Walt Mason

“ Tell me not in mournful numbers, with the air of critics wise, that the retail lumber dealer’s not the one to advertise.
“Let the shoe and grindstone dealers fill the papers with their ads, let the pharmacists be spielers for their pills and liver pads; let the dry goods merchant merry sing in print his cheerful tunes, let the boatman boom his wherry, let the grocer boost his prunes. But when men are buying shingles they will seek you in your lair, and will need no prose or jingles to induce their going there.” ”

“ The floors on which we spend our lives, and train our kids, and beat our wives, are surely handsome things; be they of color light or dark, we proudly view them and remark, “They’re good enough for kings.”
Your mansion might have jasper walls, the finest painting in its halls that artists can produce, and onyx stairs and marble doors, but if it had no modern floors ’twould be a poor excuse.
Good hardwood floors make life a pome; they beautify your happy home as nothing else can do; your lumber dealer has the best; the years have given it the test that means so much to you. ”

“ When the Christmas music’s rollin’, and the children’s socks are swollen, we should all be young; young as when we watched and waited for those reindeer, rapid-gaited, by the night wind stung. We can be as young in spirit as the kids, or pretty near it, if we only try, though our heads are gray and dusty and our joints are worn and rusty, and no longer spry. Then when Christmas time is ended and we to our tasks have wended, we shall bear away something of the youth we captured when the whole world was enraptured with its Christmas day. ”

“ And now a noble Curtis stair adds grace and comfort to my lair; I never find it on the blink, it doesn’t warp or split or shrink.
ALL THE TIME
This is the burden of my rhyme: Be nice and pleasant all the time. Some men are only sweet and nice, when they desire to get the price. The lumber men at Bungtown hear that I intend, some time this year, to build a handsome Gothic shed, all up to date and painted red. ”

“ Most every tree is made of wood; the best ones are remote from cities; and in their cheerful neighborhood the birds keep singing ragtime ditties. Beneath their limbs the children play and swing within their leafy border, upon the long, bright summer day, when picnic parties are in order. And now and then the poets come, to eulogize the forest spirit, and you can hear their thought works hum, like auto wheels, or pretty near it. And it may chance, upon a day, that farmers from adjacent ranches, will bring a rope along this way, and hang an agent from the branches. ”

“ When they’re sick and tired of chasing, when their souls with woe are filled, maybe they will do some bracing; maybe they’ll decide to build. Rents are higher now than ever, and the prices won’t slump back, and that man is really clever who will build himself a shack.
“But the cost!” I hear men yawping; and they put up thoughtless roars, for they never have been shopping at the modern lumber stores. Building goods today are cheaper than all other goods you buy; all commodities are steeper—ask the lumber dealer nigh. ”

“ I was so crippled, bruised and sore, men took me home upon a door. It shows how useful doors can be; I always carry two or three.
We’re always viewing doors, you know; they face us everywhere we go; on doors we knock, at doors we wait, and if they’re handsome, smooth and straight, they strike us as a work of art, they’re soothing to the mind and heart. ”

“ He has to feed his eighteen kids, he has to clothe his wife and auntie; he has to buy them pies and lids, and put new paint upon his shanty. And thus the forest giant falls, there’s none to shield it or deliver; now other men in overalls, will float it down some rushing river. And then through loud and busy mills the good old tree in fragments dashes, and makes its bow as doors and sills, as scantling, joists and window sashes. ”

“ A gent of rather seedy looks came to my shack today, to sell me fifty-seven books—the works of Bertha Clay. And one is selling china eyes, one deals in pewter spoons, and one would sell me whisker dyes, another, musty prunes.
I never waddle through the woods but some one comes along, and tries to sell me useless goods, with tiresome dance and song. I’m weary of the man who yells of jimcracks gone to seed; how stately is the man who sells the goods men really need! I watch the lumberman go past, upon his useful chores, to sell a mariner a mast, or fit a house with doors ”

“ But when the hogs are feeling gay, and everything serene, and all the oats and corn and hay present a healthy green, he hitches up old Kate and Dick and journeys off to town, and then comes homeward pretty quick, with lumber loaded down. And when I see the wagons drill along the country road, each one a-creaking, loud and shrill, beneath its lumber load, I know the country’s on the boom, and things will hum once more; and any man who talks of gloom is just a misfit bore. ”

“ And as the long, slow years go by, perchance that stately tree will die; there’s death for all, it seems, and men, to earn the needed plunk, will separate its mighty trunk, and fashion boards and beams.
And one who plans to build a shack, will to the lumber dealer track, and purchase beam and board; and carpenters will straightway go, and build as fine a bungalow as mister can afford. The walls and roof of my good tree, will shelter human grief and glee, for, maybe, untold years ”

“ There’s nothing in the lumber store superfluous or vain; you do not seek that dealer’s door fool doodads to obtain. And every time he sells a bill, improvements there will be; the coin he puts into his till helps the community. And when his goods are in demand, the better times have come, your town will flourish and expand, the wheels of commerce hum. ”

“ Perhaps he lacks the sort of charm that will all prejudice disarm, that makes his gladsome patrons shout, “I like to deal with that old scout.”
A man may study all the tricks of commerce, trade or politics, may know his biz from A to Zed, and yet still fail to get ahead, if he has not that winning way that makes a new hit every day. One doctor’s good at making friends; from door to door he blithely wends, and fills his patients up with pills, and cheerfully they pay his bills. ”

“ Some merchants are so all-fired dumb, you wonder how they ever come to sell the stuff they have in store, and keep the sheriff from the door. Old Binkson is a lot that way; he seldom has a word to say. I ask him for a pound of lime; he wraps it up, and all the time, he wears a tragic air of doom, and sheds an atmosphere of gloom. He never chats, he never spiels, nor jumps up high and cracks his heels. ”

