BE kind to your daddy, O gamboling youth; his feet are now sluggish and cold; intent on your pleasures, you don’t see the truth, which is that your dad’s growing old. Ah, once he could whip forty bushels of snakes, but now he is spavined and lame; his joints are all rusty and tortured with aches, and weary and worn is his frame. He toiled and he slaved like a government mule to see that his kids had a chance; he fed them and clothed them and sent them to school, rejoiced when he marked their advance. The landscape is moist with the billows of sweat he cheerfully shed as he toiled, to bring up his children and keep out of debt, and see that the home kettle boiled. He dressed in old duds that his Mary and Jake might bloom like the roses in June, and oft when you swallowed your porterhouse steak, your daddy was chewing a prune. And now that he’s worn by his burden of care, just show you are worth all he did; look out for his comfort, and hand him his chair, and hang up his slicker and lid.