Judge — July 29, 1922 — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

WANDERED idly in the park, where down-and-outers go, their bosoms full of cares that cark, and everlasting woe. With dreary eyes and whi: s loose, and faces drawn and pale, they seem to say, “We've no excuse for staying in this vale. Our divers weirds we could not dree, with others to com- pare; so take us to the churchyard tree, and plant us snugly there.” I often talk with these poor scouts and ask them to explain what made them ghastly down-and-outs, sad relics in the rain, And always others are to blame, the poor old dead ones tl some fellows, void of sense of shame, have put them on the blink. “ O * YORE,” says one whose errant goat will never more return, “I caroled forth a joyous note, for I had coin to burn. Respected by my fellow men, of every grade and rank, I was a man of sub- stance then, with money in the Among the Failures By Watt Mason ILLusTRATION BY HENRY J. PECK bank. My credit good in every store, a fast increasing pile, what wonder that I always wore an eighteen-karat smile? Then came my neighbor, Bil- geman Boat—his name inspires these groans!—and asked me to indorse note for twice a thousand bones. You know the rest; an easy mark, my roll I could not keep, and I am_ sit- ting in this park, and have no place. to And Bilgeman Boat, he lives in state, with butlers two or three, and when I journeyed to his gate he sets his dogs on me. I asked some coffee in a can, a sandwich built of ham—man’s inhumanity to man has put me where Iam. Yet I will cease m ments and smiling go my wa; will lend me ety cents until next New Year's day. T HAPPENED, on that gloomy morn, I had a phoney buck; I gave it to the guy forlorn, and wished him better luck. And when he left I moralized on what this drifter said; I muttered, “I am not surprised that all these bos are dead. It is their nature to repine, to blame some other gent, when they can’t find a place to dine, and lack around red cent. They never hold them- selves to blame, the cheap and _ spineless bums; they never learned to play the game and gather in the plums.” N_ THINKING I had talked aloud; then spake an ancient wight, with prophet eyes, and well endowed with whiskers long and white. He looked as though he knew it all, the sum of human lore; and, scanning him, I lacked the gall to josh the hat he wore. He held me with reproachful gaze, and said, “You surely jest; why roast the poor downtrodden Jays who do this park infest? Why roast them for the very things that handicap us all? The same old whines you'll hear from kings, when pushed against the wall. Some other monarchs were to blame for giving them a squeeze; the other kings won't play the game—it is the same old wheeze. “You've had good luck, I understand, in oil wells and the like, and now in rai- ment fine and grand you bloom upon the pike. You take the credit to yourself for what you have acquired; you gather in the well-known pelf, and failures make you tired. But some day operators keen will take a fall from you, and you won’t have the price, I ween, to buy an oyster stew. And bitterly will you bewail the perfidy of men who robbed you of your wad of kale, down to the bottom yen.” “He held me with reproachful gaze, and said, ‘You surely jest’” comicbooks.com