If I should die tonight how few would care; Perhaps some heart would ache, some one somewhere, Some might cast a lingering look, a tear And tremble with emotion at my bier, But before many days would pass away, Before my silent form would turn to clay, I’d be forgotten and alone, And not a heart to ache or moan. Oh! this bitter, lonely life’s a snare, The kind friends you hear so much about are rare. Some may mean it in their hearts but feign And measure men by dollars not by brain.

A friend came to me one time and said he was in pressing financial straits and asked me to loan him fifteen dollars for two weeks. I granted the request and the loan was made. I thought I was familiar with the calendar and knew when two ordinary weeks ended, but those two weeks were the longest I have ever known. Fortnight after fortnight passed and no end came. Long and endless weeks of this kind might be all right for the man facing the electric chair, but they had no solace for an individual anxious to get married and needing the husky “Simoleans” to furnish a cage for his waiting bird.

One day I met the overdue biped and I said, “How about it?” I was young then and I thought I could glide in as easy this way as well as any phrase I had in my limited vocabulary. “Well,” he said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I know you are about to plunge in the matrimonial sea and I have a proposition to offer you. I have a good standard make of organ that I don’t need and if you will give me forty-five dollars and forget about that previous fifteen we will call the transaction closed and drop the curtain.”

“All right,” I said, “here is your money.”

That organ may not be in existence yet, but it’s in my memory fresh as ever. I couldn’t play it, for it was all I could do to carry a tune when it was tied in a bag. I had no wife to play it and I couldn’t keep it and get married, I was in a desperate condition one day when I walked into a hardware store, that is a store, you know, where they keep ware that is hard, frying pans, dish pans, bread pans, etc., you know what those things are for. “Well,” I said to the village wit behind the case, “I’ll trade you that organ for enough household paraphernalia to cook with, take care of enough viands and stuff or whatever you call it, to keep two people about to start out together; each now separate and apart but very anxious to be united.” “Agreed,” he said, “hand over that list you’ve got with the articles on and I’ll have them ready in a short time.”

Funny, isn’t it, how the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, but how about the one ready to be shorn when there isn’t even a zephyr blowing. Well, the deal was transacted, exchange made, and that is how I got my household goods when I married dearie. The financial report read like this: Actual cash in organ, sixty dollars; actual worth, forty-five dollars; second actual value in organ, forty-five dollars; actual value of pots and pans twenty-five dollars, experience and pleasure of making a two weeks’ loan, thirty-five dollars. This was not putting a premium on “Bliss” for a fellow just getting ready to carry the matrimonial load.

The weight would have been some lighter if that weasened faced Dutchman had not worked off on me a left handed frying pan for a right-handed bride, and was so extremely liberal on the good deal he had made that he threw in a second hand mouse trap when the new ones sold six for a dime. This was the first time I saw tears in my wife’s eyes. The fountain was opened and they flowed freely. Those tears were trivial to the tears we’ve in shed later life, but those first tears moved me to almost unconsolable grief and the emotion caused a flow of poetry. It’s not very long and will not tire you much, so I will slip it in here as a filler.

Cheer up, little darling, You know my love is true, And nowhere in this great big world Is a sweeter girl than you. I have loved you always Trust me fully, dear, Let me be your shining star I’ll sparkle when you’re near. And all along our pathway We’ll never pluck a thorn, But will pluck the roses In life’s dewy morn, Roses are more fragrant, They’ll give us better cheer And the thorns we’ll cast aside, They are worthless, dear.

When I was a County Clerk and exceedingly busy pushing the quill over the big records, a M. E. Minister came in one day and accosted me with that word that arouses confidence. Brother, he said, we are figuring on a short order annex to the church, (remember that word SHORT?) and we, of course, couldn’t slight you and if you will kindly donate as liberally as possible the Lord will bless you abundantly, for you know he loves a cheerful giver, and etc., and etc. Well, I responded. When you get your subscription list in these parts drop in and I will help you.

I know what an annex to some of the churches without or with cook stove means. It seems nowadays, as the prophecies are being filled, some churches deem it necessary to feed the stomach before the soul, realizing, I presume, a full stomach is a twin brother to a big heart. They beg the food and the utensils to serve it in from uncheerful givers and then dispense it cautiously and sparingly, the more sparingly the more money for the Lord. When the ice cream is served they forget all about scriptural measure of “Heaped up and running over” and run it under. If one dish of scriptural measure can be stretched into four dishes of worldly measure, there is forty cents instead of ten. High finance, you see! I’ve often thought a society of this kind that would squeeze down the measure on ice cream procured at a minimum cost, would bear watching if they were running a milk wagon with a pump near. If any one else gets money in this way they call it an unearned increment. What would Jesus call it? I really would be afraid to express my thoughts at that kind of a meeting for fear they’d request the parcel post.