WILD OATS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1604, 29 August 1916, Page 4

WILD OATS.

(By Walt Mason)

You’re sowing wild oats, William Henry Pit/.James, you’re playing with others the dissolute games; when you should be sleeping you’re still on the jump, a painting the village clear down to the pump; and ancient tradition looks foolishly kind on chaps like yourself who are going it blind; it says; “Let them frolic like luittitic goats, for youths must be youths, and must sow their wild oats.” But merry carousers who caper and prance must pay for the fiddler when done is the dance. Alas for the oats that you carelessly sow! You find they are thistles when started to grow, and though you may live for a cycle, my friend, they’ll prick you and sting you right up to the end. I sold fifty bushels of oats that were wild, and while I was sowing I recklessly smiled; laughed at the future and lilted gay tunes, and now I am old I am harvesting prunes. With aches in my body and grief in my soul and doctors and druggists despoiling my roll, the wearisome knowledge ray consciousness totes that all of my troubles are due to wild oats. Be wise in the morning of life, oh, be wise! And side-step the bait of the father of lies; for wasting the moments and sowing wild oats will lead you to chewing the husks with the shot es.