MELANCHOLY DAYS
THE melancholy days have come, the saddest of the year, when you, determined to be glum, produce the flowing tear, when you refuse to see the joys surrounding every gent, and thus discourage other boys, and stir up discontent. A grouch will travel far and long before its work is done; and it will queer the hopeful song, and spoil all kinds of fun. Men start downtown with buoyant tread, and things seem on the boom; then you come forth with blistered head, and fill them up with gloom. There’d be no melancholy days, our lives would all be fair, if it were not for sorehead jays who always preach despair. We’d shake off every kind of grief if Jonah didn’t come, the pessimist who holds a brief for all things on the bum. So, if you really cannot rise above the sob and wail, and see the azure in the skies, and hear the nightingale, let some dark cave be your abode, where men can’t hear your howl, and let your comrades be the toad, the raven, and the owl.
MIGHT BE WORSE
THE window sash came hurtling down on Kickshaw’s shapely head and neck; it nearly spoiled his toilworn crown, and made his ears a hopeless wreck. Then Kickshaw sat and nursed his head, a man reduced to grievous pass; yet, with a cheerful smile, he said, “I’m glad it didn’t break the glass.” He might have ripped around and swore, till people heard him round a block, or kicked a panel from the door, or thrown the tomcat through the clock; he might have dealt in language weird, and made the housewife’s blood run cold, he might have raved and torn his beard, and wept as Rachel wept of old. But Kickshaw’s made of better stuff, no tears he sheds, no teeth he grinds; when dire misfortune makes a bluff, he looks for comfort, which he finds. And so he bears his throbbing ache, and puts a poultice on his brain, and says, “I’m glad it didn’t break that rich, imported window pane.” It never helps a man to beef, when trouble comes and knocks him lame; there’s solace back of every grief, if he will recognize the same.
MODERATELY GOOD
A LOAD of virtue will never hurt you, if modestly it’s borne; the saintly relic who’s too angelic for week days, makes us mourn. The gloomy mortal who by a chortle or joke is deeply vexed, the turgid person who’s still disbursin’ the precept and the text, is dull and dreary, he makes us weary, we hate to see him come; oh, gent so pious, please don’t come nigh us—your creed is too blamed glum! The saint who mumbles, when some one stumbles, “That man’s forever lost,” is but a fellow with streak of yellow, his words are all a frost. Not what we’re saying, as we go straying adown this tinhorn globe, not words or phrases, though loud as blazes, will gain us harp and robe. It’s what we’re doing while we’re pursuing our course with other skates, that will be counted when we have mounted the ladder to the Gates. A drink of water to tramps who totter with weakness in the sun will help us better than text and letter of sermons by the ton. So let each action give satisfaction, let words be few and wise, and, after dying, we’ll all go flying and whooping through the skies.