Read Ebook: Garden Pests in New Zealand A Popular Manual for Practical Gardeners Farmers and Schools by Miller David

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A Glance at History 17 Longfellow 18 In Politics 19 The Human Head 20 The Universal Help 21 Little Sunbeam 22 The Flag 23 Doc Jonnesco 24 Little Girl 25 The Landlady 26 Twilight Reveries 27 King and Kid 28 Little Green Tents 29 Geronimo Aloft 31 The Venerable Excuse 32 Silver Threads 33 The Poet Balks 34 The Penny Saved 35 Home Life 36 Eagles and Hens 37 The Sunday Paper 38 The Nation's Hope 39 Football 40 Health Food 41 Physical Culture 43 The Nine Kings 44 The Eyes of Lincoln 45 The Better Land 46 Knowledge Is Power 47 The Pie Eaters 48 The Sexton's Inn 49 He Who Forgets 50 Poor Father 51 The Idle Question 52 Politeness 53 Little Pilgrims 55 The Wooden Indian 56 Home and Mother 57 E. Phillips Oppenheim 58 Better than Boodle 59 The Famous Four 60 Niagara 61 A Rainy Night 62 The Wireless 63 Helpful Mr. Bok 64 Beryl's Boudoir 65 Post-Mortem Honors 67 After A While 68 Pretty Good Schemes 69 Knowledge by Mail 70 Duke and Plumber 71 Human Hands 72 The Lost Pipe 73 Thanksgiving 74 Sir Walter Raleigh 75 The Country Editor 76 Useless Griefs 77 Fairbanks' Whiskers 78 Letting It Alone 79 The End of the Road 80 The Dying Fisherman 81 George Meredith 82 The Smart Children 83 The Journey 85 Times Have Changed 86 My Little Dog "Dot" 87 Harry Thurston Peck 88 Tired Man's Sleep 89 Tomorrow 90 Toothache 91 Auf Wiedersehen 92 After the Game 93 Nero's Fiddle 94 The Real Terror 95 The Talksmiths 96 Woman's Progress 97 The Magic Mirror 99 The Misfit Face 100 A Dog Story 101 The Pitcher 102 Lions and Ants 103 The Nameless Dead 104 Ambition 105 Night's Illusions 106 Before and After 107 Luther Burbank 108 Governed Too Much 109 Success in Life 110 The Hookworm Victim 111 Alfred Austin 112 Weary Old Age 113 Lullaby 114 The School Marm 115 Poe 116 Gay Parents 117 Dad 118 John Bunyan 119 A Near Anthem 121 The Yellow Cord 122 The Important Man 123 Toddling Home 124 Trifling Things 125 Trusty Dobbin 126 The High Prices 127 Omar Khayyam 128 The Grouch 129 The Pole 130 Wilhelmina 131 Wilbur Wright 132 The Broncho 133 Schubert's Serenade 135 Mazeppa 136 Fashion's Devotee 137 Christmas 138 The Tightwad 139 Blue Blood 140 The Cave Man 141 Rudyard Kipling 142 In Indiana 143 The Colonel at Home 144 The June Bride 145 At The Theatre 146 Club Day Dirge 147 Washington 149 Hours and Ponies 150 The Optimist 151 A Few Remarks 152 Little Things 153 The Umpire 154 Sherlock Holmes 155 The Sanctuary 156 The Newspaper Graveyard 157 My Lady's Hair 158 The Sick Minstrel 159 The Beggar 160 Looking Forward 161 The Depot Loafers 162 The Foolish Husband 163 Halloween 165 Rienzi To The Romans 166 The Sorrel Colt 167 Plutocrat and Poet 168 Mail Order Clothes 169 Evening 170 They All Come Back 171 The Cussing Habit 172 John Bull 173 An Oversight 174 The Traveler 175 Saturday Night 176 Lady Nicotine 177 Up-To-Date Serenade 179 The Consumer 180 Advice To A Damsel 181 The New Year Vow 182 The Stricken Toiler 183 The Law Books 184 Sleuths of Fiction 185 Put It On Ice 186 The Philanthropist 187 Other Days 188 The Passing Year 189

