Pat and Mike walked into a drug store and said they wanted something to make them feel young again. The druggist gave them a well known remedy, and Pat and Mike each took a swallow and started out.
A block down the street they took another swallow.
A few blocks farther Pat said: “Bejabers, Mike, don’t drink another drop of that stuff. I’ve gone back to infancy.”
_Lasca, the rhythmic tale of a girl of the Rio Grande and the stampede pictured by Paul Desprez will lead the Smokehouse Poetry for April. With it also will be “In Flanders Field,” by Lieutenant-Colonel John McCray, which is being published after many requests. Colonel McCray’s simple song of tragedy was the Marsellaise of the great world war. The author was a surgeon with the Canadian Expeditionary forces and wrote the poem during the battle of Ypres._
A bunch of the boys were whooping it up, in the Malemuke saloon, The Kid that tickled the music-box, was playing a jag-time tune; Back of the bar in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew, While watching his luck was the light of his love. The Lady—that was 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 one foot in the grave And scarcely the strength of a louse, As he tilted a poke of dust on the bar And called for the drinks for the house.
There was none could place the stranger’s face, Though we searched ourselves for a clew; But we drank to his health, and the last to drink, Was Dangerous Dan McGrew.
There are men that somehow just grip your eyes And hold them hard like a spell, And such was he for he looked to me Like a man who had lived in hell.
With a face most hair, and a glassy stare Like 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 figuring who he was And wondering what he’d do When I turned, and there stood watching him Was the Lady, who was known as Lou.
The stranger’s eyes wandered round the room And seemed in a kind of a 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 And the stranger stumbled across the room And flopped down there like a fool.