Horse Sense in Verses Tense

THE old gray hen has thirteen chicks, and round the yard she claws and picks, and toils the whole day long; I lean upon the garden fence, and watch that hen of little sense, whose intellect is wrong. She is the most important hen that ever in the haunts of men a waste of effort made; she thinks if she should cease her toil the whole blamed universe would spoil, its institutions fade. Yet vain and trifling is her task; she might as profitably bask and loaf throughout the year; one incubator from the store would bring forth better chicks and more than fifty hens could rear. She ought to rest her scratching legs, get down to tacks and lay some eggs, which bring the valued bucks; but, in her vain perverted way, she says, “I’m derned if I will lay,” and hands out foolish clucks. And many men are just the same; they play some idle, trifling game, and think they’re sawing wood; they hate the work that’s in demand, the jobs that count they cannot stand, and all their toil’s no good. THE milkman goes his weary way before the rising of the sun; he earns a hundred bones a day, and often takes in less than one. While lucky people snore and drowse, and bask in dreams of rare delight, he takes a stool and milks his cows, about the middle of the night. If you have milked an old red cow, humped o’er a big six-gallon pail, and had her swat you on the brow with seven feet of burry tail, you’ll know the milkman ought to get a plunk for every pint he sells; he earns his pay in blood and sweat, and sorrow in his bosom dwells. As through the city streets he goes, he has to sound his brazen gong, and people wake up from their doze, and curse him as he goes along. He has to stagger through the snow when others stay at home and snore; and through the rain he has to go, to take the cow-juice to your door. Through storm and flood and sun and rain, the milkman goes upon the jump, and all his customers complain, and make allusions to his pump. Because one milkman milks the creek, instead of milking spotted cows, against the whole brave tribe we kick, and stir up everlasting rows. Yet patiently they go their way, distributing their healthful juice, and what they do not get in pay, they have to take out in abuse.