The children nod their drowsy heads, their toys around them lying. “I’ll take them to their little beds,” says mother, softly sighing. “It’s time they were away from here—the evening is advancing; but ere they go, O husband dear, read one more tale entrancing.” And father seeks that inside page where “Household Hints” are printed, where, for the good of youth and age, this “Household Hint” is hinted:
“If you have maladies so rank they are too fierce to mention, just call on good old Dr. Crank; you’ll find it his intention to cure you up where others fail, though t’others number twenty; but don’t forget to bring the kale, and see that you have plenty.”
AT THE END
WE do our little stunt on earth, and when it’s time to die, “The ice we cut has little worth—we wasted time,” we sigh. When one has snow above his ears, and age has chilled his veins, he looks back on the vanished years, his spirit racked with pains. However well he may have done, it all seems trifling then; alas, if he could only run his little course again! He would not then so greatly prize the sordid silver plunk; for when a man grows old and wise, he knows that coin is junk. One kindly action of the past, if such you can recall, will soothe you greatly at the last when memory is All. If you have helped some pilgrim climb from darkness and despair, that action, in your twilight time, will ease your weight of care. The triumphs of your business day, by stealth or sharpness gained, will seem, when you are tired and gray, to leave your record stained. Ah, comrade, in the dusk of life, when you have ceased your grind, when all your strategy and strife are left for aye behind, when you await the curtain’s fall, the setting of the sun, how you will struggle to recall the good that you have done!
WHAT’S THE USE?
MAN toils at his appointed task till hair is gray and teeth are loose, and pauses now and then to ask, in tones despondent, “What’s the use?” We have distempers of the mind when we are tired and sorely tried; we’d like to quit the beastly grind, and let the tail go with the hide. The money goes for shoes and pie, for hats and pork and dairy juice; to get ahead we strive and try, and still are broke, so what’s the use? Then, gazing round us, we behold the down-and-outers in the street; they shiver in the biting cold, they trudge along on weary feet. They have no home, they have no bed, no shelter neath the wintry sky; they’ll have no peace till they are dead, and planted where the paupers lie. No comfort theirs till in the cell that has a clammy earthen lid; yet some of them deserve as well of Fortune as we ever did. And, having seen the hungry throng, if we’re good sports we cease to sigh; we go to work with cheery song, and make the fur and feathers fly.