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Our Best Greetings to You

Christmas! And the bells are clanging! Christmas! And the goose is hanging high and joy’s abroad! Christmas is the happy season! Though the weather may be freezin’, human hearts are thawed! Here we see the ancient codger sporting like an artful dodger with the laughing kids; here we see the haughty chappie smiling broadly and as happy as the katydids. Every one has shed his sorrow, dropped his burden till tomorrow, dropped the world and care; Christmas is no time for sadness—all the world is full of gladness, each should have his share.

Therefore, if you deal in lumber, let your business rest and slumber, till the day is o’er; think no more of lath and plaster; frolic fast and frolic faster till you split the floor. Cast aside all thoughts of timber; show the folks your legs are limber, and your soul unspoiled; show your heart has not been toughened, show your nature’s not been roughened, by the years you’ve toiled. Let no thoughts of sash and siding your attention be dividing on this day of grace; help to fill with glee your shanty, till grandmother, sister, auntie, bless your cheer-up face.

Christmas! When the reindeer travel, and Old Santa scratches gravel, making good his dates! Men who don’t get good and mellow when is due that brave old fellow, surely are cheap skates. When the Christmas music’s rollin’, and the children’s socks are swollen, we should all be young; young as when we watched and waited for those reindeer, rapid-gaited, by the night wind stung. We can be as young in spirit as the kids, or pretty near it, if we only try, though our heads are gray and dusty and our joints are worn and rusty, and no longer spry. Then when Christmas time is ended and we to our tasks have wended, we shall bear away something of the youth we captured when the whole world was enraptured with its Christmas day.

THE CURTIS COMPANIES

CURTIS BROS. & CO.
CLINTON, IOWA

CURTIS & YALE CO.
WAUSAU, WIS.
PITTSBURGH, PA.

CURTIS SASH & DOOR CO.
SIOUX CITY, IOWA

CURTIS, TOWLE & PAINE CO.
LINCOLN, NEBR.
TOPEKA, KAN.

CURTIS-YALE-HOWARD CO.
MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.

CURTIS, BOOTH & BENTLEY CO.
OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLA.

CURTIS DOOR & SASH CO.
CHICAGO, ILL.

CURTIS DETROIT CO.
DETROIT, MICH.

CURTIS DAYTON CO.
DAYTON, OHIO

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Walt Mason is a poet and the world knows it. He is read by more people than any other living writer. His prose rhymes are published in 200 daily newspapers with an aggregate circulation of about 12 millions. Walt says his only claim on the nation’s gratitude is that he does not go about the country reading from his “works.” Indeed, he doesn’t have to, for his writings are read with avidity by hosts of people.

Walt Mason lives in Emporia, Kansas, most of the time, but spends his summers in Estes Park, Colorado. He does nothing but write prose rhymes. And at this job he is one of the hardest working men living. He is probably the only poet who makes his living solely by the sweat of his brow.

Many people have wondered what Walt Mason gets for his contributions to Curtis Service. This is rather a personal question but it is sufficient to say that he gets enough money from work of this kind so that his monthly income has totalled as high as $875.00. At any rate, this was the figure he gave out in an interview in a Kansas City paper in 1914, and like everything else, prose rhymes weren’t as high then as they are now.

As Mr. Mason himself explains, he was never a lumber dealer, though he has tried to sell everything from hardware to hogs.

How, then, can he write lumber lyrics that hit such a responsive chord in every lumber dealer’s mind? The Lord knows. He was born that way. His prose rhymes “get under your hide” and under every other lumber dealer’s hide, because Walt Mason has an interest in you and your fellow human beings.

Walt Mason was born in Columbus, Ontario, May 4th, 1862. He was the fifth of six sons of poor parents. When Walt was four years old his father was accidentally killed. After his mother died, when he was fifteen, he went to Port Hope, Ontario, and worked in a hardware store for $2.50 a week, boarding himself. He soon forsook the hardware business, in 1880, and crossed Lake Ontario into New York State, where he hoed beans until he decided that there wasn’t any sense in hoeing beans.

“Arm in arm with the star of empire,” he took his course westward, stopping in Ohio and in Illinois, and then in St.[Pg 7] Louis. There he wrote “some stuff” for a humorous weekly called The Hornet, which obtained for him a position at $5.00 per week doing everything from writing gems of thought to sweeping the floors.

When The Hornet went broke, Mason continued westward and worked for three years as a hired man in Kansas. He became disgusted with the work and managed to get a position with the Leavenworth Times. From there he floated to the Atchison Globe, and was off and on connected with newspapers in a dozen cities. At last, William Allen White, publisher of the Emporia Gazette, offered him a position.

The Gazette always printed on its first page an item of local interest with a border around it, called a “star head.” One day, the city editor was shy the necessary item and asked Walt to write something to fill the space. He wrote a little prose rhyme asking people to go to church next day, which was Sunday. The rhyme attracted attention, and on Monday he wrote another one, and a little later on, Walt and the “star head” became a feature of the Gazette. This was the origin of the prose poem and that was when Walt Mason came to himself—at the age of forty-five.

The rhymes of Walt Mason have had a marked influence on American literature. Their unusual character have made the “highbrows” wonder how to class them. His rhymes seem to be neither prose nor poetry, though it must be remembered that the poems of the classics were written in lineless form, and therefore, that Mason’s stuff can’t be condemned simply because it isn’t printed like verse.

Mason used to write for a great many house organs, but today Curtis Service, for which he has been writing since the third issue of the publication, in September, 1913, is one of the few on his list.

Walt Mason believes that poets are born and not made. At any rate, he says that they must have an ear for rhyme. The manner in which he sends in his contributions to Curtis Service shows that he doesn’t chew up many pencils paring down his rhymes and changing them about so that their feet will toe the mark.

