FATIGUE
FROM day to day we sell our whey, our nutmegs, nails or cotton, and oft we sigh, as hours drag by, “This sort of life is rotten! The dreary game is e’er the same, no respite or diversion; oh, how we long to join the throng on some outdoor excursion! On eager feet, along the street, more lucky folks are hiking, while we must stay and sell our hay—it’s little to our liking!” Those going by perhaps will sigh, “This work we do is brutal; all day we hike along the pike, and all our work is futile. It would be sweet to leave the street and own a nice trade palace, and sell rolled oats to human goats, it would, so help me Alice!” All o’er this sphere the briny tear is shed by people weary, who’d like to quit their jobs and flit to other tasks more dreary. We envy folks who wear their yokes, and tote a bigger burden, we swear and sweat and fume and fret, and oft forget the guerdon. There is no lot entirely fraught with happiness and glory; if you are sore the man next door can tell as sad a story.
SPRING REMEDIES
“THIS is the time,” the doctors say, “when people need our bitters; the sunny, languid, vernal day is hard on human critters. They’re always feeling tired and stale, their blood is thick and sluggish, and so they ought to blow their kale for pills and potions druggish.” And, being told we’re in a plight, we swallow dope in rivers, to get our kidneys acting right, and jack up rusty livers. We pour down tea of sassafras, as ordered by the sawbones, and chewing predigested grass, we exercise our jawbones. We swallow pints of purple pills, and fool with costly drenches, to drive away imagined ills and pipe-dream aches and wrenches. And if we’d only take the spade, and dig the fertile gumbo, the ghost of sickness would be laid, and we’d be strong as Jumbo. Of perfect health, that precious boon, we’d have refreshing glimpses, if we would toil each afternoon out where the jimpson jimpses. There’s medicine in azure skies, and sunshine is a wonder; more cures are wrought by exercise than by all bottled thunder. So let’s forsake the closed up room, and hoe weeds cockle-burrish, where elderberry bushes bloom, and juniorberries flourish.
THE RURAL MAIL
A FIERCE and bitter storm’s abroad, it is a bleak midwinter day, and slowly o’er the frozen sod the postman’s pony picks its way. The postman and his horse are cold, but fearlessly they face the gale; though storms increase a hundredfold, the farmer folk must have their mail. The hours drag on, the lonely road grows rougher with each mile that’s past, the weary pony feels its load, and staggers in the shrieking blast. But man and horse strive on the more; they never learned such word as fail; though tempests beat and torrents pour, the farmer folk must have their mail. At night the pony, to its shed, drags on its cold, exhausted frame; and after supper, to his bed, the wearied postman does the same. Tomorrow brings the same old round, the same exhausting, thankless grind—the journey over frozen ground, the facing of the bitter wind. The postman does a hero’s stunt to earn his scanty roll of kale; of all the storms he bears the brunt—the farmer folk must have their mail!