"When everything's been dreamed before and everything's been sought?
When everything that ever ran has, so to speak, been caught?—
When every game's been played before and every battle fought?"
I started him at solitaire, a fooling, piffling game.
He played it ninety-seven hours and failed to find it tame.
In all the times he dealt the cards no two games were the same.
He never tumbled to its tricks nor mastered all its curves.
He grunted, "Well, this takes the cake, the pickles and preserves!
Its infinite variety is getting on my nerves."
"Its infinite variety!" I scoffed. "Just fifty-two
Poor trifling bits of pasteboard!—their combinations few
Compared to what there is in man!—the poorest!—even you!
"Variety! You'll never find in forty-seven decks
One tenth of the variety found in the gentler sex.
Card combinations are but frills to hang around their necks.
"The sun won't rise to-morrow as it came to us to-day,
'Twill be older, we'll be older, and to Time this debt we pay.
For nothing can repeat itself, for nothing knows the way."
Then the Grumpy Guy was silent as a miser hoarding pelf.
He knew 'twas time to put his grouch away upon the shelf.
And so he did.—You see, I was just talking to myself!
Griffith Alexander.
From "The Pittsburg Dispatch."