Though he is a poet he has but one eccentricity: he is fat. He tried out a large number of eccentricities, because he knew all poets had to have some, but finally decided upon being fat as the one with fewest drawbacks and the least inconvenient.

Who’s Who says he married Ella Foss of Wooster, Ohio, in 1893, and that he is a Republican in politics and a Unitarian in religion. His twelve million readers all acclaim him as a “regular guy.”

The prose poems appearing in this little book have been written by me for the Curtis Companies during the past few years, and, judging from the many letters I have received from lumber dealers all over the country, they took kindly to the little effusions; and often these correspondents have asked me where and when I had experience in the lumber business.

I have had no experience in that line, except as a customer at the lumber yards. I have bought a lot of boards and such things in my time, and when I was buying them, or waiting for my change, I looked around. Anybody who looks around, and who doesn’t wear blinders, observes many things in the course of a lifetime.

I have always been interested in the things around me and close to me. I have an insatiable curiosity; I want to know all the facts about anything I am interested in. When I go to a lumber yard to buy the materials for a cupboard or a coffin, I ask a million questions. I want to know where the boards grew, and who harvested them, and how they were prepared for the consumer, and all about them; and, as a rule, lumber men know their own trade, and can give any reasonable amount of information. I have been asking questions all my days; and, having a good memory, very few facts get away from me.

And so I am prepared to write a rhyme about anything at an hour’s notice. If I am to write about a steam engine, or a whale, or the north pole, I usually do it without consulting any books; at various times I have questioned people about steam engines, and whales, and north poles, and the things they told me are on file in my memory.

So with these poems. They have been suggested by[Pg 9] things I have heard lumber men say, perhaps day before yesterday, perhaps twenty years ago.

There are many people who will tell you I am not a poet, and I am not going to quarrel with them about it. The true poet, in the estimation of the highbrows, is one who can so befuddle a subject with words that an ordinary citizen can’t tell what he is driving at. I have never had an ambition to be that kind of a poet. Really, I can be as cryptic as any of them, and can write things that would give you a sick headache, trying to understand them; but few people enjoy sick headaches.

I have never been interested in Greek gods or Lethean rivers, or things remote, either in time or distance. Most of my life I have been associated with people who worked hard for a living, and I have done all kinds of manual labor myself. It is with such people, and such varieties of labor, that my verses deal.

The lumber yard on the corner is of more enduring interest to me than the Field of the Cloth of Gold, on which sundry kings played to the gallery long ago. Every time the lumberman sells a wagonload of his goods he is contributing to the general welfare, as well as to his own; and this fact seems more important to me than any story treating of the doings of Ulysses or any other fabled gent. So I write of lumber and let the gods slide.

Most every tree is made of wood; the best ones are remote from cities; and in their cheerful neighborhood the birds keep singing ragtime ditties. Beneath their limbs the children play and swing within their leafy border, upon the long, bright summer day, when picnic parties are in order. And now and then the poets come, to eulogize the forest spirit, and you can hear their thought works hum, like auto wheels, or pretty near it. And it may chance, upon a day, that farmers from adjacent ranches, will bring a rope along this way, and hang an agent from the branches.

Now comes the woodman with his ax, and he selects some forest beauty; then through its noble trunk he whacks—it is to him a thing of duty. He has to feed his eighteen kids, he has to clothe his wife and auntie; he has to buy them pies and lids, and put new paint upon his shanty. And thus the forest giant falls, there’s none to shield it or deliver; now other men in overalls, will float it down some rushing river. And then through loud and busy mills the good old tree in fragments dashes, and makes its bow as doors and sills, as scantling, joists and window sashes.

It’s strange to labor at a desk and think that it, all carved and oaken, one time was standing, picturesque, amid a solitude unbroken; once in the forest dark and dim, these pigeonholes and doodads rested; this drawer was once a swaying limb, on which the robin sang and nested.

I sit upon my swivel chair, and meditate upon its hist’ry; these rungs and legs once waved in air, in all the strange primeval myst’ry.

This stool on which I milk my cow, this club with which I swat the heifers, though they are quite prosaic now, once rustled in the morning zephyrs; once they had leaves, and in the dawn they sang the world-old song of wonder; and in the dusk when day was gone, they saw the smiling lovers under.

This maple slat with which I soak my Willie when he gets too funny, and on his daddy plays a joke, came from some woodland sweet and sunny.

And thus in every lumber yard there’s food for pleasant meditation; a plank inspires the modern bard, and tunes him up to beat creation.

Winter winds were round us snorting, for a weary while; now that Spring’s this way cavorting, we should wear a smile.

Tempests, storms and kindred friskers lashed us with a whip, froze our noses and our whiskers, gave us all the grip.

Nights were cold and days were freezing, cheerless was the sky; we were coughing, whooping, sneezing, till we wished to die.

Now the winter’s quit its prancing, it’s an also ran; and the gentle Spring, advancing, should encourage man.

When the north winds, blood congealers, ripped along the earth, ’tisn’t strange if lumber dealers strangers were to mirth.

For there was no rush or clamor in the building trade; and the rusty saw and hammer on the shelf were laid.

But, since balmy spring is coming, and old winter’s canned, sounds of building will be humming over all the land.

When the skies are blue and sunny, and the birdlets sing, people will be spending money, as they do each spring.

They’ll be building gorgeous houses, all along the pike, shelter for their steeds and cowses, fences and the like.

So let glee and mellow laughter fill your lumber store, as you hand out joist and rafter, scantling, sash and door.

When I go into someone’s store, to buy a nickel’s worth or more, some questions I may spring; for I have an inquiring mind; all kinds of facts I like to find, and place them on a string. I ask the grocer if his tea was grown beside the Zuyder Zee, or down along the Po; and I’m disgusted when he sighs, and claws his whiskers and replies, “I really do not know.”

