Category: The Tacoma Times

From The Tacoma Times, November 1, 1913. By Berton Braley.

Where’s the road to happiness,
    Where’s the joyous way?
Where’s the path to Arcady
    Ever blithe as May?
Here be many roads to take,
    Wisdom, there, ahoy!
What’s the proper turn to make
    For the road of joy?

“Take whatever road is straight,
    Carol as you go,
Help a comrade bear his pack
    If it bends him low,
Take your chances as they come,
    Famine days or fat,
If Dame Fortune treat you ill
    Dare to laugh at that!”

What’s the road to Happiness?
    How then shall we make it?
“Tisn’t just the way you TAKE,
    But the WAY you take it!”

From The Tacoma Times, October 30, 1913. By Berton Braley.

We fellows who fool with a pencil or pen
May serve in a measure the leisure of men,
May dream little dreams which we draw or we write,
To give them a moment or hour of delight;
But somehow, it’s little and useless we feel
Compared to the builders in stone and in steel.

We muddle around with our paints or our ink
And talk about Art and the things that we think,
And we fancy ourselves and the work that we do
Which gladdens the eye for a moment or two,
And if a few people should mention our name
We think we are figures of glory and fame!

Our visions are nothing but visions—that’s all,
But the dreams of the builders are built in a wall;
They are hammered in steel, they are mortared in stone,
In tower and bridge and in buttress they’re shown,
Say, what are we singers and painter folk worth
Compared to the builders who conquer the earth!

From The Tacoma Times, October 28, 1913. By Berton Braley.

Bill’s gone to college and I’m glad that he’s beginning it;
    He’s wanted to be going for a long, long spell
For life’s a lively struggle and in order to be winning it
    A fellow’s education must be learned right well;
Bill’s gone to college and I’m tickled he is going there.
    I didn’t have the chances which have come to him,
And Bill is smart as blazes and he’ll surely make a showing there;
    He’s full of big ambitions to the very brim!

Bill’s gone to college—but not a swell and fancy one
    With Greek and Latin classics and a lot like that,
Bill’s gone to college, but not a nice Miss Nancy one
    Where they’d feed him up on “culchah” in a real swell frat;
Bill’s college courses are not favored in society,
    They won’t turn him weary of the good brown loam,
They’ll mold of him a farmer of the up-to-date variety,
    Who’ll make the farm a hummer when he gets back home!

Bill’s gone to college, a college educational,
    To learn the farming business as a man should do,
To get a sort of culture that is sensible and rational
    And not a classic “polish” and a swelled head, too;
Bill’s gone to college—but the country isn’t losing him
    He isn’t going to listen to the city’s charm,
The glamor of the city streets would scarcely be a song to him;
    Bill’s gone to college—where he’ll learn to farm!

From The Tacoma Times, October 14, 1913. By Berton Braley.

Thank the Lord I have my work!—
    In the mighty world of toil
I can share the weight and irk
    Of the labor and the moil;
I’m a worker, not a drone;
Sweat and weariness I’ve known,
Through the goodly years I’ve been
Toiling with my fellow men,
Peddler, poet, boss and clerk—
Thank the Lord I have my work!

Thank the Lord I have my work
    Ever near to serve my turn,
Refuge from the cares that lurk
    And the woes that sear and burn;
Fate may wear her grimmest mask,
Love be lost—I have my task;
Life is hard?—I’ll see it through;
There is work for me to do;
Toil shall light the dreary murk;
Thank the Lord I have my work!

From The Tacoma Times, October 6, 1913. By Berton Braley.

She firmly declared that the man she should marry
    Must wholly conform to a certain ideal.
He mustn’t be homely, like Tom, Dick and Harry,
    But handsome and noble, with muscles like steel;
He must have an intellect masterly, splendid,
    Ambition and power and honor and fame,
With knowledge and humor delightfully blended—
    And other requirements too many to name.

She married a chap who was dull as you find ‘em,
    And homely besides, as an unpainted fence;
The wise ones had long ago left him behind ‘em;
    His lack of ambition was something intense;
His humor was minus and, as for his knowledge,
    He hadn’t enough to come in when it rains;
His father had wanted to send him to college,
    But found—to his grief—that he hadn’t the brains.

