There are all kinds of people we meet on the road,
As we travel along life’s way;
And some are surly and some are grave
And others are jolly and gay.
And some folks are short, while others are tall,
Still others are skinny and thin—
And some skip along, a-humming a song,
But others are simply all in.
But where’er they come from, or whither they go,
We pigeon-hole each of them so,
We group them, and sort them, and label them all,
The short ones, the skinny, and tall.
There’s the man or the woman, the boy or the girl,
That’s always a-wishing a share
In somebody’s fortune, or somebody’s fame,
Yes, they wish for the moon ’way up there.—
Then there’s that group of persons
Who talk, talk, and talk,
You simply don’t know what they say—
From morning till night they keep talking away,
And the night is like unto the day.—
But quietly along, on the very same road,
Walk others, with little to say,
And if they have wishes (What mortals have not?),
They put them discreetly away.
They’re the workers, the lifters of burdens,—who dare
To fight for the right if need be,
Alone ’gainst a world—
And defiance they hurl
To all tyrants wherever they be.
You have met these three classes of people, I’m sure,
As you’ve traveled adown life’s way—
The folks with their wish-bone enormously grown,
And the “jaw-bones,” who talk all the day.—
And I know you have shunned them,
As others have done
From the day that time began,
But you’ve hailed with delight,
And you’ve longed for the sight
Of the steady, quiet, “back-boned” man.