I hold that every business man should follow up the good old plan and know his stock in trade; the wise old grocer always knew just where his shredded codfish grew, and where his prunes were made. The wise old clothier knows that wool is never gathered from a bull, and tells his patrons so; that merchant wearies by his acts, who answers, when you ask for facts, “I’m sure I do not know.”

We have a lumber man named Chee; I asked him, “On what sort of tree do lath and shingles grow?” He said, “We[Pg 13] have the shingles there, and where they grew I do not care, and neither do I know.” This answer filled me with amaze; he’d handled shingles all his days, and knew not whence they came; he’d played his hand for forty years, since he was wet behind the ears, and didn’t know the game.

We have a lumber man named Dumm; I asked him, “Whence do shingles come—oh, whither, why and whence?” He said, “I’m always glad to tell the history of things I sell, regardless of expense. The shingle trees,” I hear him say, “are only found at Hudson’s Bay, and they have stately shapes; the shingles, which are long and slim, profusely grow on every limb, in bunches, much like grapes. The natives harvest them in March when they are firm and stiff with starch, and dry them in the sun; then they remove the outer husk—which has a gentle smell of musk—and thrash them, every one. Then they’re sandpapered, piece by piece, and boiled six weeks in walrus grease, and smoked, like any ham; and if there’s any more you’d know, about the way the shingles grow, just ask me—here I am.”

I’ve admiration and respect for one whose knowledge is correct, so I am strong for Dumm; no matter what you ask that guy, he always has a prompt reply—and he makes business hum! Men should be ready with a spiel about the goods in which they deal, excuses won’t suffice; our estimate is always low of men who never seem to know a thing except the price.

I’d like to deal in lumber, and sell, for honest mon, good shingles without number, and scantling by the ton; I’d like to hand out timber to patrons, all day long; the moulding, thin and limber, the pillar firm and strong; for when a man is selling such things, which hit the spot, to build the stately dwelling, the store and humble cot, he feels that he is helping to push the world along, and so we hear him yelping a sweet and joyous song.

I’d like to deal in lumber, for then I’d have a hand in rousing from its slumber, the tired and stagnant land; whene’er I sold a package, and put away the dimes, I’d say, “I’m building trackage, toward the better times!” Pride’s blush would then be mantling my bulging brow upon; and when I sold a scantling I’d help the old world on.

I’d help to build the silo, which fills a pressing need, in which the rural Milo heaps up his juicy feed; I’d help to build[Pg 14] the cottage in which the Newlyweds consume their home-made pottage, with sunshine in their heads; I’d help to build the palace where Crœsus counts his chink, and hits the golden chalice when he would have a drink. I’d help to build the cities, where busy people dwell; it is a thousand pities I have no boards to sell!

I want to have a hand in all good things that’s going on; I’d hate to be astandin’ two idle feet upon! I’d hate to deal in moonshine, or take the shining plunk for goods which have the prune shine of gold bricks or of junk. You’ll find some merchants funny throughout this blooming earth; I’d not enjoy my money, unless I gave its worth; unless the goods I deal in had useful end and aim, though coin came in a-peltin’, I’d not enjoy the game.

I’d like to deal in lumber, in lime and lath, by jings, thus helping to encumber the world with handsome things; I’d like to have a finger in every worthy pie, I’d like my name to linger behind me when I die. The lumber dealers figure in every useful scheme, in everything that’s bigger than is an empty dream.

When farmers bring their teams to town, and then drive home again, their heavy wagons loaded down with boards and joists, why, then, it is a sign that things are well, the goose is hanging high; and you may safely dance and yell, for better times are nigh.

All farmers who are safe and sane like handsome cribs and barns, and for old shacks that let in rain they do not give three darns; but when the hogs are dying off, of cholera or mumps, the farmer, with affliction filled, looks on the old shacks near, and says, “I can’t afford to build until some other year.”

But when the hogs are feeling gay, and everything serene, and all the oats and corn and hay present a healthy green, he hitches up old Kate and Dick and journeys off to town, and then comes homeward pretty quick, with lumber loaded down. And when I see the wagons drill along the country road, each one a-creaking, loud and shrill, beneath its lumber load, I know the country’s on the boom, and things will hum once more; and any man who talks of gloom is just a misfit bore.

Some people read the Wall Street news to see which way we head, and some keep tab on Henry Clews, to see if we are dead; some follow up what Congress does, and think therein they’ll find the signs that business will buzz, or maybe fall behind.[Pg 15] And some are making frequent notes upon the tariff law, to see if it will get our goats, and dislocate our jaw.

But when I want to know the truth, about our future fate, I pass up all such things, forsooth, and sit on my front gate, and watch the farmers going by, upon their way from town, and if with lumber piled up high, their carts are loaded down, I know prosperity’s on top, good times are here, you bet; and I go forth and whip a cop and chase a suffragette. Oh, when the farmers spend their hoards for lumber, we enthuse; the granger’s wagonload of boards tells more than Henry Clews.

Tell me not in mournful numbers, with the air of critics wise, that the retail lumber dealer’s not the one to advertise.

“Let the shoe and grindstone dealers fill the papers with their ads, let the pharmacists be spielers for their pills and liver pads; let the dry goods merchant merry sing in print his cheerful tunes, let the boatman boom his wherry, let the grocer boost his prunes. But when men are buying shingles they will seek you in your lair, and will need no prose or jingles to induce their going there.”

Thus I heard the mossback speaking as he sadly wagged his ears, and his jaws and lungs were squeaking with the rust of many years. But I knew his talk was twaddle that would fool no modern guys; for it’s true that all men waddle to the stores that advertise.

Why should men who deal in lumber make no bid for larger trade? Why should they sit ’round and slumber, slumber sweetly in the shade? If an ad will bring new patrons to the gas works or the bank, if it sells new gowns to matrons, why won’t it sell a plank? If an ad will bring new buyers to the corner ginseng store, to the man who deals in plyers, why won’t it sell a door?

