I want to have a hand in all good things that’s going on; I’d hate to be astandin’ two idle feet upon! I’d hate to deal in moonshine, or take the shining plunk for goods which have the prune shine of gold bricks or of junk. You’ll find some merchants funny throughout this blooming earth; I’d not enjoy my money, unless I gave its worth; unless the goods I deal in had useful end and aim, though coin came in a-peltin’, I’d not enjoy the game.
I’d like to deal in lumber, in lime and lath, by jings, thus helping to encumber the world with handsome things; I’d like to have a finger in every worthy pie, I’d like my name to linger behind me when I die. The lumber dealers figure in every useful scheme, in everything that’s bigger than is an empty dream.
GOOD SIGNS
When farmers bring their teams to town, and then drive home again, their heavy wagons loaded down with boards and joists, why, then, it is a sign that things are well, the goose is hanging high; and you may safely dance and yell, for better times are nigh.
All farmers who are safe and sane like handsome cribs and barns, and for old shacks that let in rain they do not give three darns; but when the hogs are dying off, of cholera or mumps, the farmer, with affliction filled, looks on the old shacks near, and says, “I can’t afford to build until some other year.”
But when the hogs are feeling gay, and everything serene, and all the oats and corn and hay present a healthy green, he hitches up old Kate and Dick and journeys off to town, and then comes homeward pretty quick, with lumber loaded down. And when I see the wagons drill along the country road, each one a-creaking, loud and shrill, beneath its lumber load, I know the country’s on the boom, and things will hum once more; and any man who talks of gloom is just a misfit bore.
Some people read the Wall Street news to see which way we head, and some keep tab on Henry Clews, to see if we are dead; some follow up what Congress does, and think therein they’ll find the signs that business will buzz, or maybe fall behind. And some are making frequent notes upon the tariff law, to see if it will get our goats, and dislocate our jaw.
But when I want to know the truth, about our future fate, I pass up all such things, forsooth, and sit on my front gate, and watch the farmers going by, upon their way from town, and if with lumber piled up high, their carts are loaded down, I know prosperity’s on top, good times are here, you bet; and I go forth and whip a cop and chase a suffragette. Oh, when the farmers spend their hoards for lumber, we enthuse; the granger’s wagonload of boards tells more than Henry Clews.
ADVERTISING
Tell me not in mournful numbers, with the air of critics wise, that the retail lumber dealer’s not the one to advertise.