Water

From Farmer Harrington's Calendar.

APRIL 25, 18--.

RAIN--rain--rain--for three good solid fluid weeks--
Till the air swims, and all creation leaks!
And street-cars furnish still less room to spare,
And hackmen several times have earned their fare.
The omnibuses lumber through the din,
And carry clay outside as well as in;
The elevated trains, with jerky care,
Haul half-way comfort through the dripping air;
The gutters gallop past the liquid scene,
As brisk as meadow brooks, though not so clean;
What trees the city keeps for comfort's sake,
Are shedding tears as if their hearts would break;
And water tries to get, by storming steady,
That fourth of all the world it hasn't already.

And men are not so sweet as men could wish,
In air that wouldn't offend a moderate fish;
Few places can be found, outside or in,
Where this dark-featured weather has not been;
For man has always striven, and in vain,
To roof his disposition from the rain.
I've strolled about, this morning, several miles,
'Mongst men who get their living by their smiles;
I've set my old umbrella up to drip
In places where I claimed relationship
(Or, rather, where my heart did; and that's more
Than blood connection is, sixteen times o'er);
I've journeyed up and down through half Broadway,
And did not see a first-class smile to-day.

And so, in spite of all that I can do,
These gold-bowed spectacles are growing blue;
And my old heart must bear along the road
A fanciful but rather heavy load;
A painful pressure from a hand unseen:
Most any one knows nearly what I mean.

I think I'll powder up this dark-skinned day,
By going, to-night, to hear the actors play!
They'll make me laugh, and tone me up a bit,
And get me out of this unnatural fit.

11 o'clock P.M.

Got back alive; and that's worth thinking on,
From where there's been such lots of killing done;
Mercy! it was a somewhat skittish sight--
So many people butchered in one night!
'Twas just a lot of people playing crime--
A sort of murder-picnic all the time.

We found the theatre with handbills spread,
Near where the notice in the paper said
(The weather had slacked up an hour or so,
And Wife thought she would condescend to go),
And after stumbling over several chaps,
Who thought they'd met us somewhere else, perhaps,
And cheerfully addressed us o'er and o'er,
As if they'd known us several years or more,
Persisting in affording us a chance
To buy our tickets at a slight advance
(The theatres employ these men, I've heard,
To greet their patrons with a friendly word,
And light their way in with kind word and smile,
And make a dollar out of them meanwhile);
We brushed past these remarkable "dead-beats,"
Some tickets bought, and scrambled to our seats.

After a piece of music by the band,
The curtain rose before a castle grand,
And soldiers talking, with a half-scared mien,
About a spook that one of them had seen.
When lo! this ghost appears, plump to their view,
And will not talk, although they beg him to.
(I whispered to my wife that I'd a freak
That a newspaper man could make him speak;
But suddenly my comments had to cease,
For Wife encouraged me to hold my peace.)

When lo! this ghost, who, thus far, might have come
Out of a sky-asylum for the dumb,
Speaks with a queer but rather human sound,
When once his son, the Prince, gets on the ground;
And taking him aside, ten feet almost,
Tells the poor boy that he's his father's ghost,
Whose own false brother softly to him crept,
And poured him full of poison while he slept.

Then the young man got mad, though to my mind
'Twas lunacy of quite a knowing kind;
And went to work with an apparent view
Of killing off 'most every one he knew.

I haven't the time his actions all to state;
I'll only say he managed it first-rate,
And some way killed all relatives he saw,
From uncle to prospective father-in-law;
And when he got through, those he hadn't snuffed out
Were hardly worth while bothering about.
(I mustn't forget to say that this poor elf
Became, at last, a good square corpse himself.)

I looked around, and, the whole building through,
Women were shedding tears as if 'twas true;
And Wife was 'most too much concerned to speak,
And even my old eyes had sprung a leak.
'Twas a moist time; and I remarked, "'Tis plain
We've come out of the rain into the rain."

I got so full of funeral, sitting there,
Then, when we once more sniffed the clean, live air,
It seemed a piece of good-luck all around,
To get away once more, alive and sound.

That's what they call a "tragedy;" where Death
Flies 'round till he himself gets out of breath;
And, with sword-slashes and cold poison filled,
All who amount to anything, get killed.
It's part of life; some time again I'll view it,
But take a good square rest before I do it!

From Arthur Selwyn's Note-book.

Here on this sea-beach I wander;
Why of the storms am I fonder
Than of the sunlight above them?
And the clouds: why do I love them--
Waves of the sky, onward sweeping,
Or to the ocean-waves leaping?
Why do I court this fierce day,
Dashing my face full of spray?
Why, when the waves strike the shore
With their strong, leonine roar,
Does my soul fiercely entreat them--
Rush out with rapture to meet them?
Why do I love to descry
War in the fields of the sky?
Why does the chain-lightning's glare,
Ploughing blue meadows of air,
Look to my vision alway
Sweet as a star in the day?

You who in fair summer weather
Seek this sea-city together
(Built for tumultuous rest,
With the famed ocean chief guest),
Not half the pleasure you've known
That I, here wand'ring alone,
On these wet sand-fields have found,
Hearing the ocean's own sound,
Viewing fierce waves from afar
Strive with the winter in war.
Storms that tumultuously roll
Far through my innermost soul--
Here you encounter, at last,
Harmonies wondrous and vast!

What did I find on the shore?
Must I rehearse it once more?

From Farmer Harrington's Calendar.

MAY 24, 18--.