Yet she doesn’t think she has been inconsistent;
    She truly believes he is all that she thought;
She clothes him with charms that are quite non-existent
    And dreams him the wonderful man that she sought;
We notice her choice and we chuckle and chortle
    And wonder how such a poor dub could appeal,
But she takes that commonplace, every-day mortal
    And firmly believes she has found her ideal!

From The Tacoma Times, August 30, 1913. By Berton Braley.

It’s time to be finished with playing
    It’s time to pick up and go home
We’re done with our loafing and straying
    On mountain top, meadow or foam;
We’ve got to get back to our labor
    And mix with the workaday mob,
The summer time’s over with, neighbor
    It’s time to get back to the job.

This day is the last of our heyday
    It marks our last fling for the year,
And now we’ll look forward to payday
    And know that the autumn time’s here;
For Labor Day’s rightly named, neighbor,
    It signals Tom, Harry and Bob,
That it’s time to go back to their labor
    It’s time to get back on the job!

The season of loafing is over
    The season of languor is done
We’ve got to quit lying in clover
    And get back to work on the run.
And though we may question it, neighbor,
    And though we may blubber and sob,
We’re pleased at the summons to labor,
    We’re glad to get back on the job!

From The Tacoma Times, July 10, 1913. By Berton Braley.

(Several hundred girls disappear every year in the big cities.)

Rosa’s gone—and who will ever find her?
     Rosa’s gone—the way so many go;
 Not a trace did Rosa leave behind her.
     That’s the way—THEY always fix it so.
 Rosa—she was young and very pretty
     (That’s the kind of girl THEY like to snare);
 So she’s posted “missing” in the city,
     God knows where!
 
 Rosa, being young, was fond of pleasure,
     Life to her was something blithe and sweet,
 So THEY planned and plotted at their leisure,
     So THEY set the trap beneath her feet;
 Innocent and gay and all unknowing,
     Trusting to the friends that led her on,
 Unaware the road that she was going.
     Rosa’s gone!
 
 Rosa’s gone—and patiently we’ve sought her,
     Vainly followed every trail or clue—
 Mothers, think of Rosa as YOUR daughter,
     Think of this as happening to YOU!
 Rosa’s gone—like other girls before her,
     Knowing not the net till it was drawn.
 How shall all our mourning now restore her?
     Rosa’s gone!

From The Tacoma Times, July 3, 1913.
 By Berton Braley.
 

 Keep women away from the polls
 For the sake of their lily-white souls,
 Forever forbid them to roam
 For the sake of the washtubs at home,
 Let ‘em tend to the clothes and the grub,
 Let ‘em dust, let ‘em bake, let ‘em scrub,
 Let ‘em raise up the girls and the boys,
 Let ‘em share all your troubles and joys,
 But we beg, with a sob in our throat,
 Don’t give ‘em, don’t give ‘em the vote,
 For they might interfere if you please,
 With the three great political “B’s,”
 Whose graft we’d be sorry to lose—
 Breweries, Brothels and Booze!
 
 Keep women away from the polls,
 They vex and they trouble our souls,
 The home is their foreordained place
 Which they deck with their beauty and grace;
 If you go and you give ‘em the vote
 They’ll start to get after our goat
 In a wholly undignified way,
 Which ain’t like a lady, we say.
 So we beg, with a sob in the throat,
 Don’t give ‘em, don’t give ‘em the vote.
 They’d never give comfort or ease
 To the three great political “B’s”
 Whose graft we’d be sorry to lose,
 Breweries, Brothels and Booze!

From The Tacoma Times, June 25, 1913.
 By Berton Braley.
 

 I’m just a bit tired of the city;
     It’s lost quite a lot of its thrill;
 I’m sick of the pavements, all gritty,
     The racket that never is still.
 I’m weary of plunder and pillage
     And all of the hurry and whirl.
 I want to go back to the village
     And sit on the porch with a Girl.
 
 I want to hear picket gates clicking
     As the young men come over to call,
 And the deep and monotonous ticking
     Of the grandfather clock in the hall,
 To harken to the laughter and singing
     That comes on the breezes awhirl
 And the creak of the hammocks all swinging
     And me on the porch with a Girl!
 
 And the leaves would be whispering lowly,
     And the flowers would perfume the air,
 And the night would grow quieter slowly,
     And—gee, but I wish I was there;
 I s’pose I’d get nothing but blame from
     The folks in the city’s mad swirl,
 But I want to go back where I came from
     And sit on the porch with a Girl!