No, let the school children, like them (or like they) of Rheims, cry out, “That’s him!” Usus loquendi has made that as mellifluous as “that’s me.” It don’t make you writhe, do it? Besides, we are all sinners, like McCoosh. And as a gentleman writes to the Scott County, Ind., Journal, “Let he that is without fault cast the first stone.”
“I want to use the ‘lightning-bug’ verse,” writes Ursus. “Please reprint it and say to whom credit should be given.”
It is easier to reprint the lines than to locate the credit, but we have always associated them with Eugene Ware. They go —
“The lightning-bug is brilliant, but he hasn’t any mind;
He stumbles through existence with his headlight on behind.”
The Harmony Cafeteria advertises, “Eat the Harmony Way.” A gentleman who lunched there yesterday counted eighteen sword-swallowers.
Remindful of the bow-legged floorwalker who said, “Walk this way, madam.”
Watching the play, “At the Villa Rose,” our thoughts wandered back to “Prince Otto,” in which piece we first saw Otis Skinner. And we wondered precisely what George Moore means when he says that Stevenson is all right except when he tries to tell a story. According to Moore, a story is not a story if it keeps you up half the night; “it is only the insignificant book that cannot be laid down,” he once maintained.
What is a story? To us it is drama first, operating on character. To Conrad it is character first, being operated on by drama. That may be why we prefer “The Wrecker” to “The Rescue.”
Writes M. G. M. from Denver: “Madame Pompadour, late of Chicago, opened a beauty shop here, and one of our up-to-date young ladies asked her if she was doing the hair in the crime wave so popular in Chicago.”
TRADE ADIEUS
Sir: After I had entertained a saleslady all evening and had said good-night at her abode, she murmured, “Thanks! Will that be all?” C. H. S.
According to Dr. Kumm of the Royal British Geographical Society, the natives of Uganda are happier than we. So are the camels of Sahara. But hoonel, as Orpheus asked Eurydice, wants to be a camel?
Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
BEING A FEW HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED PAGES FROM HIS JOURNAL
I
In this, the seven and twentieth year of my captivity, I have been much distressed by the monotony of my existence. My habitation is as complete as I can wish; I have all the clothing to my need; and my subjects – my man Friday and his father, and the Spaniard – keep me abundantly supplied with food. When I was alone the necessity of husbandry gave me plenty to do, but now I am oppressed by a great lack of matter for occupation, both physical and mental. Questioning myself, I put the blame upon an evil state of mind into which I have fallen, in no longer finding profit in reading my bible and other books, or in meditating on this life and that which is to come.
I am rich in that I want for no material thing; and I am idle, in that I do naught to profit myself or my companions; so that, although practically a solitary, I am, as you might say, an idle rich class, and were I multiplied by thousands I should be a grievous burden on society.
Friday, perceiving the state of my mind, has set himself to entertain me, and, being an ingenious fellow, will no doubt succeed. As a beginning he took unto himself the management of our simple meals, and he has contrived so to expand them, both in quantity of food and time spent in consuming it, that a large part of my day is now given over to eating. I drink a great deal of wine with my meals, and of rum also, a great store of which I saved from the wreck; and these strong waters, added to the great quantity of food consumed, produce in me a pleasant torpor, which I find to be a satisfactory substitute for meditation.
II
My man Friday came running to me this afternoon to relate that “many great number” of savages were landed on our shore, and that, by the preparations the wretches were making, a great feast was intended. The news was extremely welcome, for I have become so bored by the monotony of existence that any pretext for going abroad after nightfall is a godsend. So after disposing of a heavy dinner, that included six kinds of wines and liquors, my carriage, as I called it (though it was no more than a litter), was fetched by Friday and his father; and followed by the Spaniard, carrying my cloak and perspective glass, I set out for a little wooded hill that overlooked the beach on which the savages were encamped.
The dreadful wretches had finished their inhuman feast and were squatting on the sand, watching one of their number, a comely female, who was dancing wildly in a circle of strong firelight. The body of this creature was swathed in veils, which she removed, one after the other, until she was wholly naked. This degrading spectacle seemed to be enormously enjoyed by the spectators, who were grouped in the form of a horseshoe. I observed, also, that they were decorated with feathers and glass beads, and that, except for these ornaments, were as naked as the dancer.
