PARTISAN REVIEW
They never knew a thing!
Why, when I think of what I've done, I can't believe it!
... A Presbyterian'd say it's Providence.
In my time I've bought the whole Rhode Island Legislature
For-I disremember how much; what for too.
Harriet'd have Nellie Melba in
To entertain our friends-it never entertained
me
none–
And I'd think: "Birdie, I could buy you
The way you'd buy a piece of Melba toast."
I had my troubles-nothing money wouldn't cure.
A percentage of the world resented me
There on my money bags in my silk hat.
(To hear Ward I'd still straw stuck in my fur.)
But in the end the money reconciled 'em
all.
Don't someone call
it
the Great Reconciler?
When my boys dynamited thirteen trestles
On the New York Central, I went against my custom then
And told the papers: "Money's a
responsibility."
I'd talk down money if I hadn't any.
As
it was,
The whole office force could hear me through two doors.
E.
J.
said they said: "Listen to the Old Man go!"
Why, it was money
That got me shut of my poor trusting wife,
And bought my girl from her, and got me Harriet-
What else would Harriet have married
me
for? ... She's gone now
And they're gone too, but it's not gone. . . .
You can take it with you anywhere
I'm
going.
. . . While I was looking up my second son-in-law
In Dun and Bradstreet, the social secretary
Came on him in the
Almanach de Gotha.
It was like I figured, though: he didn't take.
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