In our town there is a dealer, selling lumber all the year, and he is the boss appealer to the public’s grateful ear. Every day his little sermon in the paper shows its face; when on building folks determine, they go chasing to his place.

Keep your name before the public, keep your business house in view, and when men would build a steeple, they will surely think of you. Advertising pays, you bet you! They who say “No” are absurd. Never let your town forget you—make your name a household word.

Our lumber man, McMellow, is quite a hustling fellow, he’s ever after trade. He says, “I’ve faith in jumping around for biz, and humping—I’ve always found it paid. I think,” remarks McMellow, “that there’s a streak of yellow in any gloomy lad, who spends his time complaining, against the breeching straining, and says that trade is bad.

“My trade is what I make it; and I could blamed soon break it, if I had doleful dumps, but when I find things dragging, I set my brains a-wagging and do some fancy humps.

“Today I heard John Abel intends to build a stable, about eight miles from town; as there was nothing doing, and no excitement brewing, to hold this village down, I thought I’d go and meet him, and to some language treat him, and sell a little bill; and right there I enrolled him a customer and sold him the roof-tree and the sill.

“Keep busy is my motto; I have a small tin auto that scoots along with vim; and when I hear some granger intends to build a manger, I burn the road to him. The people see me scooting, they see me skally-hooting, mile after breezy mile; they say, ‘He is so busy, he fairly makes us dizzy—we kind o’ like his style.’

“And when they want some woodwork—and want the best of good work, which is the Curtis kind—or joists or lath or siding, to me they come a’riding—that’s business, do ye mind?”

You never see him slouching, you never see him grouching, or talking of despair; he always keeps things humming, he’s always up a-coming, his hind feet in the air.

Some merchants are so all-fired dumb, you wonder how they ever come to sell the stuff they have in store, and keep the sheriff from the door. Old Binkson is a lot that way; he seldom has a word to say. I ask him for a pound of lime; he wraps it up, and all the time, he wears a tragic air of doom, and sheds an atmosphere of gloom. He never chats, he never spiels, nor jumps up high and cracks his heels. He isn’t grouchy or unstrung; he never learned to wag his tongue.

Oh, silence is a golden thing, when ’tisn’t worked too hard, by jing. But none of us will stand up strong for men who[Pg 17] gabble all day long, and elocute a thousand miles in fifty-seven varied styles. The dealer who is prone to talk until you hear him round a block, is worse than t’other kind of bird, who’s never known to spring a word.

But if you’ve scantling you would sell, you ought to boost it wisely well, and if a gent should buy a plank, to build himself a dipping tank, you might suggest ere home he speeds, that you have other things he needs.

I called on Lumber Dealer Gaff, to buy a shingle and a half. He put my purchase in a sack, and wrapped a string around and back, and as he toiled, in manner gay, he talked to pass the time away.

“The farmers now, in busy troops, are building stately chicken coops; the winter soon will hit the road, and hens must have a warm abode, or they won’t lay their luscious eggs, but stand around on frozen legs.”

And that recalled the fact to me that I had hens, some ninety-three, and ere I left that lumber store, I bought a wagon load or more, of stuff to build a chicken shed; it’s standing now, all painted red.

And that’s the way big sales are made, and that is how men build up trade. Talk corn cribs at the proper time, or prove a silo is sublime, but in an incidental strain, and not as though you gladly sprain your conscience—which I hope is hale—in eagerness to get the kale.

Suggestion is a noble art; the wise man gets it down by heart.

Our fathers, in the bygone years, were bold and hardy pioneers. They cleared the country of their foes, and made it blossom as the rose. On prairies vast, by lonely lakes, they scrapped with Injuns and with snakes, and whipped the large, fat grizzly bear, and chased the groundhog to its lair.

When first they cleared their patch of ground, the pioneers felt they were bound to build thereon some sort of shacks, so they got busy with the ax. How dire and gloomy was their plight! There was no lumber yard in sight; they could not take a bunch of cash, and buy their windows, doors and sash; they could not seek the haunts of trade, and buy a house already made. The modern man, who plans to build a house, with children to be filled, can to the lumber palace go, and[Pg 18] spend a little roll of dough, and get his boards, all planed and grooved, so slick they couldn’t be improved. And in a very little while he builds a house that’s quite in style.

But it was different, my dears, with those old hardy pioneers; they humped themselves like busy bees, and with their axes chopped down trees, and of the branches made them bare, and chopped and chopped, and made them square. And as they toiled around the boles, the Injuns shot them full of holes. How would you like to build a shack, and have an arrow in your back?

But still they toiled on tireless shanks, and fashioned doors of three-inch planks, and made their windows, high and broad, all out of plumb and wapperjawed. Oh, did they sing, or did they swear, when interrupted by a bear, which sized them up as juicy food, and chased them through the lonely wood? Oh, did they laugh, or did they wail, when wildcats got upon their trail? For once an hour their labors ceased; they had to scrap with man or beast. It’s hard to work ’neath such a strain; it frets the heart and jars the brain.

Just ponder o’er those early shacks, all built with rusty saw and ax; they once were viewed with lofty pride, in them our fathers lived and died. How would you like it if you had to build log cabins, like your dad? You’d surely think it pretty hard—you’d yearn for some good lumber yard.

It is a nipping, eager air; the signs of Fall are everywhere. The coal man smiles, the ice man grieves; the trees have shed their summer leaves; the cockleburs and other flowers that brighten all the summer hours, are lying dead; the birds have flown to lands where blizzards are unknown.

The farmer sits around indoors, when he has done his evening chores, and finished all the daily grind, and talks of plans he has in mind.

“Amanda Jane,” he tells his wife, the faithful partner of his life, “the time has come when we can build; the strongbox is with rubles filled. It hasn’t been the best of years, but I have sold a bunch of steers, and, too, a galaxy of swine, and quite a wad of dough is mine. We’ll build the house we long have planned, with modern things on every hand, with weather strips and folding doors, and walnut stairs and rosewood floors.”

