WHY do I grind from morn till night,
And sick or well sit down to write?
Why do I line my brow with sweat,
An extra buck or two to get?
The reason isn’t hard to trace,
For us our neighbors set the pace.
The Greens go weekly to a show,
And so, of course, we have to go;
A dollar-fifty per they pay
For seats down in the parquet,
And always they wear evening dress;
We couldn’t think of doing less.
The Browns maintain a servant girl,
The one we have was christened Pearl;
At dinner, several kinds of wine
They serve in glass of rare design.
Their dinners are a great success;
And ours, of course, must be no less.
In summer all our neighbors flee
Unto the mountains or the sea;
They spend two months in big hotels
And hobnob with the other swells;
And though it’s costly, I confess
That wife of mine shall do no less.
Two doors from us lives Mrs. Grout,
Who owns a lovely runabout,
And though she’s very nice, it’s plain
She looks on us with some disdain.
Although it’s more than I can do,
My wife will shortly have one, too.
I ‘d like to take a holiday
And spend a month or two in play;
I’d like to take an ocean trip
And give this awful grind the slip;
But there’s no rest for me the while
We let our neighbors set the style.
