The People, Yes Read online

  Be not a baker if your head be of butter.

  Yesterday? It’s a nickel thrown on a Salvation Army dram.

  How could I let go when it was all I could do to hold on?

  Thousands drink themselves to death before one dies of thirst.

  He didn’t have much till he married a hunk of tin.

  There’s always a nut on every family tree.

  The mosquitoes organized and drove me out of bed.

  We’ll fight till hell freezes over and then write on the ice, “Come

  on, you bastards.”

  The yes-man spent his vacation yelling, “No! no! I tell you No!”

  A man having nothing to feed his cow sang to her of the fresh green grass to come: this is the tune the old cow died on.

  The man feeding a hatful of doughnuts to a horse explained to the curious, “I want to see how many he’ll eat before he asks for a cup of coffee.”

  “I fired the man,” said the new section boss, “not because I had anything agin him but because I had the authority.”

  “Don’t I argue? Don’t I sputify?” the backwoods preacher inquired of the complaining committee whose chairman responded, “Yes, you do argue and you do sputify but you don’t tell wherein!”

  The late riser is asked, “Are you up for all day?”

  Shut the door—do you want to heat all outdoors?

  He won’t go to a wedding unless he’s the bride nor a funeral

  unless he’s the corpse.

  “May you have the sevenyear itch,” was answered, “I hope your wife eats crackers in bed.”

  He was always a hell of a big fellow in Washington when he was in Rhode Island and a hell of a big fellow in Rhode Island when he was in Washington.

  You say you are going to Warsaw (or Boston) because you want me to think you are going to Lemberg (or Buffalo) but I know you are going to Warsaw (or Boston).

  He got on a horse and rode off in all directions at once.

  Did they let you out or did you let yourself out?

  “Why!” said a Republican Governor of Illinois, “Why the Democrats can’t run the government! It’s all us Republicans can do.”

  This will last a thousand years and after that to the end of the world.

  When a member died the newspaper men of the Whitechapel

  Club of Chicago gave the toast:

  “Hurrah for the next who goes!”

  In Vermont a shut-mouthed husband finally broke forth to his wife, “When I think of how much you have meant to me all these years, it is almost more than I can do sometimes to keep from telling you so.”

  51

  The blood of all men of all nations being red

  the Communist International named red its banner color.

  Pope Innocent IV gave cardinals their first red hats

  saying a cardinal’s blood belonged to the holy mother church.

  The bloodcolor red is a symbol.

  A Scotsman keeps the Sabbath and anything else he can lay his hands on, say the English.

  A fighting Frenchman runs away from even a she-goat, say the Germans.

  A Russian, say the Poles, can be cheated only by a gypsy, a gypsy by a Jew, a Jew by a Greek, and a Greek by the devil.

  “If I owned Texas and hell I would rent Texas and move to hell,” said a famous general.

  “That’s right,” wrote a Texas editor. “Every man for his own country.”

  The Peloponnesians pulled these long ago, so did the Russians, the Chinese, even the Fijis with rings in their noses. Likewise:

  An American is an Anglo-Saxon when an Englishman wants something from him: or:

  When a Frenchman has drunk too much he wants to dance, a German to sing, a Spaniard to gamble, an Italian to brag, an Irishman to fight, an American to make a speech: or:

  “What is dumber than a dumb Irishman?” “A smart Swede.”

  These are in all tongues and regions of men. Often they bring laughter and sometimes blood.

  The propagandas of hate and war always monkey with the buzz-saw of race and nationality, breed and kin, seldom saying, “When in doubt hold your tongue.”

  In breathing spells of bloody combat between Christian nations the order goes out: “Don’t let the men in the front-line trenches fraternize!”

  The sea has fish for every man.

  Every blade of grass has its share of dew.

  The longest day must have its end.

  Man’s life? A candle in the wind, hoar-frost

  on stone.

  Nothing more certain than death and nothing

  more uncertain than the hour.

  Men live like birds together in a wood; when

  the time comes each takes his flight.

  As wave follows wave, so new men take old

  men’s places.

  The copperfaces, the red men, handed us tobacco,

  the weed for the pipe of friendship,

  also the bah-tah-to, the potato, the spud.