“Now, Hiram, you are safe and sane,” remarks the glad[Pg 19] Amanda Jane. “For twenty weary years, alack, we’ve lived in this old dingy shack; we’ve built fine shelter for the cows, and sheds palatial for the sows, and gorgeous stables for the mules, and lived in this old shack, like fools. Now let us have a dwelling fine, and not a dugout twelve by nine. And, Hiram, bear this thought in mind: When buying, do not go it blind. I’ve talked with women who have homes which are for beauty simply pomes, and they have told me many a time, that cheap john woodwork is a crime. With it your house will be a frost, regardless of the roll it cost.”

“Don’t worry, wife,” old Hiram sighs; “methinks you’ll find your husband wise; I’ve had that matter long in mind, and I shall buy the Curtis kind.”

I tried to sell a load of slabs to Charles Augustus Clarence Dabbs. He owns a farm some nine miles long, and twice as wide—unless I’m wrong; I am not sure about its size, but it is big, or some one lies.

“I cannot blow myself for slabs,” said Charles Augustus Clarence Dabbs; “with forty kinds of grief I’m filled, I’m not in shape this year to build. When one is loaded to the ears with cares and woes, and doubts and fears, he’s in no mood to talk of planks, or building stunts, you bet your shanks.

“The government,” said Mr. Dabbs, “is on the farmers keeping tabs; it looks to us to raise the wheat, that half the blooming world shall eat. It looks to us for corn and hay, and succotash and beans and whey. We farmers want to raise the stuff; we surely have desire enough; we have the land, we have the mules, we have the seed, we have the tools, but where in thunder shall we get the laborers, to toil and sweat? We cannot keep men on the farm; the life appears to have no charm. I need a half a dozen hands to cultivate my fertile lands; I’d give them work the whole year round, if men of muscle could be found.”

“It is a problem old and hoar,” I said, and sat down on the floor. “It is a problem that will grow more frightful as the sad years go, unless you farmers realize that laborers are human guys. They want to live a normal life, each with his fireside and his wife, and not be packed in garrets bare up forty miles of winding stair.

“If I were farming, Mr. Dabbs, instead of selling rosewood slabs, I’d build some nifty little shacks, to house my toiling[Pg 20] Jills and Jacks. I’d say to men I hired, ‘You see, you do not have to live with me; you have your house in which to dwell, a garden and a cow and well, a rooster and a Dorking hen, which things appeal to honest men.’

“When you take up that sort of thing, your men will stay with you, by jing.”

Then Mr. Dabbs sat down by me. “There may be truth in that,” said he. “I’m blamed if I don’t try it out, so let us see some plans, old scout.”

We figured there for half a day, and when the patron drove away, he hauled a load of joists and jambs, and seemed as chipper as nine clams.

The barber who is bald as blazes can’t sell me tonic for my hair, and all his fine and ringing phrases strike me as merely heated air. The tailor who is looking shabby can’t sell me clothes, howe’er he tries; his eloquence seems vain and flabby, his course of conduct is not wise.

The jeweler, whose watch is gaining, or losing, seven hours a day, might spend a week or two explaining his wondrous skill—I’d go my way.

If I were selling battle-axes, I’d see my own the best in town, as slick and clean and smooth as wax is, a thing of fair and wide renown.

One lumber man is always telling what kind of homes the folks should build, and he lives in a rocky dwelling, with bargain counter fixtures filled. And men who listen to his spieling remark, “Why don’t you build, yourself? Your home is punk, from floor to ceiling, from kitchen sink to pantry shelf.”

The lumber man, more than all others, should show his faith in what he sells, should demonstrate, to men and brothers, that his own home is wearing bells. Then he can say to John and Alice, who think of putting up a home, “Come out and see my little palace, examine it, from porch to dome. Of goodly points it has a number, I think it good and up to date; it shows what one can do with lumber, if he has got his head on straight.”

The workman who is always fussing can’t ply for me the monkey wrench; the preacher who is always cussing can’t lead me to the mourner’s bench.

The lumberman whose home is rocky can’t tell me what I ought to build; though he be eloquent and talky, the force of all he says is killed.

So many folks are selling things we really do not need! They sell us pups and spiral springs, and patent chicken feed. A dozen times a day or more I have to drop my pen; some chap is ringing at the door, to sell a setting hen. A gent of rather seedy looks came to my shack today, to sell me fifty-seven books—the works of Bertha Clay. And one is selling china eyes, one deals in pewter spoons, and one would sell me whisker dyes, another, musty prunes.

I never waddle through the woods but some one comes along, and tries to sell me useless goods, with tiresome dance and song. I’m weary of the man who yells of jimcracks gone to seed; how stately is the man who sells the goods men really need! I watch the lumberman go past, upon his useful chores, to sell a mariner a mast, or fit a house with doors; his boards and beams, of seasoned wood, for helpful arts are made; he does our social fabric good when he builds up his trade.

There’s nothing in the lumber store superfluous or vain; you do not seek that dealer’s door fool doodads to obtain. And every time he sells a bill, improvements there will be; the coin he puts into his till helps the community. And when his goods are in demand, the better times have come, your town will flourish and expand, the wheels of commerce hum.

I’m tired of buying pumpkin trees, and postholes by the crate, and ostrich eggs, and swarms of bees, and tinhorn real estate. Hereafter I shall blow my roll for articles worth while, a peck of lime, a load of coal, a good large lumber pile.

I know a man who deals in planks, and he has money in nine banks. He has a busy lumber booth, where he makes business hum, in sooth. And when the day of toil is o’er, he might go home and rest and snore, and put his feet upon a chair, and talk about his load of care. But when he’s had his evening meal, and read the valued Daily Squeal, he says, “Methinks I’ll go down town, and see what’s up, or maybe down.”