Page Frontispiece 12 "A Glance at History" 16 "Geronimo Aloft" 30 "Physical Culture" 42 "Little Pilgrims" 54 "Post-Mortem Honors" 66 "The Journey" 84 "The Magic Mirror" 98 "A Near Anthem" 120 "Schubert's Serenade" 134 "Washington" 148 "Halloween" 164 "Up-to-Date Serenade" 178

A Poet of the People

A newspaper service sells these rhymes to two hundred newspapers with a combined daily circulation of nearly five million, and assuming that five people read each newspaper--which is the number agreed upon by publicity experts--it may be called a fair guess to say that two out of every five readers of newspapers read Mr. Mason's poems.

So the ten million daily readers is a reasonably accurate estimate. No other American verse-maker has such a daily audience.

Walt Mason is, therefore, the Poet Laureate of the American Democracy. He is the voice of the people.

Put to a vote, Walt would be elected to the Laureate's job, if he got a vote for each reader. And, generally speaking, men would vote as they read.

The reason Walt Mason has such a large number of readers is because he says what the average man is thinking so that the average man can understand it.

The philosophy of Walt Mason is the philosophy of America. Briefly it is this: The fiddler must be paid; if you don't care to pay, don't dance. In the meantime--grin and bear it, because you've got to bear it, and you might as well grin. But don't try to lie out of it. The Lord hates a cheerful liar.

This is what the American likes to hear. For that is the American idea about the way the world is put together. So he reads Walt Mason night and morning and smiles and takes his knife and cuts out the piece and carries it in his vest pocket, or her handbag.

In the meantime we do not claim its medicinal properties will cure everything. But it is good for sore eyes; it cures the blues; it sweetens the temper, cleanses the head, and aids the digestion. In cases of heart trouble it has been known to unite torn ligaments and encourage large families.

And a gentleman over there takes a bottle! Step up quickly; remember we are merely introducing this great natural remedy. Our supply is limited. In a moment the music will begin.

Charles the First, with stately walk, made the journey to the block. As he paced the street along, silence fell upon the throng; from that throng there burst a sigh, for a king was come to die! Charles upon the scaffold stood, in his veins no craven blood; calm, serene, he viewed the crowd, while the headsman said, aloud: "Cheer up, Charlie! Smile and sing! Death's a most delightful thing! I will cure your hacking cough, when I chop your headpiece off! Headache, toothache--they're a bore! You will never have them more! Cheer up, Charlie, dance and yell! Here's the axe, and all is well! I, though but a humble dub, represent the Sunshine Club, and our motto is worth while: 'Do Not Worry--Sing and Smile!' Therefore let us both be gay, as we do our stunt today; I to swing the shining axe, you to take a few swift whacks. Lumpty-doodle, lumpty-ding, do not worry, smile and sing!"

Singer of the kindly song, minstrel of the gentle lay, when the night is dark and long, and beset with thorns the way--in the poignant hour of pain, in this weary worldly war, there is comfort in thy strain, courage in "Excelsior." When the city bends us down, with its weight of bricks and tiles, lead us, poet, from the town, to the fragrant forest aisles, where the hemlocks ever moan, like old Druids clad in green, as they sighed, when all alone, wandered sad Evangeline. Writer of the cleanly page, teacher of the golden truth; still I love thee in my age, as I loved thee in my youth. In some breasts a fiercer fire flamed, than ever thou hast known; but no mortal minstrel's lyre ever gave a purer tone. Singer of the kindly song, minstrel of the gentle lay, time is swift and art is long, and thy fame will last alway.

