Few people care to listen to your sorrows, trials and burdens if you are not succeeding. If you succeed, everybody is grabbing for the stock no matter how well filled with water it is. They point with pride at the successful man as he saunters by; he can do a great many things that are shady, but on account of his success and prominence they are hushed up and never rise above a whisper; he’s dined and wined; gets cut prices on everything he consumes; rebates from the railroads and special privileges in the churches. But take the poor fellow that each day’s debts eats up his pay roll and we never hear of his fine qualities until we read his obituary.

If you will take a few leisure moments and look up the meaning of the word “gratitude,” you will find that there are few words that surpass it in quality, love and kindness. It clusters near the soul and is properly a virtue. In this life it is very hard to be misunderstood and undervalued by those we love, but this too in the journey from the cradle to the grave we must learn to bear without a murmur, for it’s a tale often repeated.

Any one who has given their time, talent and attention serving the dear people, either as a Town Trustee, member of the School Board, Mayor, or any of the petty offices of small towns and villages, used his best judgment in endeavoring to meet every issue honestly, fairly and squarely, wins for his gratuitous services the everlasting displeasure of his constituents.

No matter how hard you strive or how honest you may be there come up little intricate issues where there is no middle course and no matter what stand you take some people charge you with graft and dishonest motives. Any one who can serve for one term and is so unfortunate and foolish as to accept another, has acquired a character so colored that it takes from ten to fifteen years in our best Sunday Schools to wash out the stains.

Don’t ever feel elated or think you are popular because you are elected and people call you alderman, for the first thing they will do will be to slip out that pleasant, sweet sounding word “Alderman” and put in “Grafter” with the thumbscrews set. They’d call you a grafter if they personally know the treasury had been depleted for fifteen years. My, the pleasures of a gratis councilman!

I have heard of people losing their minds for long intervals and then suddenly regain them and I have often wondered if they had been favored with an aldermanic pleasure and the mind commenced to slip into space, I wonder if when the cog alderman appeared if it wouldn’t cause such a jolt that it would clear the whole mental atmosphere. Perhaps there is one redeeming feature and if it wasn’t for some consolation the pictures and scenes would be so indelibly impressed that you would be able to recall them long after you’d said “Amen.”

The spirit of revenge and retaliation were never very deeply imbedded in my make up. The seed being lightly sown I used the harrow instead of the cultivator and got it out. I am glad I did; it has helped me to get a good night’s rest instead of fondling and caressing discolored orbs that might have come in sudden contact with solid and knotty obstacles.

I bought a small business one time from a devout Presbyterian; I had the greatest confidence and trust in him, which I had a sad right to have. If false colors are carried we must find it out because they carry no notice to warn us. Well, anyway, he spread the tempting menu of his careful preparation in great shape. He was pleasant, courteous and very entertaining. The way he figured up the invoice you’d thought mathematics was his specialty. His tongue kept pace with his pencil and after everything was figured up he brought up the “Bonus Good Will” part and I really thought he was letting me do him a favor by giving him one hundred iron men. You see I wanted his good will along with everybody else’s.

I am glad I learned about this “Good Will” business. All told “Good Will” and “Bonuses” have cost me nine hundred and thirty-three dollars thirty-three and a third cents. Don’t try to fool me on “Good Wills” again; they’re a drug on the market, very unsaleable and unpopular to your humble servant.

After I paid the “Good Will” price and everything was agreeably settled I started in with my maiden business. Going through the bags and some other stuff in the back room a few days afterwards, I discovered bags invoiced and paid for at one hundred pounds shy. “Shy,” I said, and he a Christian! This taught me that there are eighty and ninety pound Christians. The loud smelling, decaying and life moving gunny sacks contained prepared meats for poultry. I quit in disgust and went into the front department; a fellow stepped in and said, “How is business?” and I answered “Rotten.” A frank acknowledgment of a painful truth.

Other things ran about the same; the horses were sold as unblemished, sound as a dollar, etc., and mind you, he a Christian and ministers dropping in every few days and talking and planning how to increase the congregation. My, I’m glad I used that harrow! When I sold out the business, I marked down experiences one thousand dollars. I felt pretty blue after I had lost the thousand bones I worked hard to get, and it used to be when I got the blues I eased my mind with graveyard poetry; pardon me for inserting it here.

