Rippling Rhymes
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 whoop and song. 

 

 

 COURAGE 

 Brave men are they who set their faces toward the polar bergs and floes, who roam the wild, unpeopled places, perchance to find among the snows a resting-place remote and lonely; a winding-sheet of deathless white, where elemental voices only disturb the brooding year-long night. 

 Brave souls are they whose man-made pinions have borne them over plains and seas, who conquered wide and new dominions, and strapped a saddle on the breeze. Their engine-driven wings are wearing new pathways through the realm of clouds; they play with death, with dauntless daring, to please the breathless, fickle crowds. 

 Brave men go forth to distant regions, forsaking luxury and ease; through all the years they've gone in legions, to unknown lands, o'er stormy seas; and when, by sword or fever smitten, they blithely journeyed to the grave, full well they knew their names were written down in the annals of the brave. 

 I am as brave as any rover described in gay, romantic screeds, but, when my fitful life is over, no epic will narrate my deeds. Condemned to silent heroism, I go my unmarked way alone, and no one hands me prune or prism, as token that my deeds are known. But yesterday my teeth were aching, and to the painless dentist's lair I took my way, unawed, unquaking, and sat down in the fatal chair. He dug around my rumbling molars with drawing-knives and burglars' tools, and cross-cut saws and patent rollers, and marlinspikes and two-foot rules. He climbed upon my lap and prodded with crowbar and with garden spade, to see that I was not defrauded of all the agony that's made. He pulled and yanked and pried and twisted, and uttered oft his battle shout, and now and then his wife assisted—till finally the teeth came out. And never once while thus he pottered around my torn and mangled jowl—not once, while I was being slaughtered, did I let out a single howl! No brass-bands 
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