His days were joyous and serene, his life was pure, his record clean; folks named their children after him, and he was in the social swim; ambitious lads would say: "I plan to be just such a worthy man!" But in the fullness of his years, the tempter whispered in his ears, and begged that he would make the race for county judge, or some such place. And so he yielded to his fate, and came forth as a candidate. The night before election day they found him lying, cold and gray, the deadest man in all the land, this message in his icy hand: "The papers that opposed my race have brought me into deep disgrace; I find that I'm a fiend unloosed; I robbed a widow's chicken roost, and stole an orphan's Easter egg, and swiped a soldier's wooden leg. I bilked a heathen of his joss, and later kidnapped Charlie Ross; I learn, with something like alarm, that I designed the Gunness farm, and also, with excessive grief, that Black Hand cohorts call me chief. I thought myself a decent man, whose record all the world might scan; but now, alas, too late! I see that all the depths of infamy have soiled me with their reeking shame, and so it's time to quit the game."

The greatest gift the gods bestowed on mortal was his dome of thought; it sometimes seems a useless load, when one is tired, and worn and hot; it sometimes seems a trifling thing, less useful than one's lungs or slats; a mere excuse, it seems, to bring us duns from men who deal in hats. Some men appreciate their heads, and use them wisely every day, and every passing minute sheds new splendor on their upward way; while some regard their heads as junk, mere idle knobs upon their necks; such men are nearly always sunk in failure, and are gloomy wrecks. I know a clerk who's served his time in one old store for twenty-years; he's marked his fellows climb, and climb--and marked with jealousy and tears; he's labored there since he was young; he'll labor there till he is dead; he never rose a single rung, because he never used his head. I know a poorhouse in the vale, where fifty-seven paupers stay; they paw the air and weep and wail, and cuss each other all the day; and there they'll loll while life endures, and there they'll die in pauper beds; their chances were as good as yours--but then they never used their heads. O human head! Majestic box! O wondrous can, from labels free! If man is craving fame or rocks, he'll get them if he uses thee!

My cow's gone dry, my hens won't lay, my horse has got the croup; the hot winds spoiled my budding hay, and I am in the soup. And while my life is sad and sore, and earthly joys are few, I'll write a note to Theodore; he'll tell me what to do. I wasn't home when Fortune called, my feet had strayed afar; I fear that I am going bald, and I have got catarrh. The wolf is howling at my door, I've naught to smoke or chew; but I shall write to Theodore--he'll tell me what to do. My Sunday suit is old and sere, I'm wearing last year's lids; my aunt is coming for a year, to visit, with her kids. They will not trust me at the store, and I am feeling blue, so I shall write to Theodore--he'll tell me what to do. When we are weary and distraught, from worldly strife and care, and we're denied the balm we sought, and given black despair, ah, then, my friends, there is one chore devolves on me and you; we'll simply write to Theodore--he'll tell us what to do.

She was sweet and soft and clinging, and he always found her singing, when he came home from his labors as the night was closing in; she was languishing and slender, and her eyes were deep and tender, and he simply couldn't tell her that her coffee was a sin. Golden hair her head was crowning; she was fond of quoting Browning, and she knew a hundred legends of the olden, golden time; and her heart was full of yearning for the Rosicrucian learning, and he simply couldn't tell her that the beefsteak was a crime. She was posted on Pendennis, and she knew the songs of Venice, and he listened to her prattle with an effort to look pleased; and she liked the wit of Weller--and he simply couldn't tell her that the eggs he had for breakfast had been laid by hens diseased. So she filled his home with beauty, and she did her wifely duty, did it as she understood it, and her conscience didn't hurt, when dyspepsia boldly sought him, and the sexton came and got him, and his tortured frame was buried 'neath a wagon-load of dirt. O, those marriageable misses, thinking life all love and kisses, mist and moonshine, glint and glamour, stardust borrowed from the skies! Man's a gross and sordid lummix--men are largely made of stomachs, and the songs of all the sirens will not take the place of pies!

