Uncle Walt [Walt Mason], the Poet Philosopher — Themes and Context

She was sweet and soft and clinging, and he always found her singing, when he came home from his labors as the night was closing in; she was languishing and slender, and her eyes were deep and tender, and he simply couldn't tell her that her coffee was a sin. Golden hair her head was crowning; she was fond of quoting Browning, and she knew a hundred legends of the olden, golden time; and her heart was full of yearning for the Rosicrucian learning, and he simply couldn't tell her that the beefsteak was a crime. She was posted on Pendennis, and she knew the songs of Venice, and he listened to her prattle with an effort to look pleased; and she liked the wit of Weller--and he simply couldn't tell her that the eggs he had for breakfast had been laid by hens diseased. So she filled his home with beauty, and she did her wifely duty, did it as she understood it, and her conscience didn't hurt, when dyspepsia boldly sought him, and the sexton came and got him, and his tortured frame was buried 'neath a wagon-load of dirt. O, those marriageable misses, thinking life all love and kisses, mist and moonshine, glint and glamour, stardust borrowed from the skies! Man's a gross and sordid lummix--men are largely made of stomachs, and the songs of all the sirens will not take the place of pies!

Bright-hued and beautiful, it floats upon the summer air; and every thread of it denotes the love that's woven there; the love of veterans whose tread has sounded on the fields of red; and women old, who mourn their dead, but mourn without despair. Bright-hued and beautiful, it courts caresses of the breeze; and, straining at its staff it sports, in flaunting ecstasies; and other flags, that once were gay, long, long ago were laid away, and many men, whose heads are gray, are thinking now of these. Serene and beautiful it waves, the flag our fathers knew; in Freedom's sunny air it laves, and gains a brighter hue; and may it still the symbol be of all that makes a nation free; still may we cherish Liberty, and to our God be true.

"O Doc," I cried, "I humbly beg, that you will amputate my leg." The doctor cheerfully complied, and shot some dope into my hide, and made his bucksaw fairly sail, until it struck a rusty nail. "Hoot, mon!" he said, quite undismayed, "I'll have to finish with a spade." And as he dug and toiled away, we talked about the price of hay, the recent frightful rise in pork, the sugar grafters in New York, the things we found in Christmas socks, the flurry in Rock Island stocks, the hookworm and the hangman's noose, the bright career of Captain Loose. I felt no pain or ache or shock; it pleased me much to watch the doc; and when the job was done, I said: "Now that you're here, cut off my head." With skillful hands he wrought and wrought, and soon cut off my dome of thought, and when I asked him for his bill: "There is no charge, already, still; I work for Science, not for scads, so keep the dollars of your dads; to banish pain is my desire; to nothing more do I aspire; if I may win that goal, you bet, I'll be so happy, always, yet!" Is there a more heroic game? Could any man have nobler aim? One poet, old, and bald and fat, to this great man takes off his hat!

Little girl, so glad and jolly, playing with your home-made dolly, built of rags and straw, fill the sunny air with laughter, heedless of the sorrow after--that is childhood's law! Let no sad and sordid vision cheat you of the joy Elysian that to youth belongs; let no prophecy of sorrow scheduled for a sad tomorrow still your joyous songs! Soon enough will come the worry, and the labors, and the hurry, soon you'll cook and scrub; soon with milliners and drapers you will fuss, and read long papers, at the Culture Club. Lithe your form, but soon you'll force it in a torture-chamber corset that will make you bawl; and those little feet, that twinkle, you will squeeze, until they wrinkle, into shoes too small. And those sunny locks so tangled will be tortured and kedangled into waves and curls; and you'll buy complexion powder, and your bonnets will be louder than the other girl's. Little girl, with home-made dolly, cut out woe and melancholy, jump and sing and play! Fill the rippling air with laughter! Tears and corns will follow after! This is childhood's day!