He takes a hand in everything that makes our home town move and swing. If boosters hold a jamboree, this lumber dealer there you’ll see, and he will on his hind legs stand, and help to boost, to beat the band.

[Pg 22]

If there’s a wedding at the kirk, this lumber man will leave his work, and reach the scene with active stride, and he’s the first to kiss the bride.

When we arrange a big parade, you see this lumber man arrayed in all his panoply and pomp, and down the street he’ll proudly romp.

If we decide to lynch a gent, some agent for a patent tent, or one who’s sold us mining shares, or double action easy chairs, that lumber man is right on deck, and puts the rope around his neck.

I hear folks say, “That lumber chap, has put this village on the map. If we had twenty men like him, the town would sure be in the swim. He is the first man, every time, to help to make things hump and climb.”

The business man who hopes to win must boost the town he’s living in. You cannot do the hermit stunt, and hope to travel at the front. Get next to all that’s going on, mix in with Richard, James and John, and help along the town’s affairs, and leave the grouches in their lairs.

Some years ago I built a house in which I settled, with my spouse. It was a gorgeous shack, indeed; the kind of house of which you read. For such a house I’d always yearned, and so I said, “Expense be derned! I want the best that coin will buy; my dwelling place must stack up high. I want a dwelling that will stand till I’m so old I should be canned.”

I said, “I want a splendid stair, a stairway that’s beyond compare; the kind you read about in books, with banisters and window nooks.”

And so we built a noble stair, and it was surely passing fair; and guests who came to spend the night, when viewing it, expressed delight, and said it surely took the cake; it was a bird, and no mistake.

But when the stair was five years old its antics made my trilbys cold. It warped and twisted like the deuce, till half the steps and rails were loose, it creaked and crackled, as in pain, and warped and bent and warped again. It took a circus acrobat to climb my stairway after that.

Then came a neighbor to my door, who’d built a hundred shacks or more. He viewed my stair and shed some weeps, and said, “That is a frost, for keeps. You’d better take it out from[Pg 23] there and get yourself a Curtis stair. The wood the Curtis people use will ne’er its right proportions lose; it will not wind around, I wist, like some dadblamed contortionist. For it is seasoned to a hair; there is no reckless guesswork there.

“The Curtis trademark on a stair just means that grief won’t travel there. You have a stairway that will last until your earthly woes are past, and you are playing golden lyres, or heaping brimstone on the fires.

“Your warped old stairway yet will wreck some fellow’s back or break his neck, so pull it down, I humbly beg, before there is a broken leg. Then get the Curtis seasoned wood, and have a stairway staunch and good, and you will bless me every day for showing you the proper way.”

And now a noble Curtis stair adds grace and comfort to my lair; I never find it on the blink, it doesn’t warp or split or shrink.

This is the burden of my rhyme: Be nice and pleasant all the time. Some men are only sweet and nice, when they desire to get the price. The lumber men at Bungtown hear that I intend, some time this year, to build a handsome Gothic shed, all up to date and painted red.

At ordinary times these gents don’t smile at me worth twenty cents. They pass me by and do not say, “How is your liver?” or “Good day!” But since they’ve heard that I expect to build a shed that’s all correct, a modern shed with wooden doors and handsome knotholes in the floors, they’re so polite and smooth and sweet, they give me fantods in my feet.

They do not win me with their grins; such work is coarse, and seldom wins. If men would sell their laths and lime, they should be pleasant all the time, and not, like some cheap candidate, just when they think ’twill pay the freight.

I’ll buy the lumber for my shed, when I have got the coin ahead, from dealers who are pleasant lads e’en when they are not after scads. There are such dealers in our town, and no sane man would turn them down. I meet them nearly every day, and talk with them of hogs and hay, and bats and cats and curleycues, and ships and synagogues and shoes.

They do not seem to care a red who sells the lumber for my shed; they’re always pleasant and polite, they hand me smiles and treat me right.

So when I wish to buy a plank, I take some pennies from[Pg 24] the bank, and cheerfully I blow the price with men who can’t help being nice.

And when the Bungtown fellows know what I have done, they’ll droop in woe; they’ll look on me with moody scorn, and wish I never had been born. Their souls can’t reach the heights sublime; they can’t be pleasant all the time.

Oft I hear discordant slogans, hear the loud and sad lament; men are wearing out their brogans hunting houses they can rent. Every village, town and city sees the same discouraged crew; and it seems to me a pity that good houses are so few.

In my native burg, Empory, I see women chasing round, and they tell the same old story—houses simply can’t be found. And the same sad word is spoken everywhere I chance to roam; from Topeka to Hoboken folks are hunting for a home.

When they’re sick and tired of chasing, when their souls with woe are filled, maybe they will do some bracing; maybe they’ll decide to build. Rents are higher now than ever, and the prices won’t slump back, and that man is really clever who will build himself a shack.

“But the cost!” I hear men yawping; and they put up thoughtless roars, for they never have been shopping at the modern lumber stores. Building goods today are cheaper than all other goods you buy; all commodities are steeper—ask the lumber dealer nigh.

Monied men are often questing for gold bricks, and dern the price; always ready for investing in blue sky and pickled ice. If they’d build a lot of houses they might dwell in Easy street, where the catawampus browses, and the dingbat’s song is sweet. Every time they’d build a dwelling crowds would come, and still increase, crying, clamoring and yelling, begging for a five-year lease.

There’s no better proposition than this thing of building homes, and the fact should find position in the plutocratic domes.

And the man with modest bundle should be renting nevermore; he should take his wad and trundle to the lumber dealer’s store.

There should be a boom in building such as we have never seen; palaces with ornate gilding, modest homes, all painted green.

