ain!"

Ma's not a business woman, she is much too
kind of heart
To squabble over pennies or to play a selfish
part,
An' when someone asks for money, she's not
one to stop an' think
Of a little piece of paper an' the cost of pen
an' ink.
She just tells him very sweetly if he'll only
wait a bit
An' be seated in the parlor, she will write a
check for it.
She can write one out for twenty just as easily
as ten,
An' forgets that Pa may grumble: "Well,
you're overdrawn again!"

Pa says it looks as though he'll have to start in
workin' nights
To gather in the money for the checks that
mother writes.
He says that every morning when he's summoned
to the phone,
He's afraid the bank is calling to make mother's
shortage known.
He tells his friends if ever anything our fortune
wrecks
They can trace it to the moment mother started
writing checks.
He's got so that he trembles when he sees her
fountain pen
An' he mutters: "Do be careful! You'll be
overdrawn again!"

{102}

THE FISHING CURE

There's nothing that builds up a toil-weary soul
Like a day on a stream,
Back on the banks of the old fishing hole
Where a fellow can dream.
There's nothing so good for a man as to flee
From the city and lie
Full length in the shade of a whispering tree
And gaze at the sky.

Out there where the strife and the greed are forgot
And the struggle for pelf,
A man can get rid of each taint and each spot
And clean up himself;
He can be what he wanted to be when a boy,
If only in dreams;
And revel once more in the depths of a joy
That's as real as it seems.

The things that he hates never follow him there--
The jar of the street,
The rivalries petty, the struggling unfair--
For the open is sweet.
In purity's realm he can rest and be clean,
Be he humble or great,
And as peaceful his soul may become as the scene
That his eyes contemplate.

It is good for the world that men hunger to go
To the banks of a stream,
And weary of sham and of pomp and of show
They have somewhere to dream.
For this life would be dreary and sordid and base
Did they not now and then
Seek refreshment and calm in God's wide, open space
And come back to be men.

{103}

THE HAPPY SLOW THINKER

Full many a time a thought has come
That