nd
gritty; I've had enough--just watch me hike back to the good old city.

THE MILLIONAIRES

They like to make the people think that all their piles of yellow
chink, are weary burdens, to be borne, with eyes that weep and hearts
that mourn; but as you jog along the road, you see no millionaires
unload. They like to talk and drone and drool, to growing youths in
Sunday school, and tell them that the poor man's lot is just the thing
that hits the spot; to warn them of ambition's goad--they talk, and
talk, but don't unload. They like to talk of days long gone, when life
for them was at its dawn, and they were poor and bent with toil, and
drew their living from the soil, and lived in some obscure abode--and
so they dream, but don't unload. They like to take a check in hand,
and, headed by the village band, present it to some charity--'twould
mean five cents to you or me; then they're embalmed in song and ode;
they smirk and smile, but don't unload.

LITTLE MISTAKES

I used to trade at Grocer Gregg's and paid him heaps of cash for flour
and cheese and germ-proof eggs, and cans of succotash. But now he
doesn't get my trade--that's why his bosom aches; I had to quit him,
for he made so many small mistakes.

He'd send me stale and wilted greens when I had ordered fresh; he's
send me gutta percha beans, all string and little flesh. And when I
journeyed to his store to read the riot act, three score apologies or
more he'd offer for the fact. That doggone clerk of his, he'd say, had
got the order wrong; and always, in the same old way, he'd sing the
same old song. He seemed to think apologies were all I should desire,
when he had sent me moldy cheese or herrings made of wire.

And when his bill came in, by jings, it always made me hot; he'd have
me charged with divers things I knew I never bought. Then I would call
on Grocer Gregg in wrath and discontent, and seize him firmly by the
leg and ask him what he meant. Then grief was in the grocer's looks,
frowns came, his eyes betwixt; "The idiot who keeps my books," he'd
say, "has got things mixed. I wouldn't have such breaks as these for
forty million yen; I offer my apologies and hope you'll come again."

He'd often send the things I bought to Colonel Jones, up town, and I
would get a bunch of rot that should have gone to Brown. And oft at
home I'd wait and wait, in vain for Sweitzer cheese; instead of that
I'd get a crate of codfish, prunes or peas.