rooster's early call that wakes the world to labor. I'd seek the hayfields whose perfume the jaded heart doth nourish, I'd go where wayside roses bloom and johnny-jump-ups flourish. I'd see the pasture flecked with sheep and mule and colt and heifer, and let my spirit lie asleep upon the twilight zephyr. Oh, town, I leave you for a week, your burdens and your duties! The country calls me—I must seek its glories and its beauties! 

 

 Reality 

 Gee whiz! I'd give a million bones to be back home a-sleeping! My shoes are full of burs and stones, and I am tired of weeping. Last night I sought a stack of hay, where slumber's fetters bound me, and at the cold, bleak break of day a husky farmer found me. I tried to pacify his nibs when he stood there and blessed me; alas, his pitchfork smote my ribs, his cowhide shoes caressed me. The dogs throughout this countryside all seem to think they need me; they've gathered samples of my hide, and many times they've treed me. And when I roamed the woodland path to see the wild-flowers' tinting, a bull pursued me in its wrath and broke all records sprinting. At noontide I sat down to rest, and rose depressed and dizzy; I'd sat upon a hornet's nest, and all the birds got busy. My whiskers now are full of hay, my legs are lame and weary; it's been a-raining every day, and all the world is dreary. The road will do for those who like a pathway rough and gritty; I've had enough—just watch me hike back to the good old city. 

 

 

 THE MILLIONAIRES 

 They like to make the people think that all their piles of yellow chink, are weary burdens, to be borne, with eyes that weep and hearts that mourn; but as you jog along the road, you see no millionaires unload. They like to talk and drone and drool, to growing youths in Sunday school, and tell them that the poor man's lot is just the thing that hits the spot; to warn them of ambition's goad—they talk, and talk, but don't unload. They like to talk of days long gone, when life for them was at its dawn, and they were poor and bent with toil, and drew their living from the soil, and lived in some obscure abode—and so they dream, but don't unload. They like to take a check in hand, and, headed by the village band, present it to some charity—'twould mean five cents to you or me; then they're embalmed in song and ode; they smirk and smile, but don't unload. 

 

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