Bright-hued and beautiful, it floats upon the summer air; and every thread of it denotes the love that's woven there; the love of veterans whose tread has sounded on the fields of red; and women old, who mourn their dead, but mourn without despair. Bright-hued and beautiful, it courts caresses of the breeze; and, straining at its staff it sports, in flaunting ecstasies; and other flags, that once were gay, long, long ago were laid away, and many men, whose heads are gray, are thinking now of these. Serene and beautiful it waves, the flag our fathers knew; in Freedom's sunny air it laves, and gains a brighter hue; and may it still the symbol be of all that makes a nation free; still may we cherish Liberty, and to our God be true.

"O Doc," I cried, "I humbly beg, that you will amputate my leg." The doctor cheerfully complied, and shot some dope into my hide, and made his bucksaw fairly sail, until it struck a rusty nail. "Hoot, mon!" he said, quite undismayed, "I'll have to finish with a spade." And as he dug and toiled away, we talked about the price of hay, the recent frightful rise in pork, the sugar grafters in New York, the things we found in Christmas socks, the flurry in Rock Island stocks, the hookworm and the hangman's noose, the bright career of Captain Loose. I felt no pain or ache or shock; it pleased me much to watch the doc; and when the job was done, I said: "Now that you're here, cut off my head." With skillful hands he wrought and wrought, and soon cut off my dome of thought, and when I asked him for his bill: "There is no charge, already, still; I work for Science, not for scads, so keep the dollars of your dads; to banish pain is my desire; to nothing more do I aspire; if I may win that goal, you bet, I'll be so happy, always, yet!" Is there a more heroic game? Could any man have nobler aim? One poet, old, and bald and fat, to this great man takes off his hat!

Little girl, so glad and jolly, playing with your home-made dolly, built of rags and straw, fill the sunny air with laughter, heedless of the sorrow after--that is childhood's law! Let no sad and sordid vision cheat you of the joy Elysian that to youth belongs; let no prophecy of sorrow scheduled for a sad tomorrow still your joyous songs! Soon enough will come the worry, and the labors, and the hurry, soon you'll cook and scrub; soon with milliners and drapers you will fuss, and read long papers, at the Culture Club. Lithe your form, but soon you'll force it in a torture-chamber corset that will make you bawl; and those little feet, that twinkle, you will squeeze, until they wrinkle, into shoes too small. And those sunny locks so tangled will be tortured and kedangled into waves and curls; and you'll buy complexion powder, and your bonnets will be louder than the other girl's. Little girl, with home-made dolly, cut out woe and melancholy, jump and sing and play! Fill the rippling air with laughter! Tears and corns will follow after! This is childhood's day!

I run a hash bazaar, just up the street; there all my boarders are yelling for meat; boarders carniverous, boarders herbiverous; Allah deliver us! just watch them eat! Boarders are ravenous, all the world o'er; "feed till you spavin us," thus they implore; boarders are gluttonous, roastbeef and muttonous; "come and unbutton us, so we'll eat more!" Little they pay me for chicken and rice; yet they waylay me for dainties of price; "bring us canary birds"--these are their very words, bawling like hairy Kurds--"bring them on ice!" I give them tea and toast, jelly and jam, some kind of stew or roast, codfish or ham; their words are Chaucerous: "Dame Cup-and-Saucerous, bring us rhinoceros, boiled with a yam!" I run a boarding booth, as I have said; there Age and Smiling Youth, raise the Old Ned; maybe the clamoring, knocking and hammering bunch will be stammering, when I am dead!

At that hour supremely quiet, when the dusk and darkness blend, and the sordid strife and riot of the day are at an end; when the bawling and the screaming of the mart have died away, then I like to lie a-dreaming of my castles in Cathay. I would roam in flowery spaces watered by the fabled streams, I would travel starry spaces on the winged feet of dreams; I would float across the ages to a more heroic time, when inspired were all ages, and the warriors sublime. At that hour supremely pleasing, dreams are all knocked galley west, by the phonograph that's wheezing: "Birdie, Dear, I Love You Best."