“ No shoppers tighten their surcingles in lumber yards, at Christmas time, and buy their girls a lot of shingles, or sundry pecks of unslacked lime.
A man might think the lumber dealer was off the map, and in the shade, without a tendril or a feeler upon the blooming Christmas trade. But all the year they’re building houses, with stuff the lumber dealer sells, in which the Christmas crowd carouses, and good old Santa whoops and yells. Beneath yon roof there’s joyous laughter, that indicates good will to men ”

“ But if they’re warped and out of plumb, and cracked and cheap and on the bum, we think, “The owner doesn’t heed how much his dwelling runs to seed.”
I size up people by their doors; not by the rugs upon their floors.
There’s nothing looks so dad-blamed punk as some cheap door that’s warped and shrunk.
The Curtis hardwood doors are great; they’re always true and fine and straight; their beauty gladdens every eye, and years don’t make that beauty fly. They’re built by experts, and each door is planned to sell a hundred more; each one’s an ad for all the rest, and every Curtis door’s the best. ”

“ Oft I hear discordant slogans, hear the loud and sad lament; men are wearing out their brogans hunting houses they can rent. Every village, town and city sees the same discouraged crew; and it seems to me a pity that good houses are so few.
In my native burg, Empory, I see women chasing round, and they tell the same old story—houses simply can’t be found. And the same sad word is spoken everywhere I chance to roam; from Topeka to Hoboken folks are hunting for a home. ”

“ When we arrange a big parade, you see this lumber man arrayed in all his panoply and pomp, and down the street he’ll proudly romp.
If we decide to lynch a gent, some agent for a patent tent, or one who’s sold us mining shares, or double action easy chairs, that lumber man is right on deck, and puts the rope around his neck. ”

“ It’s strange to labor at a desk and think that it, all carved and oaken, one time was standing, picturesque, amid a solitude unbroken; once in the forest dark and dim, these pigeonholes and doodads rested ”

“ The Curtis trademark on a stair just means that grief won’t travel there. You have a stairway that will last until your earthly woes are past, and you are playing golden lyres, or heaping brimstone on the fires. ”

“ But years, my friends, are much the same; they stay a while and play their game, and then they disappear; they’re modeled on the same old plan; success depends on Mr. Man, and not on any year. The finest year that ever grew will bring no rich rewards to you, if you’re a shiftless chap; the poorest year that they can send will see you prosper without end, if you have vim and snap. ”

“ But when I want to know the truth, about our future fate, I pass up all such things, forsooth, and sit on my front gate, and watch the farmers going by, upon their way from town, and if with lumber piled up high, their carts are loaded down, I know prosperity’s on top, good times are here, you bet; and I go forth and whip a cop and chase a suffragette. Oh, when the farmers spend their hoards for lumber, we enthuse ”

“ They do not win me with their grins; such work is coarse, and seldom wins. If men would sell their laths and lime, they should be pleasant all the time, and not, like some cheap candidate, just when they think ’twill pay the freight.
I’ll buy the lumber for my shed, when I have got the coin ahead, from dealers who are pleasant lads e’en when they are not after scads. There are such dealers in our town, and no sane man would turn them down. I meet them nearly every day, and talk with them of hogs and hay, and bats and cats and curleycues, and ships and synagogues and shoes. ”

“ I’d like to deal in lumber, in lime and lath, by jings, thus helping to encumber the world with handsome things; I’d like to have a finger in every worthy pie, I’d like my name to linger behind me when I die. The lumber dealers figure in every useful scheme, in everything that’s bigger than is an empty dream.
GOOD SIGNS
When farmers bring their teams to town, and then drive home again, their heavy wagons loaded down with boards and joists, why, then, it is a sign that things are well, the goose is hanging high; and you may safely dance and yell, for better times are nigh. ”

“ He takes a hand in everything that makes our home town move and swing. If boosters hold a jamboree, this lumber dealer there you’ll see, and he will on his hind legs stand, and help to boost, to beat the band. ”

“ I hold that every business man should follow up the good old plan and know his stock in trade; the wise old grocer always knew just where his shredded codfish grew, and where his prunes were made. The wise old clothier knows that wool is never gathered from a bull, and tells his patrons so; that merchant wearies by his acts, who answers, when you ask for facts, “I’m sure I do not know.”
We have a lumber man named Chee; I asked him, “On what sort of tree do lath and shingles grow?” He said, “We [Pg 13] have the shingles there, and where they grew I do not care, and neither do I know.” ”

“ I hear folks say, “That lumber chap, has put this village on the map. If we had twenty men like him, the town would sure be in the swim. He is the first man, every time, to help to make things hump and climb.”
The business man who hopes to win must boost the town he’s living in. You cannot do the hermit stunt, and hope to travel at the front. Get next to all that’s going on, mix in with Richard, James and John, and help along the town’s affairs, and leave the grouches in their lairs.
STAIRWAYS
Some years ago I built a house in which I settled, with my spouse. It was a gorgeous shack, indeed ”

“ I’ve admiration and respect for one whose knowledge is correct, so I am strong for Dumm; no matter what you ask that guy, he always has a prompt reply—and he makes business hum! Men should be ready with a spiel about the goods in which they deal, excuses won’t suffice; our estimate is always low of men who never seem to know a thing except the price.
A LONGING
I’d like to deal in lumber, and sell, for honest mon, good shingles without number, and scantling by the ton; I’d like to hand out timber to patrons, all day long ”

“ It looks to us for corn and hay, and succotash and beans and whey. We farmers want to raise the stuff; we surely have desire enough; we have the land, we have the mules, we have the seed, we have the tools, but where in thunder shall we get the laborers, to toil and sweat? We cannot keep men on the farm; the life appears to have no charm. ”