A friend came to me one time and said he was in pressing financial straits and asked me to loan him fifteen dollars for two weeks. I granted the request and the loan was made. I thought I was familiar with the calendar and knew when two ordinary weeks ended, but those two weeks were the longest I have ever known. Fortnight after fortnight passed and no end came. Long and endless weeks of this kind might be all right for the man facing the electric chair, but they had no solace for an individual anxious to get married and needing the husky “Simoleans” to furnish a cage for his waiting bird.

One day I met the overdue biped and I said, “How about it?” I was young then and I thought I could glide in as easy this way as well as any phrase I had in my limited vocabulary. “Well,” he said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I know you are about to plunge in the matrimonial sea and I have a proposition to offer you. I have a good standard make of organ that I don’t need and if you will give me forty-five dollars and forget about that previous fifteen we will call the transaction closed and drop the curtain.”

“All right,” I said, “here is your money.”

That organ may not be in existence yet, but it’s in my memory fresh as ever. I couldn’t play it, for it was all I could do to carry a tune when it was tied in a bag. I had no wife to play it and I couldn’t keep it and get married, I was in a desperate condition one day when I walked into a hardware store, that is a store, you know, where they keep ware that is hard, frying pans, dish pans, bread pans, etc., you know what those things are for. “Well,” I said to the village wit behind the case, “I’ll trade you that organ for enough household paraphernalia to cook with, take care of enough viands and stuff or whatever you call it, to keep two people about to start out together; each now separate and apart but very anxious to be united.” “Agreed,” he said, “hand over that list you’ve got with the articles on and I’ll have them ready in a short time.”

Funny, isn’t it, how the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, but how about the one ready to be shorn when there isn’t even a zephyr blowing. Well, the deal was transacted, exchange made, and that is how I got my household goods when I married dearie. The financial report read like this: Actual cash in organ, sixty dollars; actual worth, forty-five dollars; second actual value in organ, forty-five dollars; actual value of pots and pans twenty-five dollars, experience and pleasure of making a two weeks’ loan, thirty-five dollars. This was not putting a premium on “Bliss” for a fellow just getting ready to carry the matrimonial load.

The weight would have been some lighter if that weasened faced Dutchman had not worked off on me a left handed frying pan for a right-handed bride, and was so extremely liberal on the good deal he had made that he threw in a second hand mouse trap when the new ones sold six for a dime. This was the first time I saw tears in my wife’s eyes. The fountain was opened and they flowed freely. Those tears were trivial to the tears we’ve in shed later life, but those first tears moved me to almost unconsolable grief and the emotion caused a flow of poetry. It’s not very long and will not tire you much, so I will slip it in here as a filler.

When I was a County Clerk and exceedingly busy pushing the quill over the big records, a M. E. Minister came in one day and accosted me with that word that arouses confidence. Brother, he said, we are figuring on a short order annex to the church, (remember that word SHORT?) and we, of course, couldn’t slight you and if you will kindly donate as liberally as possible the Lord will bless you abundantly, for you know he loves a cheerful giver, and etc., and etc. Well, I responded. When you get your subscription list in these parts drop in and I will help you.

I know what an annex to some of the churches without or with cook stove means. It seems nowadays, as the prophecies are being filled, some churches deem it necessary to feed the stomach before the soul, realizing, I presume, a full stomach is a twin brother to a big heart. They beg the food and the utensils to serve it in from uncheerful givers and then dispense it cautiously and sparingly, the more sparingly the more money for the Lord. When the ice cream is served they forget all about scriptural measure of “Heaped up and running over” and run it under. If one dish of scriptural measure can be stretched into four dishes of worldly measure, there is forty cents instead of ten. High finance, you see! I’ve often thought a society of this kind that would squeeze down the measure on ice cream procured at a minimum cost, would bear watching if they were running a milk wagon with a pump near. If any one else gets money in this way they call it an unearned increment. What would Jesus call it? I really would be afraid to express my thoughts at that kind of a meeting for fear they’d request the parcel post.

In a few days the brother dropped in and hoisted from his inside pocket the subscription list and handed it to me. I glanced over it casually, as is natural in such cases made and provided, to see who were the cheerful givers. After concluding what I thought was a liberal donation and really beyond what a man of my means should give I put down forty dollars and handed the paper back to him. The ungentlemanly gentleman took it and looked at it and said, “Well, we expected much better than this from you.” You know what feelings ebb and flow within you when you get a snub like this. I could feel the Irish blood chasing the English blood at a hazardous speed, but I said nothing and was glad again of the early use of that harrow.