It is music of a high and holy kind.
Which reminds me that I am to treat in this chapter on Markham only of
what he has written since 1906, the preceding period, best known
through his "Man with the Hoe," having been discussed by Dr. Downey in
the book heretofore mentioned. I have the joy-task in these brief lines
to bring to you Markham's "The Shoes of Happiness," which seems to me
the strongest book he has written, not forgetting, either, "The Hoe"
book, as he himself calls it.
If you have the privilege of personal friendship with this "Father
Poet," he will write for you somewhere, some time, some place, these
four favorite lines, with a twinkle in his eyes that is half boy and
half sage, but all love, which quatrain he calls "Outwitted":
"He drew a circle that shut me out--
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!"
The Shoes of Happiness.
And with these four lines he introduces the new book of poems, "The
Shoes of Happiness."
THE HAPPINESS OF POVERTY
One wonders where "The Shoes of Happiness" may be found, and the answer
is forthcoming in the first of "Six Stories," when he finds that the
Sultan Mahmoud is near unto death, and that there is just one thing
that will make him well, and that is that he may wear the shoes of a
perfectly happy man:
"For only by this can you break the ban:
You must wear the shoes of a happy man.
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