So pleasant it is to have money!

I was thinking about the cop who gave me the ticket 20 years ago.

How funny, you know, to run into someone like that, and without benefit of Facebook! My brother George says Facebook is like the afterlife, everyone in your life comes back. But this officer, he appeared without Facebook. In person.

How surreal to be talking with him!

Today I was telling my mom about it and one thing I remembered, when I got this ticket, my father was still around. And I told my father about it. About this ticket I got, and why I got it.

I remember telling my father that now that I had the job at the paper, and I had a paycheck, I could not assume the correct craven attitude toward the officer who stopped me, the attitude that I suspected had gotten me off the hook the (few, ahem) other times this sort of thing had happened. It was as if I were a new person. I was not the person I had been before.

My dad listened and he understood. And he quoted a poem to me. After all these years, I remembered two lines of it:

And if I should chance to run over some cad
I can pay for the damage, no matter how bad.

Only now did I think to Google it and find out what poem this was. Everything is at your fingertips, you know? If you just Google.

The verse came up right away. I found it here, to give credit where credit is due. The poem has a wonderful name. It is "Dipsychus." And the author has a wonderful name. It is Arthur Hugh Clough.

It is illuminating to see it, just as it was illuminating when someone came forward with a poem he said inspired Leonard Pennario's "Midnight on the Cliffs." But that is another story for another day.

For now ...

Dipsychus

By Arthur Hugh Clough

(English poet and scholar, friend of Tennyson and Matthew Arnold, 1819–1861)

AS I sat at the café, I said to myself, They may talk as they please about what they call pelf, They may sneer as they like about eating and drinking, But help it I cannot, I cannot help thinking,   How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!         5   How pleasant it is to have money. I sit at my table en grand seigneur, And when I have done, throw a crust to the poor; Not only the pleasure, one’s self, of good living, But also the pleasure of now and then giving.         10   So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!   So pleasant it is to have money.… I drive through the streets, and I care not a d—n; The people they stare, and they ask who I am; And if I should chance to run over a cad,         15 I can pay for the damage if ever so bad.   So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!   So pleasant it is to have money. We stroll to our box and look down on the pit, And if it weren’t low should be tempted to spit;         20 We loll and we talk until people look up, And when it’s half over we go out to sup.   So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!   So pleasant it is to have money. The best of the tables and best of the fare—         25 And as for the others, the devil may care; It isn’t our fault if they dare not afford To sup like a prince and be drunk as a lord.   So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!   So pleasant it is to have money.