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Frontier Humor in Verse, Prose and Picture

Chapter 78: THE ANNIVERSARY.
By Palmer Cox
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About This Book

A lively assortment of comic verses, short prose pieces, and illustrated vignettes that lampoon everyday life on the frontier and in small towns. Individual items portray bungled schemes, animal mishaps, social embarrassments, and civic or courtroom absurdities presented with ironic twists. Many pieces are brief rhymes or tall tales while others develop longer humorous narratives, and most are paired with spirited drawings that amplify physical gags and visual punch lines. The overall tone is playful and satirical, aiming to amuse by exposing human foibles through slapstick situations and witty observation.

THE ANNIVERSARY.

This is the anniversary of my departure from my native fields. As I sit gazing by the fire, pondering over the event, thoughts of friends far away and foes who are near, come crowding upon me numerous as spirits around some favored medium.

Many years ago I turned my back upon all I loved and setting my face against the sinking sun, cried:—

“Ho, sailors! spread your widest sails,
And court the strong impellent gales,
Until the stout and stubborn mast
Bends like a sapling to the blast;
And westward let your bearing be;
My fortune lies beyond the sea.”

What a ruinous rent fifteen or twenty years make in a person’s lease of life. Why, bless my benighted understanding! the seal, the signature and the better portion of the parchment are gone. There’s hardly enough document remaining upon which to hinge a hope. Now, that I think of it, what have the departed years neglected to bring me? No flaxen heads cluster around my board; no nose is flattened against the window pane; no eye strained to mark my coming, when the granite pave is chafed by the homeward hastening feet.

No jute or mohair chignons lie around my room in rich profusion, adding charms to the apartment that pictures cannot give.

When I muse upon the many blessings that the past years have failed to furnish, I am inclined to sadness. But when I turn to contemplate what they have brought, my heart sinks down into its lowest recess and for a time lies still. Aye! that’s the rub that makes me wince.

There is but little satisfaction in the thought that I am not alone in this. I look around and I see others drifting down the stream as rapidly as I. Time is cutting furrows in fairer brows than mine. He has brought many a person during the last ten years—

A scattered sight, a limping gait,
Toothless gums and a shining pate.

Why should I squeal because I feel his hands? But where are those full cheeks, those hopeful smiles, those luxuriant locks, and firm-set grinders that once were mine?

Gone, like the life from a busted balloon,
Gone, like the soul from a ruptured bassoon,
Gone, like the sheen from a pock-pitted cheek,
Gone, like our change at the close of the week,
Gone!

But what has that to do with my sore heel, peeled to-day by the hoof of a clergyman’s horse before I could get out of the way? The event called forth the following lines, written while laboring under great mental excitement:

How blest is he above the many
Who turns to-day a handsome penny,
By stating to the drowsy throng
The line dividing right and wrong!
Far richer pickings he commands
Than ears of corn rubbed in the hands.
How different now from days of yore,
When sandal-shod and spirit sore,
With stiffened joints and limber thews,
And garments damp with midnight dews,
The poor Apostles, staff in hand,
Went limping through a stranger’s land.
Now charge they up and down the way,
Like jockeys on the “Derby day;”
And we poor wights must waltz aside,
And let the pulpit princes glide;
Or have a phaeton o’er us wheeled,
Or have our heels adroitly peeled.
Oh, money! money! root and start
Of every sin, ’tis claimed thou art;
But let them doubt the fact who will,
’Tis money spreads the gospel still.