Judge — April 3, 1920 — page 15: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Adeareaunetra rete, ar “I Sit Besipe My Corract Door, Axo Droot oF ‘THincs Forcorres” Sour Grapes By Waur Mason Raven IMlustration by "D LIKE to be a profiteer, and coin all kinds of money. and make my wares so beastly dear that folks would think it funny. But when I try to raise the price, they cry, with fierce emotion, “You cannot sting us once or twice, if that’s your blooming notion. We'll struggle on without the odes you hatch beneath your bonnet, we'll plod along our divers roads without your silly sonnet.” And so, bedewed with honest sweat, I do my labors hateful; I have to take what I can get, and for the dole be grateful. And since I cannot play that game, my words are harsh and bitter; I roast the profiteering game, and every get-rich critter. I say that lynching is too good for men dispensing ices, who sell me clothes, or cords of wood, at profiteering prices. I see the brash young giddy jays paint things a carmine color, and I lament the bygone days when life was somewhat duller. “What is the old world coming to?” I often murmur sadly, “when all the young and gaudy crew are cutting up so madly? They ought to stay at home, gadzooks, and cut out all their folly, and study tracts and moral books, and sermons melancholy. They’re going to the bow-wows fast, they'll soon be dodging sheriffs; ah, me! the good old saintly past, when all the boys were seraphs!”” Barton But I am old and foundered too. afflicted with bog spavin; and this explains my doleful view, the fantods I am havin’. Oh, jings, if 1 were young again. how I'd tear things asunder, and all the wise, prophetic men, might watch, and go to thun der! I'd go to every village dance, with plate glass jewels laden, and never, never miss a chance to woo the winsome maiden: But I am old and full of prunes, and lame and broken- hearted, and so I sing my wistful tunes about the days departed; I sit beside my cottage door, and drool of things forgotten; all youthful follies 1 deplore, and say the times are rotten. I'm always saying politics is something vile and vicious, a thing of sin and noxious tricks, a graft that’s bound to dish us. Our statesmen are a ten-cent bunch, forever hot air strewin,’ they’re no account, and I’ve a hunch they'll bring us all to ruin. Three times I’ve run for county clerk, and all the hicks I treated; the voters then got in their work, and I was plumb de feated. And so I’m down on statesmanship, and all that it embraces, at all the trifling crew I yip, when I behold their faces. Man roasts the things he cannot have, he hates the snaps he loses; and finds in this a healing salve for all his sores and bruise comicbooks.com