The Sorrel Colt
A sorrel colt, one pleasant day, ran round and round a stack of hay, and kicked its heels, and pawed the land, and reared and jumped to beat the band. The older horses stood around and swallowed fodder by the pound, and gave no notice to the kid that gaily round the haystack slid. I loafed along and murmured, then: "If horses were as mean as men, some old gray workhorse, stiff and sour, would jaw that colt for half an hour; methinks I hear that workhorse say: 'You think you're mighty smooth and gay, and you are fresh and sporty now, but when they hitch you to the plow, and strap a harness on your back, and work you till your innards crack, and kick you when you want to balk, and slug you with a chunk of rock, and cover you with nasty sores, and leave you freezing out of doors—O, then you won't kick up your heels! You'll know, then, how a workhorse feels!' But horses have no croaking voice, to chill the colt that would rejoice; no graybeard plug will leave its feed to make the heart of childhood bleed; no dismal prophecies are heard, no moral homilies absurd, where horses stand and eat their hay, and so the colts may run and play!"
Plutocrat and Poet
Good old opulent John D.! He would look with scorn on me; I consider I'm in luck, when I have an extra buck; buying ice or buying coal always keeps me in the hole, and when I have paid the rent I am left without a cent. Yet I'm always gay and snug, happy as a tumblebug, having still the best of times, grinding out my blame fool rhymes! Old John D., on t'other hand, frets away to beat the band; he is burdened with his care—though he isn't with his hair—and his health is going back, and his liver's out of whack, and his conscience has grown numb, and his wishbone's out of plumb, and he's trembling all the day lest a plunk may get away. Better be a cornfed bard, writing lyrics by the yard, with an appetite so gay it won't balk at prairie hay, than to have a mighty pile, and forget the way to smile!