  Sunflowers came from Peruvians in ponchos.

  Early Italians taught us of chestnuts,

  walnuts and peaches being Persian mementoes,

  Siberians finding for us what rye might do,

  Hindus coming through with the cucumber,

  Egyptians giving us the onion, the pea,

  Arabians handing advice with one gift:

  “Some like it, some say it’s just spinach.”

  To the Chinese we have given

  kerosene, bullets, bibles

  and they have given us radishes, soy beans, silk,

  poems, paintings, proverbs, porcelain, egg foo yong,

  gunpowder, Fourth of July firecrackers, fireworks,

  and labor gangs for the first Pacific railways.

  Now we may thank these people

  or reserve our thanks

  and speak of them as outsiders

  and imply the request,

  “Would you just as soon get off the earth?”

  holding ourselves aloof in pride of distinction

  saying to ourselves this costs us nothing

  as though hate has no cost

  as though hate ever grew anything worth growing.

  Yes we may say this trash is beneath our notice

  or we may hold them in respect and affection

  as fellow creepers on a commodious planet

  saying, “Yes you too you too are people.”

  “When God finished making the world

  He had a few stinking scraps of mud left over

  and used it to make a yellow dog”

  (and when they hate any race or nation

  they name that race or nation

  in place of the yellow dog).

  They say and they say and the juice of prejudice drips from it.

  They say and they say and in the strut of fool pride spit in the wind.

  And the first of the seven rottening sins is this one: pride.

  They set up a razzle-dazzle and get caught in their own revolving mirrors,

  “We are the greatest city, the greatest people. Nothing like us ever was.”

  They set out for empire not knowing men and nations can die of empire.

  And the earth is strewn with the burst bladders of the puffed-up.

  The best preacher is the heart,

  say the Jews of faith.

  The best teacher is time.

  The best book is the world.

  The best friend is God.

  The three worst waters,

  say the Irish:

  brown rain at the fall of the leaf,

  black rain at the springing of roots,

  the grey rain of May.

  Love, a cough, an itch, or a fat paunch cannot be hid.

  Love, a cough, smoke, money or poverty, are hard to hide.

  Three things you can’t nurse: an old woman, a hen, and a sheep.

  Three who have their own way: a mule, a pig, and a miser.

  Three to stay away from: a snake, a man with a
n oily tongue, and a loose woman.

  Three things dear to have: fresh eggs, hickory smoked ham, and old women’s praise.

  Three things always pleasing: a cat’s kittens, a goat’s kid, and a young woman.

  The three prettiest dead: a little child, a salmon, a black cock.

  Three of the coldest things: a man’s knee, a cow’s horn, and a dog’s nose.

  Three who come unbidden: love, jealousy, fear.

  Three soon passing away: the beauty of a woman, the rainbow, the echo of the woods.

  Three worth wishing: knowledge, grain, and friendship.

  Men are made of clay but women are made of men.

  An old friend is better than two new ones.

  He gets up early who pleases everybody.

  Two fools in a house are a couple too many.

  “I have forgotten your name” is better than “I don’t

  remember you.”

  Some can eat nails, others break their teeth on applesauce.

  “Run home, your house is on fire.” “No, that can’t be.

  I locked the house when I left home.”

  “So now he’s dead.” “Yes.” “What did he die of?”

  “The want of breath.”

  There are two good men, say the Chinese, one dead,

  the other not born yet.

  The seller can get along with one eye, the buyer

  needs a hundred.

  The ragged colt may prove a good horse.

  The hasty bitch brings forth blind whelps.

  He’s eaten off many a dish and never washed a dish.

  He’s the son that would haul rock with a race-horse.

  It would be like him to drown in a spoonful of water.

  If he had learned the hatter’s trade, men would have

  been born without heads.

  Ugly? Sleep stays away from him till he

  covers his face.

  Poor? He can’t raise money enough to buy

  lumber for a backhouse.

  Big feet? Buying shoes he don’t ask for a

  number, he says, “Lemme see the biggest

  you got.”

  “Slave, I have bought you.”

  “God knows you have.”

  “Now you belong to me.”