My Spaniard, a God fearing man, was greatly shocked by the sight, and my man Friday, too, was strongly affected; but to my shame I must confess that I did not share their abhorrence. Yet even my stomach began to protest when the dancer, darting to one of the canoes, appeared with a gory head that had been chopped from one of the victims of the feast, and continued her shocking gyrations, to a most infernal din of barbarous musical instruments that half a hundred of the wretches were beating. The Spaniard and Friday urged, in their indignation, that we discharge our muskets at the unholy crew; but I restrained them from such an intelligible piece of violence, reflecting that the barbarous customs of these people might be regarded as their own disaster, and that I was not called upon to judge their actions, much less to execute the judgment of heaven upon them. Besides, they were in such numbers that, had we attacked, we should have been overwhelmed. So, calling for my litter, I returned to my habitation.
A LINE-O’-TYPE OR TWO
Hew to the Line, let the quips fall where they may.
An artist friend, back from the Land of Taos, brings word of another artist who is achieving influence by raising hogs – or “picture buyers,” as he sardonically calls them. This set us to wondering what had become of Arthur Dove, one of the first of the Einstein school to exhibit in this town. Despairing of the public intelligence, Mr. Dove took up the raising of chickens, and very old readers of this column may recall the verses in which we celebrated his withdrawal from art:
THE BROODING DOVE
Arthur Dove is raising chickens,
He has put his paints away:
Tell me, Chronos, where the dickens
Are the Cubes of yesterday!
Dove was real, Dove was earnest,
But his efforts came to nix.
Bowing to decree the sternest,
He has gone to raising chicks.
There’s a strong demand for broilers,
There’s a call for chicken-pie;
Dove declined to paint pot-boilers,
So he put his brushes by.
Luck attend his every setting!
May his inspirations hatch!
And, whatever price he’s getting,
May he market every batch.
“Perpetual reduction of my audience is my hobby,” observes Mr. Yeats, who aspires to be the Einstein of song. When only twelve disciples are able to understand him, he will be content.
A scientific expedition will hunt for the missing link in Asia, and may find it. But it will never be known whether the m. l. was capable of the popular songs which one sees in the windows of music stores, or whether it could have done something better.
The gadder contrib who uses the Gideon Bible to hold the shaving mirror at the right angle is properly rebuked by sundry readers. As one of them, M. B. C., says, he may make the Line, but he’ll have a close shave if he makes heaven.
We imagine the Gideon Bible is read more than may be supposed. Evening in a small town must be desperately dull to many travelers. And there are better love stories in the Bible than can be bought on the trains. Some of our gadding contribs have so good a writing style that we feel sure it must have been influenced by the Great Book.
A STERN PEDAGOGUE
[From the Antelope, Montana, local.]
Miss Gladys Spank arrived here from Bozeman last Saturday and is again teaching in the school near Williams.
Our esteemed contemporaries, F. P. A., Don Marquis, and Chris Morley, have taken the pains to reply to Miss Amy Lowell’s recent remark that “colyums” are “ghastly and pitiful.” Dear! dear! What has happened to their sense of humor?
SHE NOT ONLY HAS A BOOK. SHE HAS TWO!
“I wish to buy a book for a young lady,” infoed the blond mustached one to a clerk at McClurg’s. “She has both the ‘Rubaiyat’ and ‘A Tale of Two Cities.’ What do you advise?” O. B. W.
“I never could get to Detour, either,” communicates Jezebel, “but recently, on a train, I passed through Derail, which seems to be a fairly thriving village, although some of the houses need paint.”
Old readers detour here —
YES, YES
Sir: Herbert F. Antunes is a piano tuner in Evanston. L. L. B.
Resume main pike.
YE STUFF
Sir: “Yee Laundry” reads the sign over Yee Hing’s washee at Deming, N. M. Wherein ye olde world is joined with ye olde English. C. P. A.
“Henry Ford is poverty stricken intellectually, morally, and spiritually.” – Comrade Spargo.
Hint for Briggs: “Wonder what Henry Ford thinks about?”
Powell’s taxicab service in Polo, Ill., offers “a rattle with every ride,” and for the life of us we can’t imagine the kind of car employed.
Speaking of Detour and Derail, “I wonder,” wonders A. T., “whether in your travels you ever got to Goslow.”