The king sat up on his jeweled throne, and he heaved a sigh that was like a groan, for his crown was hard, and it bruised his head, and his scepter weighed like a pig of lead; the ladies smirked as they came to beg; the knights were pulling the royal leg. The king exclaimed: "If I had my wish, I would cut this out, and I'd go and fish. For what is pomp to a weary soul that yearns and yearns for the fishing hole; the throne's a bore and the crown a gawd, and I'd swap the lot for a bamboo rod, and a can of worms and a piece of string--but there's no such luck for a poor old king!" And a boy who passed by the palace high, to fish for trout in the streamlet nigh, looked up in awe at the massive walls, and caught a glimpse of the marble halls, and he said to himself: "Oh, hully chee! Wisht I was the king, and the king was me! To reign all day with your crown on straight is a whole lot better'n diggin' bait, and fishin' round when the fish won't bite, and gettin' licked for your luck at night!"

The little green tents where the soldiers sleep, and the sunbeams play and the women weep, are covered with flowers today; and between the tents walk the weary few, who were young and stalwart in 'sixty-two, when they went to the war away. The little green tents are built of sod, and they are not long, and they are not broad, but the soldiers have lots of room; and the sod is part of the land they saved, when the flag of the enemy darkly waved, the symbol of dole and doom. The little green tent is a thing divine; the little green tent is a country's shrine, where patriots kneel and pray; and the brave men left, so old, so few, were young and stalwart in 'sixty-two, when they went to the war away!

The sod is o'er the dauntless head, the fierce old eyes are dim and dead, the martial heart is dust; they say he died in sanctity, and his wild soul, of fetters free, went forth to join the just. But will the joys of Paradise, as we imagine them, suffice to hold Geronimo? Will joyous song and endless calm to that bold spirit be a balm, while silent eons flow? But Heaven is a region fair, and there may be long reaches there, to give the savage space to ride his steed o'er field and fell and raise his fierce, defiant yell, in foray and in race. The Judge who knows the hearts of men may find a desert or a glen for souls that love the wild; and through the gates perchance may jog the hunter's pinto and his dog, his painted squaw and child.

You say your grandma's dead, my lad, and you, bowed down with woe, to see her laid beneath the mold believe you ought to go; and so you ask a half day off, and you may have that same; alas, that grannies always die when there's a baseball game! Last spring, if I remember right, three grandmas died for you, and you bewailed the passing, then, of souls so warm and true; and then another grandma died--a tall and stately dame; the day they buried her there was a fourteen-inning game. And when the balmy breeze of June among the willows sighed, another grandma closed her eyes and crossed the Great Divide; they laid her gently to her rest beside the churchyard wall, the day we lammed the stuffing from the Rubes from Minnepaul. Go forth, my son, and mourn your dead, and shed the scalding tear, and lay a simple wreath upon your eighteenth grandma's bier; while you perform this solemn task I'll to the grandstand go, and watch our pennant-winning team make soupbones of the foe.

Sing a song of long ago, now the weary day is done, and the breeze is sighing low dirges for the vanished sun; sing a song of other days, ere our hearts were tired and old; sing the sweetest of old lays: "Silver Threads Among the Gold." We who feebly hold the track in the gloaming of life's day, love the songs that take us back to life's springtime, far away, when our hope had airy wing, and our hearts were strong and bold, and at eve we used to sing "Silver Threads Among the Gold." Then our hair no silver knew, and these eyes, that shrunken seem, were the brightest brown or blue, and old age was but a dream; but the years have taken flight, and life's evening bells are tolled; so, my children, sing tonight, "Silver Threads Among the Gold."

