Classic Poem

It is all right for a man to be kind,
But there's such a thing as being too soft
To get on well with your work and neighbors.
I've often wondered just where the line lay.
Now, I think death is a mercy sometimes,
And we have a right to take it, or give it,—
Only we must be sure that we are right.
There's something wrong in life as I see it:
You've got to fight for everything you have,
And Nature's not kindly 'bout ways and means.
She's a flighty, unreasonable person
And she don't respect a coward at all.
The only man who ever tames her in harness
Is the man who don't fear her devilments.

Dave Murdock was a coward and fond of cats,
Though I dunno as the two go together.
But he kept on feeding stray kittens,
And naturally more kept coming—and then
The milk from two cows wouldn't feed them
And make any butter for Dave to eat.
He couldn't make a living because of cats;
They lay all over him purring; he wallowed
In kittens, and like a dang soft coward
He ran away leaving the house open,
The cats in possession—there must 'a' been forty.
He didn't have the nerve to drown them;
He liked them too well to give them away
To homes where they'd been well taken care of;
So one day he just up and ran away.

I had to take a day off from harvesting
And shoot those beasts; they were starving.
And he heard of it and sneaked back in the night,
And went to farming again. After a while
I kind of forgot he was a “softy,”
(We don't like that kind here in this country);
But blast me, if I didn't pass his house
Last week, and see a cat on the doorstep!