Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 April 1919 — PHILOSOPHY OF WALT MASON [ARTICLE]

PHILOSOPHY OF WALT MASON

I have just dug up my savings, paying up the income tax; so excuse my frantic ravings, which distubed you in your shacks. Oh, this is indeed a black age, and the times are punk and ill, when a man must blow his package, all because of Kaiser Bill. And the tax 'Collector rambles over hill and over i dale, saying ever, as he ambles, ■ “Uncle Sam’l needs the kale.” To my door I saw him trundle, with his tab and fountain pent, and he {touched me for jny bundle, as he doubtless will again. Money that we need for taters, money that we need for jam, cigarets and alligators, all must go to Uncle Sam. All I because a bonetread kaiser sitting on a tinhorn throne, thought I’twould be a whole lot wiser if the |trum<p of war were blown. Then ( the dove of peace was flying in the ether overhead; no one thought of bleeding, dying, or of painting 'Countries red. No one yearned for .war’s excursion save the kaiser on I his throne; now we pay for his diversion with the n treasured, hardearned bone. And the tax collectors travel over hHI and over glen, saying,.- aS they scratch the gravel, l“Please cough -up the iron men. ( Dig the doubloon- and the kroner, ( dlg the guilder and the franc; .Uncle Sam, to keep his honor, must have boodle in the bank. Dig the .kreutzer and the shilling, dig the rouble and the groat; is there one jwho is unwilling to preserve his country’s goat?” And we all are digging money, paying up the. income tax; some with smiles serene ■ and sunny, some with spasms in [their backs. And we all of us remember Bill’s to blame, and Bill alone; and we’d like to place an ember in/ the whiskers he has I a i grown; and we’d like to get together in the misty Hollamd hills, 'Oach one with a tar and- feather, to j adorn that frame of bill’s. For the world was calm and happy ere he had his bughouse dream; chapI pie then communed with chappie, I setting uip the pink ice cream. |Then a man could blow his dollars jfor a span of - trotting yaks; now | he digs it, while he hollers, paying lup his income tax. Now the tax collectors teeter, autocratic, on the scene, saying, “For the love of Peter, pony up the good long green! Dig the pistole and piastre, dig the bawbee and the quid! Dig the kopecks faster, faster, prithee, than you. ever did!”