A FEW more years, or a few more days, and we’ll all be gone from the rugged ways wherein we are jogging now; a few more seasons of stress and toil, then we’ll all turn in to enrich the soil, for some future farmer’s plow. A few more years and the grass will grow where you and the push are lying low, your arduous labors o’er; and those surviving will toil and strain, their bosoms full of the same old pain you knew in the days of yore. Oh, what’s the use of the carking care, or the load of grief that we always bear, in such a brief life as this? A few more years and we will not know a side of beef from a woozy woe, an ache from a bridal kiss. “I fear the future,” you trembling say, and nurse your fear in a dotard way, and moisten it with a tear; the future day is a day unborn, and you’ll be dead on its natal morn, so live while the present’s here. A few more years and you cannot tell a quart of tears from a wedding bell, a wreath from a beggar’s rags; you’ll take a ride to the place of tombs in a jaunty hearse with its nodding plumes, and a pair of milk-black nags. So while you stay on the old gray earth, cut up and dance with exceeding mirth, have nothing to do with woe; a few more years and you cannot weep, you’ll be so quiet and sound asleep, where the johnnie-jumpups grow.
