{"id":8813,"date":"2022-11-23T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-23T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newspaperhistory.com\/?p=8813"},"modified":"2022-11-23T01:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-11-23T06:00:00","slug":"the-blessings-of-hard-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/desperaudio.com\/newspaperpoetry\/the-blessings-of-hard-times\/","title":{"rendered":"The Blessings of Hard Times"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>From <a href=\"https:\/\/chroniclingamerica.loc.gov\/lccn\/sn82016014\/1914-11-23\/ed-1\/seq-4\/\">The Topeka State Journal, November 23, 1914<\/a>. By James J. Montague.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n<p>When Farmer Jones\u2019 Berkshire hog was living on the farm<br\/>His personality was gross, his manner had no charm;<br\/>He daily wallowed in the mud, he guzzled from his trough,<br\/>And grew a mass of embonpoint which nothing could take off.<br\/>And while his body waxed so great that he could hardly crawl,<br\/>His brains became so dull and thick he couldn\u2019t think at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n<p>But when one day the farm burned down, the Berkshire hog got loose,<br\/>And had to put his thickening brains to very active use.<br\/>Nobody came to feed him now; he had to hustle \u2018round,<br\/>And use his nerve and judgement to provide his daily found.<br\/>And soon new muscles thewed his flanks instead of flabby fat,<br\/>And his once soggy countenance became worth looking at.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n<p>There is no startling moral to this tale of Jones\u2019s swine,<br\/>Except that when one has to work before one sits to dine,<br\/>And has to keep expenses down, the life he learns to lead<br\/>Is pretty sure to keep his brains from running all to seed.<br\/>And though no doubt it will surprise a lot of soft-raised men,<br\/>A little pinch of poverty won\u2019t hurt them\u2014now and then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From The Topeka State Journal, November 23, 1914. By James J. Montague. When Farmer Jones\u2019 Berkshire hog was living on the farmHis personality was gross, his manner had no charm;He daily wallowed in the mud, he guzzled from his trough,And grew a mass of embonpoint which nothing could take off.And while his body waxed so [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,21],"tags":[182],"class_list":["post-8813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newspapers","category-the-topeka-state-journal","tag-james-j-montague"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/desperaudio.com\/newspaperpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/desperaudio.com\/newspaperpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/desperaudio.com\/newspaperpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desperaudio.com\/newspaperpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desperaudio.com\/newspaperpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/desperaudio.com\/newspaperpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8813\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/desperaudio.com\/newspaperpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desperaudio.com\/newspaperpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desperaudio.com\/newspaperpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}