GREEN OLD ACE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16539, 24 September 1921, Page 8

GREEN OLD ACE.

(By WALT MASON.) So lire that when your head is grey, and you are bent and tired, you’re fixed to throw yoar tools away, and have the rest desired, and let the young men bale the hay, for which they have been hired. Like many other ancient men, T threw my tools aside; and then I picked them up again—l can’t be satisfied with resting, rusting in mv den, while toilers round me stride. But if I had to buckle down in these, my wintry years, to earn the shilling and the crown, I’d earn the same in tears, and on my brow a dismal frown would reach back to my ears. But I could quit my job to-night, and ply my harp no more, nnd live in indolence, all right, on coin T saved of yore; nnd, knowing this, with much delight, 1 dc my daily chore. There s nothing sadder, I maintain, than old men making tracks, by stark need driven, through the rain, to toil with aching backs, until they die beneath the strain, and in the grave lelax. I work by day, burn midnight gas, and leave a trail of smoke, but I don’t need to put up grass, and so the job’s a joke; if I were forced to earn the brass, how bitterly I’d croak 1 911, 1 could sit and chew my thumbs, if that were my desire; but when for me the summons comes, I’ll still be at my lyre; you’ll hear its tinkling tumty-tums, played like a house afire.