hustle
me to jail. If down the highway I should press, beneath the summer
skies, to rescue damsels in distress and wipe their weeping eyes, I'd
win no praises from the sports; they'd call me a galoot; I'd have to
answer in the courts to breach-of-promise suit. Adventure is a thing
that's dead, we've reached a low estate, and I was born, alas!" he
said, "five hundred years too late."

He took the morning paper then, which reeked with thrilling things,
with tales of fighting modern men; the strife of money kings; the
eager, busy, human streams throughout this mundane hive; the struggle
of the baseball teams, which for the pennant strive; the polar hero and
his sled; the race of motor cars; the flight of aernauts o'erhead,
outlined against the stars.

"It is a humdrum age," he sighed, "of avarice the fruit. Upon a steed
I'd like to ride, and wear a cast iron suit, and live as lived the
knights of old, the heroes of romance; I'd like to carry spurs of gold
and wield a sword and lance; but in this drear and pallid age, from
Denver to Des Moines, there's naught to stir a noble rage--there's
nothing counts but coin!"

BOOST THINGS

Don't sit supinely on your roost, but come along and help us boost, for
better things of every kind, and leave your kicking clothes behind. O
let us boost for better streets, and softer beds, and longer sheets;
for smoother lawns and better lights, and shorter-winded blatherskites;
for finer homes, and larger trees, for bats and boots and bumble bees;
for shorter hours and longer pay, and fewer thistles in our hay, for
better grub, and bigger pies, for two more moons to light the skies.
And let the wolves of war be loosed on every man who doesn't boost!

THE ADVENTURER

He had braved the hungry ocean when the same was in commotion, he had
floated on the wreckage of his tempest-shattered bark; he had flirted
in deep waters with the merman's wives and daughters, he had scrapped
through seven sessions with a large man-eating shark.

He had roamed in regions polar, where there's no effulgence solar, he
had slain the festive walrus and the haughty arctic bear; and his
watchword had been spoken in the wastes by whites unbroken, and he
shelled out many gumdrops to the natives living there.

In the jungles, dark and fearful, where the tiger, fat and cheerful,
gnaws the bones of foreign hunters, he had gone, unscathed, his way; he
had whipped a big constrictor, and emerged the smil