The Eskimo has floors of ice, and probably he thinks them nice, and strictly up to date; but if there ever came a thaw they’d be the worst you ever saw, and that’s as sure as fate. The Arab has his floor of sand; I have no doubt he thinks it grand, a floor beyond compare; but sand is full of bugs and ants, and they climb up a fellow’s pants, when he sits in a chair.

The Mexican has floors of dirt, and floors of that sort will not hurt, so long as weather’s dry; but when there comes a season wet such floors are not the one best bet, which no one can deny.

In olden times men built their homes with battlements and towers and domes, and ornaments of gold; but all the floors were made of stone, and they made people sigh and groan, they were so hard and cold.

And then with rushes they were strewn, to make them warmer to the shoon, and also to the feet; and those stale rushes would decay; their scent would drive the folks away, in agonized retreat.

It took uncounted years of toil and planning by the midnight oil to dope out modern floors; the floors on which we dance and walk, and sing and cuss and wildly talk of hoarders and such bores.

The floors on which we spend our lives, and train our kids, and beat our wives, are surely handsome things; be they of color light or dark, we proudly view them and remark, “They’re good enough for kings.”

Your mansion might have jasper walls, the finest painting in its halls that artists can produce, and onyx stairs and marble doors, but if it had no modern floors ’twould be a poor excuse.

Good hardwood floors make life a pome; they beautify your happy home as nothing else can do; your lumber dealer has the best; the years have given it the test that means so much to you.

While doing here our earthly chores, we’re going in and out of doors; doors have a part in all we do, until our little trip is through; and then who knows what sort of door we’ll enter on the other shore?

If I am welcome at your shack you gladly swing the door clear back, and say, “Come in, you blamed old skate, and stay[Pg 26] six months, or maybe eight!” But if I sell “The Works of Poe,” you ope the door an inch or so, and cry, “Go chase yourself, gadzooks! We do not want your tinhorn books!”

Oh, doors are good for many things; they’re used by peasants and by kings; the humblest hut has three or two, and palaces have quite a few. And I recall a bitter day, when I climbed on a dappled gray, a horse that wasn’t brought up right; it liked to kick and buck and bite; it threw me off, in wanton style, then sat on me for quite a while. I was so crippled, bruised and sore, men took me home upon a door. It shows how useful doors can be; I always carry two or three.

We’re always viewing doors, you know; they face us everywhere we go; on doors we knock, at doors we wait, and if they’re handsome, smooth and straight, they strike us as a work of art, they’re soothing to the mind and heart. But if they’re warped and out of plumb, and cracked and cheap and on the bum, we think, “The owner doesn’t heed how much his dwelling runs to seed.”

I size up people by their doors; not by the rugs upon their floors.

There’s nothing looks so dad-blamed punk as some cheap door that’s warped and shrunk.

The Curtis hardwood doors are great; they’re always true and fine and straight; their beauty gladdens every eye, and years don’t make that beauty fly. They’re built by experts, and each door is planned to sell a hundred more; each one’s an ad for all the rest, and every Curtis door’s the best.

Oh, I could write a whole lot more, but some one’s rapping at the door.

I built a house, erect and square, its basement touched the ground; and all my neighbors gathered there, and said it should be round. “Square houses long are out of date,” remarked old Jabez Black, “and no one but a fossil skate would build him such a shack.”

“I see your shingles are of wood,” said Johnsing, with a grin; “you ought to know they are no good—they should be made of tin. Your house is sure the bummest job a man could find in town; I’ve half a mind to raise a mob, and come and tear it down. The porch roof has too steep a drop, it makes a wretched show; the basement should be built on top, the garret down below.”

[Pg 27]

“You surely must have lost your head,” exclaimed old Captain Bean, “to go and paint your mansion red, with trimmings of pea green. A person’s eyes it fairly slams; the man who sees that paint will think he has the James H. Jams, and he’ll be apt to faint. If you had made it pink and blue, it would have hit the spot; but you have chosen such a hue as makes the neighbors hot.”

“I see your chimney is of brick,” said Colonel Sassafras; “and such a bungle makes me sick—it should be built of glass. Glass chimneys now are all the rage in Paris and in Rome, but you’re away behind the age, when you put up a home.”

“Upon a pivot,” said Judge Ace, “it should be built, just so, then you could turn it round to face most all the winds that blow.”

They all agreed that such a shack was never built before; it all was wrong and out of whack, from roof to cellar door; except the woodwork—that was grand, and beautiful and slick; they saw it had the Curtis brand, and so they could not kick.

All Spring it rained to beat the band, and o’er the saturated land, the water stood in pools; old Pluvius, who runs the rain, it seemed, had water on the brain, and busted all the rules.

The farmers had to sail in boats when they went forth to feed their shotes, their ostriches and cows, and when they went to sow their beans they had to go in submarines, they couldn’t use their plows.

And in the cities things were worse, and gloomy as a country hearse was nearly every face; men stood around in dripping crowds, and viewed the stretch of leaking clouds, and called them a disgrace.

Contractors, when they called on Hoar, who runs the corner lumber store, would make an awful fuss; “this is the blinkest, blankest Spring! We cannot do a doggone thing! It’s getting wuss and wuss! It keeps on raining all day long, the mud goes through to old Hong Kong, it will not dry till fall; unless the gods give us a show, out to the poorfarm we must go, our families and all!”

But Hoar, the cheerful lumberman, is one who always ties a can to every gloomy thing; his optimism then he voiced, as he wrapped up a big oak joist, and tied it with a string.

“The rain,” he said, “is coming yet, and I admit it’s pretty[Pg 28] wet, in fact it’s almost damp; but you should hail it with delight, and shoo your troubles out of sight, and bid your griefs decamp. The ground is soaked clear through, you say, down to the center of Cathay, and that is joyous news; it means good crops for sundry years, so it’s a sin to sprinkle tears, or languish in the blues. The moisture stored in yonder soil will make our divers kettles boil, and bring us coin galore; you’ll have more palaces to build because the air with rain is filled, so please cut out the roar.”

