Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1919 — PHILOSOPHY OF WALT MASON [ARTICLE]

PHILOSOPHY OF WALT MASON

In wartime’s long and dreadful night they told us we must work or fight, and so we worked or fought; the husky man ■ secured a gun, and sought the spoor of vandal Hun; the balance of us wrought. We fat men left our gilded lairs, our hammocks and our easy chairs, and tilled the fertile soil; we pawed around and trilled our song, and tried to show the passing throng new curves in honest toil. "When war is done,’’ we said, "gadzoons, again we’ll seek our inglenooks, and bask on beds "of easjg; until shall come that blissful day we’ll grow our luscious bales of hay, and raise our bombproof peas.” Now war is but a tale that’s \old, ’the sword has rust, the guns are cold, no armies thunder by; but still we have to dig and hoe, and saw and split, and plant and sow—for now it’s work or die. It costs so much to stay on earth we have no time for hours of mirth, for, dreams or idle games; we have no time for languid ease; we have to worl»« like bumble bees around our quilting frames. With labor we are face to face; alas, it is a groundhog case, we have to work or die; we have to rustle for the bones; there is no place for dreaming drones beneath the bending sky.