Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1918 — PHILOSOPHY OF WALT MASON [ARTICLE]

PHILOSOPHY OF WALT MASON

You ask me when the war will end, and sadly I reply, “I fear it will not stop, my friend, till pigs begin to fly'” A flippant answer, you will say, to come from my fat tongue; but every hour of every day I hear that question sprung. I am no seer in spangled robe, no wizard full of gall, who looks into a crystal globe and tells what will befall. Xo prophet’s mantle came my way, the mystic’s power to lend, and so I really .cannot say just when the war will end. Oh, I can see so far ahead as any com•anon swain;, and when the morning sky is red, I know there will be rain; arid I can tell by sundry Signs when there’ll be snow and sleet; along such cheap forecasting lines I simply can’t be beat. But when yam to my lair ascend, along nvy stairway steep, and ask me when the war will end, “Search me,” I say, and weep. In politics I can predict the votes cast, more or less; George Harvey’s flaunting plumes are picked, when I begin to guess. And once I won a full-size cheese, as good as cheeses are, by guessing just how many peas were in a grocer’s jar. All guessing contests I attend, in this and other lands, but ask me when the war will end, and I throw up my hands.