Then as I pondered, minded to rebel,
He laughed and forthwith kicked me out of Hell.
Yodels of Good Sneer to the Pipple, Damn Them
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We are the buttock shakers
And we are the slayers of dreams,
Dredging our lone sea breakers,
Damming up beautiful streams.
Bad losers and friend forsakers
In whom the jackal screams,
But we are the grabbers and takers
Of the world forever it seems
With rotten, bastardly ditties We tore up the world’s great cities. And over the ashes of glory Erected a tenement whorey.
One man with a godamned hammer
Can batter a statue down
And four with an apeish clamor
Can tear off a virgin’s gown.
We, with our sneers and lying,
Since the day when the dawns were young,
Built Gomorrah with our spying
And Sodom we reared and sung.
And we curse all the birds for flying,
And the sod whence the flowers sprung,
As we go selling and buying,
Building a world of dung.
Essays and Articles
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Dula Due To Be Champion
The Beast from the Abyss
The Hyborian Age
Midnight
With a Set of Rattlesnake Rattles
The Ghost of Camp Colorado
Dula Due To Be Champion
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Arthur "Kid" Dula is due to be the middleweight champion of the world, in the opinion of Robert E. Howard of Cross Plains, who witnessed the Dula-Tramel battle in Fort Worth last week.
Howard is a close student of the boxing game, and is thoroughly posted on current boxing as well as on the history of the fight game. Writing to The Bulletin today from his home is Cross Plains, Howard says:
"Last Friday night a boy went through his baptism of blood and fire and emerged victorious. The decision went against him but the moral victory was his.
"Arthur Dula of Brownwood, in his slashing desperate battle against Duke Tramel proved that he was of the stuff of which champions are built. I have seen challengers, champions and near champions perform but that moment in the fourth round, when Dula, his back against the ropes, pinned there by Tramel’s murderous attack, and dazed from a terrific right to the temple—made a desperate rally and outslugged the most dangerous slugger the South has ever produced. Outslugged, outfought and bettered him back across the ring.
"Again in the eighth, when dizzy and bloody the Kid reeled about the ring, out on his feet but with superhuman courage refusing to go down—again in the last desperate round when the Kid, weakened by cruel punishment and low blows charged recklessly across the ring, met Tramel in his own corner. And fighting like an uncaged tiger, smashed the weakening slugger from one side of the ring to the other.
Next Champion
"All this leads to the main point; that which came into my mind as I watched that bloody eighth round. Kid Dula is the next Middleweight Champion of the World.
"The Kid has much to learn of the finer points of boxing; but he is a natural hitter, a clever boxer, tough and courageous. More, he is aggressive to an extent reminiscent of Dempsey. And like all really great sluggers, like Sullivan Ketchel, Terry McGovern, Bob Fitzsimmons and Jack Dempsey, Dula never loses his punch and is most dangerous when apparently out. This quality alone is the greatest gift a fighter can have and one which has sustained Duke Tramel also, through many grim battles and made his for a time, champion of the Southwest. And Dula besides this has other qualities which Trammel lacks, mainly boxing skill and speed. His main handicap is lack of sufficient experience.
"The fight Friday night, boiled down, comes to this: a desperate battle between two iron men, the experience and sledge hammer power of one being offset by the sppedd and aggressiveness of the other. A draw would have been fair to both. One of the greatest fights the South has ever seen.
"And Dula is the next middleweight champion. Al he needs is proper handling. He has everything else."
The Beast from the Abyss
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Having spent most of my life in oil boom towns, I am not unfamiliar with the sight of torn and mangled humanity. Oftener than I like to remember I have seen men suffering, bleeding and dying from machinery accidents, knife stabs, gunshot wounds, and other mishaps. Yet I believe the most sickening spectacle of all was that of a crippled cat limping along a sidewalk, and dragging behind it a broken leg which hung to the stump only by the skin. On that splintered stump the animal was essaying to walk, occasionally emitting a low moaning cry that only slightly resembled the ordinary vocal expressions of a feline.
There is something particularly harrowing about the sight of an animal in pain; the desperate despair, undiluted by hope or reason, that makes it, in a way, a more awful and tragic sight than that of an injured human. In the agony cry of a cat all the blind abysmal anguish of the black cosmic pits seems concentrated. It is a scream from the jungle, the death howl of a Past unspeakably distant, forgotten and denied by humanity, yet which still lies awake at the back of the subconciousness, to be awakened into shuddering memory by a pain-edge yell from a bestial mouth.
Not only in agony and death is the cat a reminder of the brutish Past. In his anger cries and in his love cries, the gliding course through the grass, the hunger that burns shamelessly from his slitted eyes, in all his movements and actions is advertised his kinship with the wild, his tamelessness, and his contempt for man.
Inferior to the dog the cat is, nevertheless, more like human beings than is the former. For he is vain yet servile, greedy yet fastidious, lazy, lustful and selfish. That last characteristic is, indeed, the dominant feline trait. He is monumentally selfish. In his self love he is brazen, candid and unashamed.
Giving nothing in return, he demands everything--he demands it in a raspy, hungry, whining squall that seems to tremble with self-pity, and accuse the world at large of perfidy and broken contract. His eyes are suspicious and avaricious, the eyes of a miser. His manner is at once arrogant and debased. He arches his back and rubs himself against humanity's leg, dirging a doleful plea, while his eyes glare threats and his claws slide convulsively in and out of their padded sheaths.
He is inordinate in his demands, and he gives no thanks for bounty. His only religion is an unfaltering belief in the divine rights of cats. The dog exists only for man, man exists only for cats. The introverted feline conceives himself to be ever the center of the universe. In his narrow skull there is no room for the finer feelings.
Pull a drowning kitten out of the gutter and provide him with a soft cushion to sleep upon, and cream as often as he desires. Shelter, pamper and coddle him all his useless and self-centered life. What will he give you in return? He will allow you to stroke his fur; he will bestow upon you a condescending purr, after the manner of one conferring a great favor. There the evidences of gratitude end. Your house may burn over your head, thugs may break in, rape your wife, knock Uncle Theobald in the head, and string you up by your thumbs to make you reveal the whereabouts of your hoarded wealth. The average dog would die in the defense even of Uncle Theobald. But your fat and pampered feline will look on without interest; he will make no exertions in your behalf, and after the fray, will, likely as not, make a hearty meal off your unprotected corpse.
I have heard of but one cat who ever paid for his salt, and that was through no virtue of his own, but rather the ingenuity of his owner. A good many years ago there was a wanderer who traversed the state of Arkansas in a buggy, accompanied by a large fat cat of nondescript ancestry. This wayfarer toiled not, neither did he spin, and he was a lank, harried-looking individual who wore the aspect of starvation, even when he was full of food.