Be a Booster
If you can’t be a pine on the top of the hill,
Be a scrub in the valley, but be
The best little scrub by the side of the hill,
Be a bush if you can’t be a tree;
If you can’t be the sun be a star,
But the best little booster wherever you are.
* * *
Teach me that 60 minutes make an hour, 16 ounces one pound and 100 cents one dollar. Help me so to live that I can lie down at night with a clear conscience, without a gun under my pillow and unhaunted by the faces of those to whom I have brought pain. Grant that I may earn my meal-ticket on the square, and that in earning it I may do unto others as I would have them do unto me. Deafen me to the jingle of tainted money and to the rustle of unholy skirts. Blind me to the faults of the other fellow but reveal to me my own. Guide me so that each night when I look across the dinner table at my wife who has been a blessing to me, I will have nothing to conceal. Keep me young enough to laugh with little children, and sympathetic enough to be considerate of old age. And when comes the day of darkened shades and the smell of flowers, the tread of soft footsteps and the crunching of wheels in the yard—make the ceremony short and the epitaph simply ‘Here Lies a Man.’
* * *
He that does not know,
And knows he does not know;
Can be taught.
TEACH HIM!
He that does not know,
But thinks he knows;
Is a dangerous man.
BEWARE OF HIM!
He that does know.
And knows he knows;
Is a wise man—
FOLLOW HIM!
* * *
It’s a stiff neck that has no turning when a short skirt goes by.
* * *
I hope that when I die they’ll pour me back in the bottle. So do other soaks.
* * *