DATED
Sir: From the Blue Book: “Pleasant View. Saloon on left corner. Turn left. Then follow winding road.” A. C.
YOU KNOW THE TUNE
“No girl,” say the rules of Northwestern University, “must walk the campus after dusk, unless to the library or to lectures, or for purposes of learning.”
I’m a merry little campus maid,
The campus sward I rove,
Picking Greek roots all the day
And learning how to love.
Considering “A Treasury of English Prose,” – prose that rivals great poetry – Mr. J. C. Squire came to an interesting conclusion – that “there is an established, an inevitable, manner into which an Englishman will rise when his ideas and images lift into grandeur; the style of the Authorized Version.”
Auguste Comte listed five hundred and fifty-eight men and women who could be considered great in the history of the world. An English writer, striking from the list names that he had never heard of before, arrives at the “astounding fact” that since the dawn of history fewer than three hundred and fifty great men have lived. We too are astounded. We had no notion there were so many.
“Great Britain,” says Lloyd George, “must be freed of ignorance, insobriety, penury, and the tyranny of man over man.” That ought not to require more than three or four glacial periods.
The Woman’s Club asks for “jingles for the jaw.” Well, here are two from C. L. Edson. Try them on your jaw:
THE TREE TOADS
A tree toad loved a she toad
That lived up in a tree;
She was a three-toed tree toad,
But a two-toed toad was he.
The two-toed tree toad tried to win
The she toad’s friendly nod;
For the two-toed tree toad loved the ground
That the three-toed tree toad trod.
But vainly the two-toed tree toad tried —
He couldn’t please her whim;
In her tree toad bower
With her V-toe power,
The she toad vetoed him.
THE RIDER AND THE ADDER
Miss Tudor was a rider in a famous circus show;
For a pet she had an adder – and the adder loved her so!
She fed the adder dodder. It’s a plant that live on air,
Could you find an odder fodder if you hunted everywhere?
Miss Tudor bought some madder. It’s a color rather rare,
And it made the adder shudder when Miss Tudor dyed her hair.
Her hair was soft as eider when she tried her madder dye;
Then, it had an odder odor – and was redder than the sky.
The adder couldn’t chide ’er. It could only idle stare,
But a sadder adder eyed ’er when the rider dyed ’er hair.
One of our readers was dozing in the lobby of a Boston hotel when he was aroused by an altercation near the cigar stand. A was wagering B that the name of the heroine of “The Scarlet Letter” was Hester Thorne, B maintaining that it was Hester Prim. The manager of the hotel was about to call the police, forgetting that there were none, when the gum-chewing divinity behind the case awarded the decision to B, and the crowd reluctantly dispersed.
We have on hand a column of favorite wheezes sent in response to our invitation, and the only reason we have not printed them is the preponderance of our own stuff. Naturally, or not, we are better amused by the wheezes of contributors. Frexample the following evoked a smile:
“On the train running into Tulsa,” wrote a gadder, “a native was fooling with the roller curtain, when suddenly it flew up with a snap. He looked bewildered, stuck his head out of the window, and finally said to himself, ‘Well, I reckon that’s the last they’ll see of that derned thing!’”
As we have been informed, and as we repeat for the benefit of the School of Journalism, there is nothing to running a column except the knack of writing more or less apt headlines. And so for the instruction of students whose ambition may be vaulting in that direction we will reopen a short court in head-writing. See what you can do with the divorce suit of Hazel Nutt against John P. Nutt, filed in a Florida court.
As to the divorce suit of Hazel Nutt vs. John P. Nutt, M. M. C. offers, “Shucks!”
Another happy headline for the Nutt vs. Nutt divorce suit, suggested by Battle Creek: “Two Nutts Will Soon Be Loose.”
The hand-painted baby-blue pencil for the best headline last week goes to the artist on the San Francisco Chronicle for the following:
“Prehistoric Skulls Found Digging Wells.”
We see by the paper – our favorite medium of information – that Duluth is to have an evening of “wrestling and dance.” A keen eye can probably tell the difference.
The drawn-work decanter, prize for the best headline for the Nutt vs. Nutt divorce case, is awarded to G. C. H. for his inspiration, “Nutts for the Lawyers.”
