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Show The Magic Mirror of the Saloon. (From Sacred Heart Review.) Walt Mason, a western newspaper man, does not write high-class poetry, though we have no doubt he could do so if he tried: nor does he condescend to put his philosophical rhymes in current cur-rent events and everyday happenings into the usual form. Walt casts all his verses into prose form, so that one has, in the beginning, to hunt for the rhyme. But no one ever has to hunt for the reason in Walt's verses. Take for instance the following, which, for all its slang, has a very. good lesson: "I went one night with my high-priced high-priced thirst to loaf in the booze bazar, and as I sampled the old red dope I leaned on the handsome bar. My purse was full of the good long green, and my raiment was smooth, and new, ana I looked as sleek as a cabbage rose that's kissed by the nice wet dew. Behind Be-hind the bottles a mirror stood, and I looked and looked in the shining glass, and wondered, and looked some more. My own reefiction did not appear, but there where it should have been, I saw the form of a cringing, bum all crumpled crum-pled and soaked with gin. His nose was red and his eyes were dim, unshdrn was his swollen face, and I thought it queer such a seedy bo would- come to so smooth a place. I turned around for a better look at this effigy of despair, and nearly fell in a little heap, for the effigy effi-gy wasn't there! The barkeep laughed. 'It's the magic glass,' he said, with a careless yawn, 'it shows a man how he's apt to look years hence when his roll Is gonel' " . 1 |