The man who sees the good in things, who chirps around and smiles and sings, and chortles by the year, not only boosts his private trade, but sees the ghosts of others laid—the ghosts of doubt and fear.

One dealer cannot understand why people needing planks or sand go past his door, to spend their mon with t’other dealers, Dadd & Son.

His stock is just as good as Dadd’s; he gives as much for patron’s scads; why, then, do people pass his door, and pass him up forevermore? Perhaps he lacks the sort of charm that will all prejudice disarm, that makes his gladsome patrons shout, “I like to deal with that old scout.”

A man may study all the tricks of commerce, trade or politics, may know his biz from A to Zed, and yet still fail to get ahead, if he has not that winning way that makes a new hit every day. One doctor’s good at making friends; from door to door he blithely wends, and fills his patients up with pills, and cheerfully they pay his bills. This doctor’s soon in Easy street; his motor choos along the street, he wears large diamonds on his tie, his life is one long piece of pie.

Another sawbones knows full well all lore the physics books can tell. He studied medicine in Rome, and studied it some more at home. He knows all corners of his game, all ailments of the human frame, and he could cure the hopeless guy that other docs give up to die. But people say, “We’d rather croak than have that sour-faced doctor bloke!”

And thus it is in every line; the man who deals in coal or pine, the man who sells a churn or farm, should have that asset men call “charm.” With that on tap the world goes slick, and people say you are a brick; they buy your hats, they buy your gourds, they buy your beeswax, beans or boards. And if you lack it they will trot to one whose manner hits the spot.

On Arbor Day I took a spade, and then a large round hole I made, and planted there a tree; and in that tree, in coming days, the birds will sing their roundelays; and twitter in their glee.

I am an ancient also-ran; I am an old and feeble man, I soon must hit the flume; but it’s a pleasant thing to know that there will be that tree to show, when I am in the tomb. Beneath its boughs the kids will play, and veterans all bent and gray will in its shade recline; and peradventure one will sigh, “I well recall the dippy guy, who planted here this pine. The swath he cut was very small, while he was on this mundane ball, but when life neared its end, this tree he planted with his spade, and here we’re resting in its shade, and bless him as a friend.”

And as the long, slow years go by, perchance that stately tree will die; there’s death for all, it seems, and men, to earn the needed plunk, will separate its mighty trunk, and fashion boards and beams.

And one who plans to build a shack, will to the lumber dealer track, and purchase beam and board; and carpenters will straightway go, and build as fine a bungalow as mister can afford. The walls and roof of my good tree, will shelter human grief and glee, for, maybe, untold years; will echo to both sob and song, the laughter of the bridal throng, the plash of old wives’ tears.

I like to speculate this way; but now my boy comes in to say, ere he departs for school, “That tree you planted by the fence now looks like twenty-seven cents—it’s dead as Cæsar’s mule.”

When people do their Christmas shopping, and blow in all their hard-earned ore, to keep the Christmas spirit popping, they don’t call at the lumber store.

You do not see the Christmas spieler, with purse ajar and eyes a-gleam, say to the cheerful lumber dealer, “Just wrap me up that ten-foot beam! I have an aunt, Priscilla Hocking, to whom I’d send a present small; that beam will surely fit her stocking like the paper on the wall.”

You do not hear the shopper saying, “I want a gift for[Pg 30] Uncle Hank, so let me see you busy weighing about ten yards of basswood plank.”

No shoppers tighten their surcingles in lumber yards, at Christmas time, and buy their girls a lot of shingles, or sundry pecks of unslacked lime.

A man might think the lumber dealer was off the map, and in the shade, without a tendril or a feeler upon the blooming Christmas trade. But all the year they’re building houses, with stuff the lumber dealer sells, in which the Christmas crowd carouses, and good old Santa whoops and yells. Beneath yon roof there’s joyous laughter, that indicates good will to men; and every two-by-four and rafter came from the lumber dealer’s den. The walls on which you see the holly, were furnished by the lumber man, who is, like Claus, serene and jolly, and does his stunt the best he can. The door at which the guest is greeted with kindness which should hit him hard, and everything that’s nailed or cleated, comes from the modest lumber yard.

You cannot have a Christmas frolic, with joy and laughter in the air, and nuts and candies—causing colic—but that the lumber man is there.

The old year’s gone where dead years go, the New Year comes across the snow, and chortles at the door; it seems to say, “Behold in me the smoothest year you’ll ever see—none like me came before!”

But years, my friends, are much the same; they stay a while and play their game, and then they disappear; they’re modeled on the same old plan; success depends on Mr. Man, and not on any year. The finest year that ever grew will bring no rich rewards to you, if you’re a shiftless chap; the poorest year that they can send will see you prosper without end, if you have vim and snap.

We shouldn’t wait for friendly gods to come and multiply our wads, or fetch us wood to burn; the new year isn’t apt to bring to you or me a doggone thing that we don’t go and earn. We shouldn’t dream when New Year comes, or sit around and twirl our thumbs, and wish ourselves good cheer; ’twere better far to count our breaks and figure up the bad mistakes that cost us much last year.

“The lumber man across the way is doing business every[Pg 31] day, while I sit here and mope; there is some reason, sure, for that; I’ll find it, too, or eat my hat,” thus muses David Dope. And so he rustles ’round to find why trade is falling far behind; that’s better far, old scout, than quoting pretty New Year rhymes and harking to the clanging chimes that ring the old year out. “You bet,” says David, and he grins, “this year I’ll guard against the sins that put me in the hole; I’m bound this year will treat me well, so watch your Uncle David sell his lumber, lime and coal.”

And thus the year is good or bad according to the sort of lad who has it by the horns; if you are bound to win, you will; if not, the year your hopes will kill, and spoil your choicest corns.