LIMERIK
There was a young man from Art Creek
Who went around dressed in Batik.
When they asked, “Are you well?”
He replied, “Ain’t it hell?
But in Art it’s the very last shriek.”
Received by a Missouri teacher: “Please excuse Frank for being absent. I kneaded him at home.” In the woodshed? Ouch, Maw!
How could the teacher rebuke Emil when she read this excuse from his father? “The only excuse I have for Emil being late was nine o’clock came sooner than we expected.”
For our part, we are moved to protest against the growing practice among parents of rebuking their children for playing with the children of prohibitionists. We should not visit upon the little ones the sins of their intemperate progenitors.
“Attention, Members!” postcards the house committee of the Chicago Real Estate Board. “Get your feet under the table and you are putting your shoulder behind your board.” This is another good reducing exercise.
With the return of the railroads to private control, we look for an immediate improvement in the service. For, as the dining-car waiter said, when requested to brush the crumbs from a table: “We’s workin’ for the government now. We don’t have to brush no crumbs off no more.” Well, he’ll brush some crumbs off some more now, or he’ll be fired.
One may send “harmless live animals” by parcel post, with the chances eight to five that the animal will be reduced to pulp or die of old age.
THE CHIGGER
When the enterprising chigger is a-chigging
And maturing his felonious little plan,
He loves to climb the lingerie and rigging
And tunnel into Annabel and Ann.
The chigger then with chloroform they smother,
His little hour of pleasure then is o’er,
So take this consideration with the other,
A chigger’s life is pretty much a bore.
A VERSATILE CHAP
[From the Turton, S. D., Trumpet.]
Victor LaBrie gave several fine selections on the piano. Victor is a splendid musician. When he plays he has full control of the piano, and has splendid harmony to his selections.
Victor LaBrie started dragging Monday afternoon. He used the tractor and stated that it worked up fine.
“Seeing is believing,” says the vender of a piano player. But perhaps you would prefer auricular evidence.
“The only fad I have had for the last twenty-six years is my husband.” – Mrs. Harding.
This is one of the very few really worthy fads that women have ever taken up.
ACT II., SCENE II
JULIET
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
ROMEO
Thou sayest a mouthful, love. And yet how come
That Myra Tinkelpaugh, of Cobleskill,
New York, conducts therein The Music Shop?
Mr. Sink having resigned as plumber to the Immortals, we are recommending in his place the plumbing firm of Jamin & Jerkin, of St. Petersburg, Fla.
“Buy a communication ticket,” advises a restaurant. This, understands E. S., gives you the privilege of talking with the waitresses.
“Every American man has a mental picture of his wife standing behind the door with a rolling-pin.” – Blasco Ibanez.
We fear the gifted Spaniard has acquired an idea of American domestic life from Mr. Tom Powers’ sketches and other back-page comics.
A reader wonders what we can find in a book so childishly egotistical as Margot Asquith’s Autobiography. Answer: much that is interesting. When we read an autobiography we are interested in the people written about rather than in the writer. There are exceptions, of course; for example, Henry Adams and Jacques Casanova.
THE JANITOR ENTERTAINS
[Iowa City Item.]
An unusual function for men in business circles was that which John Voelkel, janitor of the First National bank, supervised, Saturday evening. He gave a dinner, card party and a smoker to all the officers of the bank. Invitations were issued to every member of the staff, from president to clerk, and those who assembled at the custodian’s home made merry for several hours at an event probably without a duplicate in banking history in Iowa City.
VARIANT OF THE V. H. W
Sir: Please send me a copy of the famous valve handle wheeze. I have heard so much about it. I hope this reaches you before your limited supply is exhausted. O. G. C.
P. S. – One of the fellows in the office just told me the joke, so you need not bother to send me a copy. O. G. C.
CRUELLE ET INSOLITE
[Transfer slip, Peninsular Railway Co.]
This ticket is good for one continuous passage only in the direction shown by conductor’s punch in the face hereof.
HIGH, LOW, JACK, AND THE GAME
Sir: While visiting in a New England family I accused them of being “highbrows,” and they gave me these modern synonyms for highbrow and lowbrow, taken from a Boston paper:
Highbrow: Browning, anthropology, economics, Bacon, the string quartette, the uplift, inherent sin, Gibbon, fourth dimension, Euripides, “eyether,” pâté de fois gras, lemon phosphate, Henry Cabot Lodge, Woodrow Wilson.