If old Jim Riley came to town, to read a bundle of his rhyme, I guess you couldn't hold me down--I'd want to hear him every time. I wouldn't heed the tempest's shriek; I'd walk ten miles and not complain, to hear Jim Hoosier Riley speak. But I would not go round a block to see a statesman saw the air, to hear a hired spellbinder talk, like a faker at the county fair. For statesmen are as thick as fleas, and poets, they are far between; one song that lingers on the breeze is worth a million yawps, I ween. If John McCutcheon came to town, to make some pictures on the wall, I'd tear the whole blamed doorway down to be the first one in the hall; you couldn't keep me in my bed if I was dying there of croup; the push would find me at the head of the procession, with a whoop. But I won't push my fat old frame across a dozen yards of bricks, to list to men whose only fame is based on pull and politics.

It is wise to save the pennies when the pennies come your way, for you're more than apt to need them when arrives the rainy day; and when Famine comes a-whooping with the cross-bones on her vest, then the fellow with the bundle has the edge on all the rest. I admire the man who's saving, if he doesn't save too hard, if he doesn't think a dollar bigger than the courthouse yard; and I like to see him salting down the riches that he's struck, if he always has a quarter for the guy that's out of luck. When the winter comes upon us, yelling like a baseball fan, then it's nice to have some boodle in an old tomato can; when there's sickness in the wigwam, and we have to call the doc, then it's nice to have a package hidden in the eight-day clock; when Old Age, the hoary rascal, comes a-butting in at last, then it's nice to have some rubles that you cornered in the past; and the man who saves the pennies is a dandy and a duck--if he always has a quarter for the guy that's out of luck.

Now the nights are growing longer, and the frost is in the air, and it's nice to hug the fireside in your trusty rocking chair, with the good wife there beside you, feeding cookies to the cat, while the energetic children play the dickens with your hat. O, it's nice to look around you, and to feel that you're a king, that your coming home at evening makes your joyous subjects sing! So you read some twenty chapters of old Gibbon's dope on Rome, and you know what human bliss is in your humble little home! There is really nothing better in the way of earthly bliss, than to toddle home at evening, and to get a welcome kiss, and to know the kids who greet you at the pea-green garden gate, have been wailing, broken-hearted, that you were two minutes late! There is nothing much more soothing than a loving woman's smile, when she sees your bow-legs climbing o'er the bargain counter stile! If you don't appreciate it, then the bats are in your dome, for the greatest king a-living is the monarch of a home!

The eagle ought to have a place among the false alarms; we place its picture on our coins, and on our coat of arms; but what did eagles ever do but frolic in the sun? They'd be in jail for larceny if justice should be done. They are not half so good to eat as mallard duck or grouse; they'd surely cause a panic in a section boarding house; and never in this weary world was farmer seen to go, to trade a pail of eagle eggs for nails or calico. The humble hen, on t'other hand, still helps the world along; she lifts the farmer's mortgage as she trills her morning song; she yields the fragrant omelet, and when reduced to pie, she makes the boarder feel that he at last is fit to die. The eagle does not stir the souls of earnest, thoughtful men; and so let's take him from the shield and substitute the hen.

I spent five cents for the Sunday "Dart," and hauled it home in a two-wheeled cart; I piled the sections upon the floor, till they reached as high as the kitchen door; I hung the chromos upon the wall, though there wasn't room to hang them all, and the yard was littered some ten feet deep with "comic sections" that made me weep; and there were sections of pink and green, a woman's section and magazine, and sheets of music the which if played would quickly make an audience fade; and there were patterns for women's gowns and also for gentlemen's hand-me-downs; and a false mustache and a rubber doll, and a deck of cards and a parasol. Now men are busy with dray and cart, a-hauling away the Sunday "Dart."

The nation's sliding down the path that leads to Ruin's lair, and all of Ruin's dogs of wrath will chew its vitals there; each day we deeper plunge in grief; we'll soon have reached the worst; why don't we turn, then, for relief, to William Randolph Hurst? It seems we haven't any sense, that we these ills endure; he's told us oft, in confidence, that he alon

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