THEY ALL COME BACK
The stars will come back to the azure vault when the clouds are all blown away; and the sun will come back when the night is done, and give us another day; the cows will come back from the meadows lush, and the birds to their trysting tree, but the money I paid to a mining shark will never come back to me! The leaves will come back to the naked boughs, the flowers to the frosty brae; the spring will come back like a blooming bride, and the breezes that blow in May; and joy will come back to the stricken heart, and laughter and hope and glee, but the money I blew for some mining stock will never come back to me!
HOME BUILDERS
Old Bullion has a stack of rich things in his shack; of Persian rugs and antique jugs and costly bric-a-brac. There's art work in the hall, fine paintings on the wall; and yet a gloom as of the tomb is hanging over all. Here costly books abound. "This cost a thousand pound; that trade-mark blur means Elzivir—I've nothing cheap around. Here's Venus in the foam; the statue came from Rome; I bought the best the world possessed when I built up this home." Thus proudly Bullion talks, as through his home he walks, and tells the cost of things embossed, of vases, screens and crocks. No children's laughter rings, among those costly things; no sounds of play by night or day; no happy housewife sings. For romping girl or boy might easily destroy a priceless jug, or stain a rug, and ruin Bullion's joy. The guests of Bullion yawn, impatient to be gone, afraid they'll mar some lacquered jar, or tread some fan upon.
Down here where Tiller dwells you hear triumphant yells of girls and boys who play with toys, with hoops and horns and bells. There are no costly screens; no relics of dead queens; but on the stand, close to your hand, cheap books and magazines. There's no Egyptian crock, or painted jabberwock, but by the wall there stands a tall and loud six-dollar clock. Old Tiller can't impart much lore concerning art, or tell the price of virtu nice until he breaks your heart. But in his home abide those joys which seem denied to stately halls upon whose walls are works of pomp and pride. That pomp which smothers joy, and chills a girl or boy, may have and hold the hue of gold, but it has base alloy.
FAILURE AND SUCCESS
He was selling tacks and turnips in a gloomy corner store, and he never washed his windows and he never swept the floor, and he let the cobwebs gather on the ceiling and the walls, and he let his whiskers flourish till they brushed his overalls. So his customers forsook him—for his patrons were not chumps—and the sheriff came and got him and that merchant bumped the bumps.