Low-highbrow: Municipal government, Kipling, socialism, Shakespeare, politics, Thackeray, taxation, golf, grand opera, bridge, chicken à la Maryland, “eether,” stocks and bonds, gin rickey, Theodore Roosevelt, chewing gum in private.
High-lowbrow: Musical comedy, euchre, baseball, moving pictures, small steak medium, whisky, Robert W. Chambers, purple socks, chewing gum with friends.
Lowbrow: Laura Jean Libbey, ham sandwich, haven’t came, pitch, I and her, melodrama, hair oil, the Duchess, beer, George M. Cohan, red flannels, toothpicks, Bathhouse John, chewing gum in public. E. S.
A bachelor complains to us that prohibition has ruined his life. His companions have deserted their haunts – all, all are gone, the old familiar faces – and he can find no one to talk to; and he talks very well, too. Now, we have as much compassion for him as it is possible to have for any bachelor, and yet we do not esteem his case utterly hopeless. As Mr. Lardner has suggested, when he repairs to his hotel at night he can open the clothespress and talk to his other suit of clothes.
Tolstoi’s “Power of Darkness” reminds P. G. Wodehouse of a definition of Greek tragedy – the sort of drama in which one character comes to another and says, “If you don’t kill mother, I will!”
“The jehu of the rubber-neck wagon,” reports a gadder from Loz Onglaze, “called out: ‘We are now in the center of the old aristocratic center. That palatial residence on our left is the home of Fatty Arbuckle.’”
MORNING IN IOWA
A cold, rough, gloomy morning!
’Gainst yellow dawn the smoke
Of neighbors’ chimneys stains the air,
Reminding me that yon grim, white-capped cone,
Which like a second Rainier stands in my backyard,
Like him of ash and cinders built, now calls
For more upbuilding. That white bloom
Which last night’s snow hath left upon
His smooth and awful sides must now
Be sicklied o’er with more and yet more
Ashes.
What’s that I smell – buckwheats?
And What’s-his-name’s pig sausage?
It is? Aha!
Gee, what a peach of a morning!
Abd-el-Kader.
AN EVENING WITH SHAKESPEARE
Sir: Overheard at the Studebaker: “What’s put him off his nut?” Lady, answering: “He ain’t really bugs – it’s a stall. The old guy [Polonius] thinks he’s got something on him.” P. S. D.
YOURS, ETC
Sir: The height of efficiency is attained by Mervin L. Lane, Insurance Service, New York, who prints on his letterhead, “Unnecessary terms of politeness as well as assurances of self-evident esteem are omitted from our letters.” E. A. D.
“It costs 30,000 Lenin rubles a day for food alone,” says Prof. Zeidler of Viborg, referring to so-called life in Russia. Apparently, then, Lenin has not yet succeeded in making money utterly worthless.
HE OUGHT TO BE DEPORTED
Sir: Gum Boot Charlie, an Alaska native, was discussing the present h. c. l. with a group of citizens of Yakutat, and while condemning the present administration and conditions generally, he was interrupted by a Swede who said: “You dam native, if you don’t like this country, why don’t you go back where you came from?” W. W. K.
A Carbondale youth was arrested for hunting out of season, and the possession of a gun and a dog is considered, by the Free Press, “facsimile evidence.”
Then, as D. B. B. reminds, there are the writers of apostrophic verse who skip lightly from ‘you’ to ‘thou’ and ‘thee,’ and from ‘thy’ to ‘your.’ A language less rugged than the English would have been destroyed long ago.
We learn from the Monticello, Ind., Journal that a couple narrowly escaped being asphyxicated by gas from an anthricate coal stove. Young Grimes must be reporting for that gazette.
Overheard in an osteopath’s office: “When does it hurt you most, when you set or when you lay?”
NOTES OF THE ACADEMY OF IMMORTALS
The following nominations have been received:
For greenskeeper on the Academy links: Mr. Launmore of Pittsburgh. Nom. by S. C. B.
For bugler: Mr. Mescall of Chicago. Nom. by Circle W.
For legal counsel: Atty. Frank Lawhead of Detroit. Nom. by H. D. T.
