Rippling Rhymes | Page 9

no word to me. I don't care about your issues or your uplift
or your ring, but I won't support the husband of that silly, stuck-up
thing!"
Major Bounder was the victor on that day of stress and strife, for it
seemed that many women didn't like the Colonel's wife.

THE AGENT AT THE DOOR
"Away with you, stranger!" exclaimed Mrs. Granger, "avaunt and
skedaddle! Come here never more! You agents are making me crazy
and breaking my heart, and I beg that you'll trot from my door! I've
bought nutmeg graters, shoelaces and gaiters, I've bought everything
from a lamp to a lyre; I've bought patent heaters and saws and egg
beaters and stoves that exploded and set me afire."
"You're laboring under a curious blunder," the stranger protested; "I
know very well that agents are trying, and dames tired of buying; but
be not uneasy--I've nothing to sell."
"I'm used to that story--it's whiskered and hoary," replied Mrs. Granger,
"you want to come in, and then when you enter, in tones of a Stentor
you'll brag of your polish for silver and tin. Or maybe you're dealing in
unguents healing, or dye for the whiskers, or salve for the corns, or
something that quickens egg-laying in chickens, or knobs for the cattle
to wear on their horns. It's no use your talking, you'd better be walking,
and let me go on with my housework, I think; you look dissipated, if
truth must be stated, and if you had money you'd spend it for drink."
"My name," said the stranger, who backed out of danger--the woman

had reached for the broom by the wall--"is Septimus Beecher; I am the
new preacher; I just dropped around for a pastoral call."

GOOD AND BAD TIMES
"Times are so bad I have the blues," says Bilderbeck, who deals in
shoes. "All day I loaf around my store, and folks don't come here any
more; I reckon they have barely cash to buy cigars and corn beef hash,
and when they've bought the grub to eat, they can't afford to clothe their
feet.
"There's something wrong when trade's thus pinched," says he, "and
someone should be lynched. The cost of living is so high that it's
economy to die; and death is so expensive, then, that corpses want to
live again. The trusts have robbed us left and right, and there's no
remedy in sight; the government is out of plumb and should be knocked
to Kingdom Come."
And Ganderson, across the street, is selling furniture for feet. "All day
he hands out boots and shoes with cheerful cockadoodledoos. I have no
reason to complain," says Ganderson; all kicks are vain; my customers
don't come to hear me raising thunder by the year.
"They have some troubles of their own, and do not care to hear me
groan. And so I beam around my place, and wear a smile that splits my
face, and gather in the shining dime--trade's getting better all the time!"
Though days be dark and trade be tough, it's always well to make a
bluff, to face the world with cheerful eye, as though the goose were
hanging high. No merchant ever made a friend by dire complainings
without end. And people never seek a store to hear a grouchy merchant
roar; they'll patronize the wiser gent who doesn't air his discontent.

LOOK PLEASANT, PLEASE!

"Look pleasant, please!" the photo expert told me, for I had pulled a
long and gloomy face; and then I let a wide, glad smile enfold me and
hold my features in its warm embrace.
"Look pleasant, please!" My friends, we really ought to cut out these
words and put them in a frame; long, long we'd search to find a better
motto to guide and help us while we play the game. Look pleasant,
please, when you have met reverses, when you beneath misfortune's
stroke are bent, when all your hopes seem riding round in hearses--a
scowling brow won't help you worth a cent. Look pleasant, please,
when days are dark and dismal and all the world seems in a hopeless
fix; the clouds won't go because your grief's abysmal, the sun won't
shine the sooner for your kicks. Look pleasant, please, when
Grip--King of diseases, has filled your system with his microbes vile; I
know it's hard, but still, between your sneezes, you may be able to
produce a smile. Look pleasant, please, whatever trouble galls you; a
gloomy face won't cure a single pain. Look pleasant, please, whatever
ill befalls you, for gnashing teeth is weary work and vain.
Look pleasant, please, and thus inspire your brothers to raise a smile
and pass the same along; forget yourself and think a while of others,
and do your stunt with gladsome