day,
"To-morrow—the endless to-morrow—is
Sunday!"