For any vacancy: Mr. Void Null of Centralia, Mo. Nom. by E. J. C.
Miss Seitsinger is organizing a chorus and glee club in the schools of Northwood, Ia. Yes, very.
BUTCHER TO THE ACADEMY
Bill Bull, the Butcher, of Bartlett, Ill.,
Says: “Trade with me. Cut down your bill.”
A. G. C.
The membership committee of the Academy has received numerous protests against the admission of Charles Ranck, the skunk trapper of Ellsworth, Neb., and J. K. Garlick, the “practical horseshoer” of Sublette, Ill.
ACADEMY NOTES
The nominations were considered of Ananias Deeds of Guthrie Center, Ia., and Mrs. Tamer Lyons of Upton, Ind. The Academy then resumed work on the Dictionary of Names.
“For goodness’ sake!” exclaims Frank Harris in Pearson’s, expressing his joy in the growth of Lenine’s state, “for goodness’ sake let us have new experiments on this old earth.” For goodness’s sake, let’s! But why not have one on a grand scale? Let’s dig a hole a mile deep and a mile across, fill it with dynamite, and see whether we can’t finish the world in one good bang.
“Learned Class of Europe In Hard Straits.”
They are in hard straits everywhere. The more learned you are, the worse you’re off.
“Budapest Hungriest of Cities in all Europe.” – South Bend Tribune.
The headliner must have his little joke.
WE DON’T LIKE TO THINK OF IT!
[From the Cambridge Review.]
Think of the portrait that Rembrandt painted of his mother hanging in the living-room of his parents’ simple home.
Our blithesome contemporary, F. P. A., is not disturbed by the steel strike, as he uses a gold pen; and for a like reason our withers are unwrung. Eugene Field of fragrant memory used a steel pen. A friend of ours was speaking of having dropped in on the poet just as he was fitting a new pen to the holder. “You can’t write anything new,” said Field, “unless you have a new pen.”
THE SECOND POST
[Received by a mail order house.]
Dear Sir: The peeaney you shipped me sum time ago come duly recd. My, is we souposed to pay the frate charge onit. When we bot this peeanney you claimed to lie it down to me. I want you two send me quick as hell a receet for 2.29 for same. Besyds the kees on sum dont work a tall. Is them ivory finger boards. Are dealer here sed we got beet on this deel. Wer is the thing you seet on? Is it eeen that box on the platform at the depo? That luks two small for it. Yours truely, etc.
P. S. – Wen you rite tel me how two tune it.
Fireplace heating, says Dr. Evans, is the most wasteful. True. And the most agreeable. So many things that make life endurable in this vale of tears are wasteful.
“Since her tour of the Pacific Coast,” declares a Berkeley bulletin, “Miss Case has made strident advances in her art.” The lady, it appears, sings.
THE SECOND POST
[Received by a Birmingham concern.]
Dear Sirs and Gents: Would say this lady i got the Range for had applied for a divorce and was to marrey me but she has taken her soldier husband back again and changed her notion so i don’t think it right to pay for a range for the other man. let him pay it out if she will live up to her bargin i will pay and could have paid at the time but was afraid this would happen as it has she has never rote or communicated with me since i left there dont think it right or justice that i pay for it and perhaps never see her again had they of rote to me i would have kept up the payments can first see the parties what they expect to do. Very Respect, etc.
You have observed the skinned-rabbit hair-cut. The barber achieves a gruesome effect by running the clippers half-way up the skull. But did you know that it originated in Columbus, O.? “Yes, sir,” said the Columbus barber to Col. Drury Underwood, “that started here. We call it the two-piece haircut.”
CUPID CARRIES A CARD
H. H. Lessner, of Alton, Ill., known as “Alton’s Marrying Justice of the Peace,” carries a union label on his stationery.
“I am reading Marcus Aurelius now,” confides Mme. Galli-Curci to an interviewer. “One can never really grow tired of it, can one?” Well, if you ask us, one can.
“Are we going crazy?” – Senator Smoot.
“Wanted, man or woman to give me a few lessons on ouija board.” – Denver Post ad.
So it seems.
ANNOUNCEMENT!
In accordance with our immemorial custom of giving our readers a Christmas holiday, when it falls on Sunday, the Line-o’-Type will not be published to-morrow.