From the Evening Star, October 27, 1913. By Walt Mason.
Yesterday, it seems, we shivered, in the bleak December blast; and I’ve just this hour diskivered that the year is going fast! Soon again, yes, ere we know it, wintry blasts again will freeze painter, plumber, printer, poet and such citizens as these. Soon again we’ll hear men yawping in the bleak and cheerless dawn: “Go and do your Christmas shopping ere the final rush is on.” How the years go whizzing by us! When man thinks how fast they’ve walked, his remarks are scarcely pious, and the women folks are shocked. Yesterday, or day before it, I was young and full of pride; I’d achieve—I grimly swore it—mighty things before I died. And I’ve just been around the edges of the things I meant to do, just got started with my wedges on the trees I meant to hew; and already I am waxing old and withered, tired and lame, and I feel my grip relaxing, and I’ve sort o’ lost my aim. Man imagines he is youthful till he wakes some winter day, and the morning, cold and truthful, tells him he is old and gray. He has aged with all his neighbors, winter makes him understand; and he goes back to his labors with a tired and heavy hand.