Category: Evening Star

From the Evening Star, March 10, 1913.
 By Walt Mason.
 

 You’re welcome at the booze bazaar while you have got a roll; they’ll say you are a shining star, a genial, princely soul. The low-browed gent who sells the suds will call you “Cap” or “Judge,” while you have bullion in your duds to buy his baneful budge. And all the mirthful hangers-on will cheer your wit and sense, while merrily the demijohn goes round at your expense. They’ll greet with wide ecstatic grin the stalest of your jokes, while you have cash to buy the gin or fix the crowd with smokes. But when your little roll is lost, and you all busted are, there falls a chill antarctic frost about the shining bar. And when you fix your thirsty gaze upon the bottled shelf, the gent who smirked in other days, growls fiercely, “Chase yourself!” The loafers eye you with disdain, who once said you were It, and grumble that you cause them pain, when you’d display your wit. The days when you showed up so strong no one can now recall; and if you hang around too long they’ll push you through the wall. Good fellows go the same old gait, the gay, high-rolling chumps; and they will meet the same old fate, and bump the same old bumps.

From the Evening Star, February 26, 1913.
 By Walt Mason.
 

 I would not care to live, my dears
 Much more than seven hundred years
     If I should last that long;
 For I would tire of things in time
 And life at last would seem a crime
     And I a public wrong.
 Old Gaffer Goodworth, whom you know
 Was born a hundred years ago
     And states the fact with mirth;
 He’s rather proud that he has hung 
 Around so long while old and young
     Were falling off the earth.
 But when his boastful fit is gone
 A sadness comes his face upon
     That speaks of utter woe;
 He sits and broods and dreams again
 Of vanished days, of long dead men,
     His friends of long ago.
 There is no loneliness so dread
 As that of one who mourns his dead
     In white and wintry age;
 Who when the lights extinguished are
 The other players scattered far
     Still lingers on the stage.
 There is no solitude so deep
 As that of him whose friends, asleep
     Shall visit him no more;
 Shall never ask, “How do you stack,”
 Or slap him gaily on the back
     As in the days of yore.
 I do not wish to draw my breath
 Until the papers say that death
     Has passed me up for keeps;
 When I am tired I want to die
 And in my cozy casket lie
     As one who calmly sleeps.
 When I am tired of dross and gold
 When I am tired of heat and cold
     And happiness has waned,
 I want to show the neighbor folk
 How gracefully a man can croak
     When he’s correctly trained.

From the Evening Star, February 19, 1913.
 By Walt Mason.
 

 Who was it first invented kraut, and put it in a barrel?
 Some scientist should find it out, and deck his tomb with laurel.
 For kraut’s a good old honest dish, and when, with eager talons,
 We throw it in our holds we wish that we could eat three gallons.
 For sauerkraut’s savory and clean, and not the least corrody
 And it contains no nicotine, or benjamin of sody.
 I always give a joyous shout, glad are my feelings inner
 When grandma says she’ll cook some kraut (with other things) for dinner.
 And toward the stove, throughout the day, with anxious eyes I’m looking;
 And neighbors seven miles away all know just what’s a-cooking.
 The incense that you read about around the dump is gropin’
 When granny cooks a mess of kraut and leaves the windows open.
 I see the neighbors going by, they sniff the sauerkraut boiling,
 And often I can hear them sigh: “For kraut I’m fairly spoiling!”
 Ah, sauerkraut is a noble dish, beloved of wise old fogies!
 And why do foolish people wish their weed in plugs or stogies?