Читать книгу "Horse Sense" in Verses Tense - Walt Mason - Страница 24

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OLD Kink’s always willing to preach, and hand out wise counsel and teach; but ask him for aid when you’re hungry and frayed, and he’ll stick to his wad like a leech. He’s handy with proverb and text to comfort the needy and vexed; but when there’s a plan to feed indigent man, old Kink never seems to get next. He’ll help out the widow with psalms, and pray for her fatherless lambs; but he never would try to bring joy to her eye with codfish and sauerkraut and hams. On Sunday he joins in the hymn, and makes the responses with vim; when they pass round the box for the worshipers’ rocks, his gift is exceedingly slim. He thinks he is fooling the Lord and is sure of a princely reward when to heaven he goes at this life’s journey’s close—with which view I am not in accord. For the Lord, he is wise to gold bricks, and the humbug who crosses the Styx will have to be sharp if he captures a harp; St. Peter will say to him, “Nix!” They size up a man nearly right when he comes to the portals of light; and no stingy old fraud ever hornswoggled God or put on a robe snowy white.