Don’t Get Gay

DON’T GET GAY.

As you face the giddy world, young friend, don’t ever try to hide
Your sense of noble manliness and conscientious pride;
Hold up your head in fearless way, look duty in the face,
And in the field of enterprise strive hard to set the pace.
Be independent in your acts, but never crow too loud,
Put forward every honest trait with which you are endowed;
In carving out your course in life fear not to have your say,
And say it independently, but
don’t
get
gay.

If you by fortune have been blessed with talent more than those
You meet in life’s unequal ranks, don’t tread upon their toes,
And if at education’s fount you’ve liberally drank,
Pray don’t imagine you’re the only turtle in the tank.
Combine your manly dignity with modesty and grace, –
A watch is never valued by the glitter of its face –
Remember, like your fellow men, you’re but a house of clay
To crumble into dust again; so
don’t
get
gay.

Though as a sparkling jewel in society you shine,
Though flatterers may tell you you’re just awfully divine,
Though pretty girls may flood you with their ever-ready smiles –
And strive to hold you captive in the network of their wiles,
Don’t think you are a demi-god of semi-human birth,
Don’t think you hold a mortgage overdue upon the earth,
Don’t tilt your nose too loftily or some time they may say,
You’re more the peacock than the man, so
don’t
get
gay.

The world admires a manly man of independent thought,
A man of nerve and enterprise with vim and rigor fraught,
A modest man content to be accepted at his worth,
But not a self-important cuss who thinks he owns the earth.
Don’t try to make the people think you’ve wit and sense to burn,
That what you don’t already know ’tis not worth while to learn;
In setting in the game of life you’ll make a winning play
If you but use good common sense, and
don’t
get
gay.

– James Barton Adams, in Denver Post.

The Nebraska State Journal (Lincoln, Nebraska) Feb 12, 1899

Hermit Digs Own Grave

Image from RED TAIL TRAILS – Pacoima Canyon via Dillon Divide

HERMIT DIGS OWN GRAVE.

Then Goes Home to Die, Leaving Pathetic Note to Coroner.

Los Angeles Dispatch to New York Sun.

“Dutch Louie,” known throughout the Southwest as the hermit of the Pacoima, a few days ago walked slowly from his hut, which is 5 miles from Pacoima, and selecting a spot on the hillside, dug himself a narrow grave.

Then he returned to his home, dressed himself in his best clothing and lay down to die. All that he told in a letter he wrote to the coroner just before he lay down for the last time.

The note, a pitiful chronicle of hope that never died, asked the coroner to bury him without ceremony in the grave he had dug and to mark it only with a scant inscription, “Dutch Louie.”

“I don’t fear death,” wrote the hermit. “It is the inevitable wages of life — and I have lived. For scores of years I have lived in the hope of finding the bonanza I had dreamed of and prayed for. I never found it, but I was cheered to the end by the star of hope.”

The body was found by hunters.

The Washington Post (Washington, D.C.) Jun 8, 1915