The Lord gave Water quite a good-sized start--
Three-fourths of this world's homestead for its part;
But lawyers are not needed to convince
That Water has been losing ever since.
The reason is not hard to understand:
For God's most knowing creatures live on land,
And, naturally, every chance they get,
Find some new means to keep them from the wet.
The farms their dykes have from the ocean won;
The ground men make to build their cities on;
The bridge that from the river shelters me;
The ships--great travelling bridges of the sea--
All are an effort of ambitious man
To make this world as solid as he can.

These thoughts, to-day, all through my mind would run,
While looking at a bridge they've just got done,
Which takes a man, dry shod, from shore to shore--
A matter of a good long mile or more.
I can't describe it; but I'll let the papers
(Who tell some truth, 'mid all their fancy capers)
To my old scrap-book give of it a taste
(What I can't do with ink I'll do with paste).

From Arthur Selwyn's Note-book.

From Farmer Harrington's Calendar.

JULY 2, 18--.

Wealth, wealth, wealth, wealth! with iron bars to defend it,
And seventeen hundred thousand ways to spend it!
How men will work, in home and foreign lands,
To get a lot of money in their hands;
How they will bar and bolt, by night and day,
To keep some one from stealing it away;
Then, when a fresh bait strikes their fancy's eye,
How easy 'tis to make them let it fly!
Lock up your cash in places howe'er strong,
You lose it when the right thief comes along.
There are some families that I could name,
Who, spring and fall and winter, toil the same
As boys with sleds for half an hour will climb,
To ride back in about five minutes' time.
These fam'lies pinched and starved nine months will be,
To make a first-class show the other three;
And some whose fortunes sprung up like a flame,
Can puff it out even quicker than it came.

These thoughts grew like June corn the other day,
As I through Coney Island picked my way,
And found there, pert and prosperous as could be,
A land-and-water city by the sea;
And people holding, in free easy style,
A Fourth-of-July picnic all the while.
Thousands were eating there amid the din,
As though they'd hardly time to do it in;
Thousands were loitering in the breezy air,
As if they had a year or two to spare;
And every trap that ever caught a dime,
Was ready set and baited all the time!

The ocean, to my unaccustomed view,
Seemed having quite a lively picnic too;
The waves came slamming at us with a roar,
And chased each other pell-mell to the shore.
And in these waves, and adding to the noise,
A lot of men and women, girls and boys,
Dressed in a style that made my good wife frown,
Like big-sized corks went bobbing up and down.
Some glided out and in, like jumping-jacks,
Some rode the waves--a-lying on their backs;
And some--as decent folks as one could see--
Made capers that were very queer to see.
I noticed Miss Doozell, much versed in books,
And quite particular about her looks,
And dignified as any one I know,
Roll over maybe thirteen times or so;
While Jeremiah Jipson, LL.D.,
Who seldom makes a move above the knee,
And who, all former signs would seem to say,
Never indulges in unseemly play--
When an irreverent wave he chanced to meet,
Stood on his head, and raised aloft his feet.
The Ocean has no awe for any one,
And always seems to get more'n half the fun.

But how the pretty children carry sail!
Each with his tiny shovel and his pail,
Each working his own little piece of land,
And making small plantations in the sand!
These little incidents show on their face
That farming's natural to the human race!

When God's poor pretty ones, 'mid summer's blaze,
Have lived 'mongst brick and mortar all their days,
Trying their best to blossom and not spoil,
Like house-plants kidnapped from their native soil,
It must be heaven to sit here in the sand,
And take old Mother Earth right by the hand!
To lie here, by no brick blocks overlooked,
And take a breath of air that hasn't been cooked!
God bless you, children! May't a long time be,
Before the sand shall cover you and me!

Yes, every trap that ever caught a dime
Is ready set and baited, all the time!
Here nigh the shore a strange machine I found,
To see how hard, with beetles, men could pound;
And several fellows tried it, o'er and o'er,
Who never handled labor so before,
And would have shown capacity to shirk,
If they had known how much it looked like work.
Here round and round I saw a big wheel go,
Like an old-fashioned horse-power--larger, though,
And worked by steam; and on the sweeps one finds
Big wooden animals of different kinds:
Elephants, horses, birds of various hues,
Lions and leopards, roosters, kangaroos--
All staring with great, stupid, wondering eyes,
And all about the very self-same size!
And on these beasts, sixteen times round or more,
Rode children of from fifty down to four,
While some big-sized hand-organ filled the air
With crack-voiced music, plenty and to spare.
Here a big premium cow--quite dead, alas!
Gave milkman's milk-and-water by the glass;
Here were some great "museums," which consisted
Of wondrous things that never have existed;
There omnibuses hover on your track,
Ready to draw you somewhere else--and back;
Here "marine railroads," as you onward plod,
Will take you riding at five cents a rod;
This "elevator" lifts you pretty high,
And shows you men must look small from the sky;
Yon gambling den will send you from its door,
Poorer and not much wiser than before;
That fellow there will, in an ocean view,
Your picture take, and swear that it is you.
Yes, every trap that ever caught a dime,
Is ready set and baited, all the time!

And sometimes everything seems blurred, indeed,
With man's surprising wickedness and greed,
Till you most feel there's nothing genuine there,
Excepting ocean waves and open air!

But still they can't put all God's plans to death
To let the people have an honest breath;
And so, while thinking it all up, to-day,
I finally felt called upon to say,
Thank the good Lord, from whom all blessings fall,
For making Coney Island, after all!

My cousin, Abdiel Stebbins, large and slow,
Arrived at Ocean Grove some days ago;
He stopped off in this city on the way,
And stayed here with us two weeks and one day
(For we keep up our airy home in town
Whether the mercury goes up or down--
Not liking to exchange it very well
For a small sweat-box in a large hotel).
He promised that the first hour he could spare
He'd write us how he liked it over there;
The letter, like himself, is rather queer;
Perhaps I'd better paste it right in here: