or fad!
Got no time to pass remarks! Got no time to write!
Got no time to sky the wipe—only time to fight!
Only time for graft and grind, dog and dough and dust!
That’s the tune the music plays—scratchin’ for a crust.
From such a life as that stanza depicts, almost inevitably men turn to intoxicating liquor for consolation or for oblivion. Any reader of Western verses must see first how large a part liquor plays in life, and secondly, how large a part of that life, that life in the desert, in the sand, in the wilderness, can only be assuaged by liquor. Bourke writes:
What’s the use of sittin’
Dry as blessed chips?
What’s the use of spittin’
Through our corn-beef lips?