  “God knows I do.”

  “And you’ll not run away?”

  “God knows.”

  In the days of the faroff Pharaohs

  in the days of Nebuchadnezzar

  the king who ate grass

  and reconsidered many former decisions—

  one of the masters straddling a slave:

  “I think about you often

  and I would be willing

  to do many kind things

  almost anything for you.”

  And the man under:

  “Almost anything except get off my back.”

  52

  Who was that early sodbuster in Kansas? He leaned at the gatepost and studied the horizon and figured what corn might do next year and tried to calculate why God ever made the grasshopper and why two days of hot winds smother the life out of a stand of wheat and why there was such a spread between what he got for grain and the price quoted in Chicago and New York. Drove up a newcomer in a covered wagon: “What kind of folks live around here?” “Well, stranger, what kind of folks was there in the country you come from?” “Well, they was mostly a lowdown, lying, thieving, gossiping, backbiting lot of people.” “Well, I guess, stranger, that’s about the kind of folks you’ll find around here.” And the dusty gray stranger had just about blended into the dusty gray cottonwoods in a clump on the horizon when another newcomer drove up: “What kind of folks live around here?” “Well, stranger, what kind of folks was there in the country you come from?” “Well, they was mostly a decent, hardworking, lawabiding, friendly lot of people.” “Well, I guess, stranger, that’s about the kind of folks you’ll find around here.” And the second wagon moved off and blended with the dusty gray cottonwoods on the horizon while the early sodbuster leaned at his gatepost and tried to figure why two days of hot winds smother the life out of a nice stand of wheat.

  In the dry farming country they said:

  “Here you look farther and see less,

  and there are more creeks and less water,

  and more cows and less milk,

  and more horses and less grass,

  than anywhere else in the world.”

  White man: “I have no time to do anything.”

  Indian: “Why you have all the time there

  is, haven’t you?”

  They said to the cow’s, “When you die we will

  wrap you in fine linen sheets.”

  The cows: “We shall be satisfied if we keep

  our hides.”

  Of one piece of Pennsylvania a Quaker poet wrote:

  “God might have made a more beautiful region than Chester County—but He never did.”

  An Oklahoma newspaper woman rewrote it: “God might have made a more beautiful country than Oklahoma—but He never did.”

  All flesh is grass. From the sod the grazers derive their food and pass it on to man. Out of the grasslands man takes his meat and milk and lives. Wherever is a rich banquet it goes back to the grass. Howsoever men break bread together or eat alone it is grass giving them life and they could pray: “Give us this day our daily grass.”

  And many, many are the grass families. From oats and corn to blue grass and timothy hay, from rye and rice to clover and alfalfa, the grass families are many and humble and hard to kill unless misused and overdriven. The populations of the grass are lush and green with care in the sun and rain and recurring seasons. The grass carries benedictions and fables of service, toil and misuse. To whom does the grass belong if not to the people?

  53

  Come on, superstition, and get my goat.

  I got mascots.

  The stars of my birthday favor me.

  The numbers from one to ten are with me.

  I was born under a lucky star and nothing can stop me.

  The moon was a waxing moon and not a waning moon when I was born.

  Every card in the deck and both of the seven-eleven bones are with me.

  So you hear them tell it and they mean if it works it’s good and if it don’t it costs nothing.

  How to win love, how to win games, the spells and conjurations are named for fever, bums, convulsions, snakebite, milksick, balking horses, rheumatism, warts.

  “Tie the heart of a bat with a red silk string to your right arm and you will win every game at which you play.”

  If your right foot itches you will soon start on a journey, if it’s your left foot you will go where you are not wanted.

  If you sing before breakfast you will cry before night, if you sneeze before breakfast you will see your true love before Saturday night.

  Lightning in the north means rain, lightning in the south means dry weather.

  Frost three months after the first katydid is heard. Three white frosts and then a rain.

  For toothache the faith doctor wrote the words “galla gaffa gassa” on the wall. With a nail he pointed at each letter of the words, asking if the toothache was better. At the letter where the tooth was feeling easier he drove the nail in and the tooth stopped aching. Galla gaffa gassa. Gassa galla gaffa.