Sour Sonnets of a Sorehead & Other Songs of the Street/The Hunch
The Hunch
Excuse me if I seem to butt in, but did you ever stop to figure how many grins get by because the average man refuses to look down? Looking up is a prize stunt, but everyone should occasionally plant his gaze on the pavement. You may see lots of mud, but if you look hard there's color in it.
This world would not be such a one-eyed dump if the bunch would only rub the sleep out of the other eye, and put that wise lamp to work on the bunch as it blows by.
If you would turn that optic on the street, you would be next that there are doings there all the while. It doesn't follow that because a guy is a rummy, that he never happens on a wise hunch, and it's bad poker to bet that because you see a fellow humping to hang onto his body that he's shy a soul.
If you would take off time to pipe the kid that sells you papers in the morning, and the one that greets you with "Going up!" every time you hit the office, if you sort of looked in on the fellow that takes your fare and the guy that grinds your shirt, not forgetting the cop that ought to have run you in last night, you would tumble to the fact that there are others. All the while you are framing up the stunt that is to put the next best in your own game in the dippy ward of the Academy for the Dead Ones, there are others.
Get next to the fact that there are others, and you are on the wise way to wisdom.
Some say that you can't grab a grimy mitt without getting dirt on your gloves, but remember that gasolene is cheap and you are missing a whole lot if you don't sit in with the bunch every time you get a chance. They don't all play the same sort of poker, and the wisest Mike is the guy that knows them all.
Above all, don't go gunning for gloom. It was a pious thought that got loose when that guy wrote "Laugh and Grow Fat," to which might be added—Grin and grow gracious.
- James P. Haverson
I'd sooner smile
Than weep,
A heap.
I'd rather laugh
Than fret,
You bet.