The Spell of the Yukon | Page 9

shy and wild -- Yet how I'd ha' treasured a
woman, and the sweet, warm kiss of a child! Well, 'tis Thy world, and
Thou knowest. I blaspheme and my ways be rude; But I've lived my
life as I found it, and I've done my best to be good; I, the primitive
toiler, half naked and grimed to the eyes, Sweating it deep in their
ditches, swining it stark in their styes; Hurling down forests before me,
spanning tumultuous streams; Down in the ditch building o'er me
palaces fairer than dreams; Boring the rock to the ore-bed, driving the
road through the fen, Resolute, dumb, uncomplaining, a man in a world
of men.
Master, I've filled my contract, wrought in Thy many lands;
Not by my sins wilt Thou judge me, but by the work of my hands.
Master, I've done Thy bidding, and the light is low in the west, And the
long, long shift is over . . . Master, I've earned it -- Rest.
Grin
If you're up against a bruiser and you're getting knocked about --
Grin.
If you're feeling pretty groggy, and you're licked beyond a
doubt --
Grin.
Don't let him see you're funking, let him know with every clout,
Though your face is battered to a pulp, your blooming heart is stout;
Just stand upon your pins until the beggar knocks you out --

And grin.
This life's a bally battle, and the same advice holds true
Of grin.
If you're up against it badly, then it's only one on you,
So grin.
If the future's black as thunder, don't let people see you're
blue; Just cultivate a cast-iron smile of joy the whole day through; If
they call you "Little Sunshine", wish that THEY'D no troubles, too --
You may -- grin.
Rise up in the morning with the will that, smooth or
rough,
You'll grin.
Sink to sleep at midnight, and although you're feeling
tough,
Yet grin.
There's nothing gained by whining, and you're not that kind
of stuff; You're a fighter from away back, and you WON'T take a
rebuff; Your trouble is that you don't know when you have had enough
--
Don't give in.
If Fate should down you, just get up and take another
cuff; You may bank on it that there is no philosophy like bluff,
And grin.
The Shooting of Dan McGrew
A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon; The
kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune; Back of the
bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his
luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as Lou.
When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and the
glare, There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty, and
loaded for bear. He looked like a man with a foot in the grave
and
scarcely the strength of a louse,
Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar,

and he called for drinks for the house.
There was none could place
the stranger's face,
though we searched ourselves for a clue;
But we

drank his health, and the last to drink was Dangerous Dan McGrew.
There's men that somehow just grip your eyes,
and hold them hard
like a spell;
And such was he, and he looked to me like a man who
had lived in hell; With a face most hair, and the dreary stare of a dog
whose day is done, As he watered the green stuff in his glass, and the
drops fell one by one. Then I got to figgering who he was, and
wondering what he'd do, And I turned my head -- and there watching
him
was the lady that's known as Lou.
His eyes went rubbering round the room, and he seemed in a kind of
daze, Till at last that old piano fell in the way of his wandering gaze.
The rag-time kid was having a drink; there was no one else on the stool,
So the stranger stumbles across the room, and flops down there like a
fool. In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him
sway; Then he clutched the keys with his talon hands
0. my God! but that man could play.
Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could
HEAR; With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in
the cold, A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the
muck called gold; While high overhead, green, yellow and red,
the
North Lights swept in bars? --
Then you've a haunch what the music
meant . . .
hunger and night and the stars.
And hunger not of the belly kind, that's banished with