Rippling Rhymes | Page 8

your hardest licks and whacks, and get right down to Old Brass Tacks, and, undismayed by bruise or fall, go right ahead--in short, play ball!

THE OLD SONGS
The modern airs are cheerful, melodious and sweet; we hear them sung and whistled all day upon the street. Some lilting ragtime ditty that's rollicking and gay will gain the public favor and hold it--for a day. But when the day is ended, and we are tired and worn, and more than half persuaded that man was made to mourn, how soothing then the music our fathers used to know! The songs of sense and feeling, the songs of long ago! The "Jungle Joe" effusions and kindred roundelays will do to hum and whistle throughout our busy days; and in the garish limelight the yodelers may yell, and Injun songs may flourish--and all is passing well, but when to light the heavens the shining stars return, and in the cottage windows the lights begin to burn, when parents and their children are seated by the fire, remote from worldly clamor and all the world's desire, when eyes are soft and shining, and hearths with love aglow, how pleasant is the sinking of songs of long ago!

GUESSING VS. KNOWING
If I were selling nails or glass, or pills or shoes or garden sass, or honey from the bee--whatever line of goods were mine, I'd study up that special line and know its history.
If I a stock of rags should keep, I'd read up sundry books on sheep and wool and how it grows. Beneath my old bald, freckled roof, I'd store some facts on warp and woof and other things like those. I'd try to know a spinning-jack from patent churn or wagon rack, a loom from hog-tight fence; and if a man came in to buy, and asked some leading question, I could answer with some sense.
If I were selling books, I'd know a Shakespeare from an Edgar Poe, a Carlyle from a Pope; and I would know Fitzgerald's rhymes from Laura Libbey's brand of crimes, or Lillian Russell's dope.
If I were selling shoes, I'd seize the fact that on gooseberry trees, good leather doesn't grow; that shoe pegs do not grow like oats, that cowhide doesn't come from goats--such things I'd surely know.
And if I were a grocer man. I'd open now and then a can to see what stuff it held; 'twere better than to writhe in woe and make reply, "I didn't know," when some mad patron yelled.
I hate to hear a merchant say: "I think that this is splendid hay," "I guess it's first class tea." He ought to know how good things are, if he would sell his silk or tar or other goods to me. Oh, knowledge is the stuff that wins; the man without it soon begins to get his trade in kinks. No matter where a fellow goes, he's valued for the things he knows, not for the things he thinks.

WHEN WOMEN VOTE
"Jane Samantha," said the husband, as he donned his hat and coat, "I would offer a suggestion ere you go to cast your vote. We have had a bitter struggle through this strenuous campaign, and the issues are important, and they stand out clear and plain. Colonel Whitehead stands for progress--for the uplift that we need: he invites investigation of his every word and deed. He's opposed to all the ringsters and to graft of every kind; he's a man of spotless record, clean and pure in heart and mind. His opponent, Major Bounder, stands for all that I abhor; plunder, ring rule and corruption you will see him working for; all the pluggers and the heelers stood by him in this campaign--so I ask your vote for Whitehead and the uplift, dearest Jane."
"William Henry," said the housewife, "I am sorry to decline, but the wife of Colonel Whitehead never was a friend of mine. Last July she gave a party--you recall her Purple Tea?--and invited all the neighbors, but she said 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