﻿STILL SEEING THINGS 
 
What is there in the United States that attracts these endurance fliers? A few hundred hours they are up in the air and then right back to terry-firmy––and Chicago, of all towns! Can’t be that Newton’s gravity works after all? Now, if they stayed up a few years I wouldn’t . . . hm.–– 
A sign in the rescuitraunt says. 
“Here’s how it works:” 
“You pay me, I pay him, he pays you.” 
A regular ring around-rosey, by heck! 
Let’s see––How was it? 
You beat me, I beat him, he beats you–– 
Dammit, I believe it works––everybody gets beat and nobody is winner––a perfect arrangement, by . . . heck.  
What’s the sense of having money? 
Not that I care a rapaho whether it works or no, its the purrinciple of the thing.  

COMMON CONSIDERATION 

Into a barber shop there strayed 
An old trail-blazer stooped and grayed 
Bewhiskered, wrinkled, sadly frayed–– 
“The grim old warrior” was his trade.  
 
The Lady-Barber obeisance made 
 Quite unabashed and undismayed 
 And welcomed “this presumptious raid” 
 Upon the peace of her “stockade”.  
 
“Say Kiddo,” roars the warrior staid,  
“I want you for to strop my blade–– 
“So thru these whiskers it will wade–– 
“Remember, gal, you don’t get paid.” 
 
She took the razor, Sheffield made, 
Along its edge her eye she laid–– 
“This blade needs honer, sir,” she said 
And promptly o’er the hone she swayed 
 
Long live the helpful barber-maid! 
For no sarcasms she essayed,  
Nor tried the trapper to up-braid, 
But offered service, time and aid.  
 
Tonsorialists, with pride arrayed,  
May take a lesson from this maid–– 
The world cantankerous decayed 
Remembers how the game was played 
  
When hard times strike the artful trade, 
Privations, want, your haunts invade, 
When skill and income from you fade, 
‘Tis well to know how friends are made. 
 
P. S. A friend is a man who knows all about you but likes you just the same.  

It appears the rich man doesn’t lose out completely on his slim chances to get to heaven––(the paupers’ paradise). The boys were discussing his prospects and one of them of the ripe age of seventeen remarked: “I do not think the rich man can make it and, for one, I’m not in favor of it.”–

“Oh well,” opines another one, “he gets his, right in this world, while the getting is good.”–– 
Now, that’s what I call thinking––if not outright wisdom.  
Note: The above should not be construed to mean the rich man will in any way resemble a fried herring or a barbecued buffalo in the next picture.  

Unemployment is the chief phenomenon in the harvest fields of Kansas. The seemingly endless yellow landscape appears as nothing remarkable, 104 in the shade gets but passing mention and the “combine,” the cause of employment, gets hardly a second look as it purrs its way disdainfully tossing its hips and sprinkling bolts, nuts and washers, etc. 
Unemployment is a serious matter not only to the worker, now hungry, but also to the farmer who must needs sell his crop profitably in order to perpetuate himself as a farmer––a wan hope, conditions being what they are. It looks as if the farmer too will be dethroned––unenfarmed. 
The combine of course is here to stay altho as yet it is in an experimental stage and can in no way compare with a, say, 44-60 old time separator. Gleaner-Baldwin combine, for instance is a collection of parts gathered from all quarters: Henry Ford builds its engine, radiator, etc., the wheels remind me strongly of the Pressed Steel Car, American Car and Foundry, if not American Can Co., the gears, castings, etc., probably come to Independence, Mo., in [c]arload lots and are there assembled into what is considered “a good combine.” 
All that will change. Combines will be made a unit machine and bigger. Fences will be knocked down by farming corporations and up to the date machine shops will be installed upon the place––in other words the farm will be made a unit and will include everything from filling station to department store. Somebody’s gonna beg and starve.  
It would seem the march of progress has a deleterious effect upon the human frame––if so, it is because of embracing those revolutionary changes too suddenly, impulsively and too ardently––unprepared. 
I’m reminded in this connection of the Jackrabbit: Mr. Rabbit, long used to the buffalo-grass trails, stubble and plowed lands, finds considerable comfort and good footing on the “improved” roads, and nothing will do but dally his footsteps in the selfsame “lines of progress.”  
Unfortunately . . . this morning I found its body flat as a pancake where it had been [se]t and crushed by a remorseless non-skid.  

THE MIRAGE 

Phantoms, spirits, elfs, surround us–– 
Daily toil has sprouted wings; 
Grewsome apparitions hound us 
And the folks are “seeing things.”  
 
Like a lost soul . . . Hush, what was it! 
Did you hear those awful groans? 
Thar’s a skeleton in that closet–– 
Hear the rascal roll his bones! 
 
Help!––I fear the place is haunted! 
Evil spirits in it lurk! 
Thru our vaunted wealth undaunted,  
Stalks “the ghastly ghost of work.” 
 
Look!––Another spook engages 
Our old friend in battle roy’l–– 
It’s the shade of “going wages” 
Clawing at the phantom toil.  
 
I behold the graveyards walking,  
Minus flesh and minus guts; 
Ghosts of men and women squawking–– 
Can it be that I am “nuts”? 
 
Can it be these things, recurring–– 
Are but mirages of mind? 
And that politicians purring 
Are not yet completely blind?  
 
Can it be that this confusion 
And the ever present want 
Are fake––a mere delusion 
And no bona facie haunt?  
 
Everyone is quite contented? 
Everyone has had his fill?  
I alone am off, demented; 
Shy of faith of hope and will.  
 
This is not a real damnation?  
What they call a sure-fire hell? 
Just a minor aberration?  
And, of course, the folks live well! 
 
Not a soul is sad or worried?  
Everyone just rolls in wealth?  
Not a hand or foot is hurried?  
Everyone is “foul” with health?  
 
All those ghosts, that I have sighted,  
Come from drinking too much cream?  
Workingmen are all united 
T-Bone Slim has had a dream?  
 
Everything is hunky-dory?  
And I’m not a bit surprised–– 
As I hold this inventory 
O’er the slaves well organized.