People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 September 1893 — AN EVERY-DAY REALIST. [ARTICLE]

AN EVERY-DAY REALIST.

No doubt I’m one of the big coarse crowd, that men of learning oft rate as fools, That work for bread when they've snatched their chance of a few fleet years at the common schools. I’m only a carpenter that lives in a cheap New York Eighth avenue flat, With a plain but tender and trusting wife, and one boy-baby, funny and fat. Yst it cheers if I read, for an hour or more (when I'm not too tired to keep from bed), And I choose past all what the poets write, with their rhymes that haunt me in heart and head: For the trip and the tinkle, the swing and ring, have a way of setting my blood aglow, Like the gurgles from cold moss-bordered brooks, when willow-stems feather and southwinds blow. I’m a city-bred fellow, and yet I’ve gained some few glad glimpses of streams and trees: That is why nearly all of my favorite verse is so filled with the echoes of birds and bees. Yet I can’t help wishing some poet would dress his melodious language in spells that deal With the tunes and tints of such days as mine, their cares and comforts,-their woe and weal I should love some poem that deigned to tell of my toil with chisel and adze and saw, Of my resolute hammer, my whistling plane, my tawny shavings, my plank’s tough flaw; 1 should love the laugh of the lines to trill with my Mary’s voice and my babe’s gay coo; 1 should love the light of the lines to beam with their four sweet eyes of so bland a blue. I should love to read of the lowlier lot which is mine and people’s of my degree—- " The neat, prim parlor, the stubborn stove, the company coming for Sunday tea; "The wide-open windows while summer broods, the jingle of cars in hot streets unclean; "The holiday spent at west Brighton beach, and the planning of just what its cost may mean. 'The grimy Italian, whose fruit-filled stall brings a blaze from the tropics beneath alien sky: 'The youngsters that pause at the candy-shop’s pane and babble of what they would like to buy; 'The sad child’s funeral just next door, with its white glazed nearse and its mourners pale; ■The wedding near by, at the church round the block, where the bride’s too poor tor the price of a veil; ■The butcher that cleaves his chops and steaks, With a broad-blown visage as red as they The baker that clutches his copper coin for loaves that to many are life’s one stay; The staggering toper that slips beneath some pawnbroker’s triple golden sign; The wan-faced woman that watches late where a bright-lit tavern flares malign; The screech of the milkman at early morn, the> clatter of carts over sullen stones; The children that polka in mirthful pairs when the strain of a hand-organ clangs and drones; The fire-engine’s rush, with its gallop of steeds, its helmeted men, its quick-smoking breath; The bell of the ambulance, bringing us dreams, now of mercy and help, now of pain and death — Oh these are the sights and sounds I should prize in the pictures and music my poets make, Though perchance thus to prize is to prove my tastes are but trivial and shallow beyond mistake. Yet I feel these poets would pardon outright my impudence, boldness, and faults like that, If they knew what a welcomo their songs have won even here in this humble Eighth avenue flat. —Edgar Fawcett, in Youth’s Companion.