El Paso daily herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1881-1901, 1897-05-01
MAY DAY REFLECTION
May Day In this Country is not What it IL
in England

May Day In this Country is not What it is
| in England.
This is MAY Pole Day." when poets
sing, or try to make people believe
they sing with real nice green lawn
as sort of frontispiece, prospect or
suthin', howery twenty foot May pole
in the center and all the young bucks
aud heifers in that section dancing,
pranciug around that flower bedecked
pole, and having day old, panorama
of time.
This sort of thing is all right in
| hold Hingland where the month of
May is as lovely as February in south
ern California. But working the May
pole racket in the United States is a
delusion, a mockery and a snare. Just
because eastern people see in the Eu-
glish story books hifalutin pictures
about May pole pcnics, they imagine
the same sort of thing holds good On
| this side of the water. So the girls
and women folks on their white tarle-
tons and the young men their summer
store clothes, scam per around May
pole over the cold, wet grasS-if there
is any grass to dance on. eat out doors,
have real good time" and oh my,
what picnic the doctors do have the
next day, and how the uudertakers do
wash their hands with invisible soap
at the prospect of a fine business ahe cad,
and the grave digger's wife knows
she'll be able TO have new dress and
bonnet Sh ortly.
El Paso is having a May day picnic
today. No iusinuatiOn is made or any
approximation thereto that there will
be any serious cases of sickness result
ing from the same, unless it be in the
case of certain youngsters whose love
of pie proves more than match for
their self restraint. But the month is
ushered in cold, raw and cherries,
cloudy and threatening to rain, and at
picnic under such conditions it may
be observed that there is fine oppor-
tunity to work the imagination for all
it is worth, and to test its elasticity to
the extreme point of tension by declar-
ing that we imagine the day is warm
and pleasant: therefore it is pleasant
quOd erat demonstrandum. or words to
that effect. The late Benjamin F.
Butler suggested once in his genial, off
hand and happy way, that if hungry
people would only imagine that pictures
OF roastS sof beef they saw painted on
restaurant walls were the real gen.
uine article, and partake of the same
in spirit, that is ethically, their
might be appeased. So to-
day, if the good Ell Pdso folks who are
off in the grove trying to picnic in the
cold, will only imagine that a typical
California sprngday, or a real old
fashioned English May day is on deck,
and declare therefore that what OUGHT
TO be in fact is, they may be the less
| kelly to catch pneumonia, and thoughts
of heaven will be less likely OF imme-
diate realization. People do like real
well to go to heaven: but ahem, well, |
when the grim messenger notifies them
to pack their spiritual gripsacks, some
how or other, they do want to hang on
to the things of this earth inst a while
longer.
The idea of May day celebrations up
north in the open ar is become mock
cry and snare, unless people would |
celebrate in sleighs or slosh around in |
he mud and slush in rubber boots, gum
coats and umbrellas. May day break
asts are becoming the thing-strictly !
INDOORS and with the furnace going.