“I will now sing for you,” announced a contralto to a woman’s club meeting in the Copley-Plaza, “a composition by one of Boston’s noted composers, Mr. Chadwick. ‘He loves me.’” And of course everybody thought George wrote it for her.
“Grand opera is, above all others, the high-brow form of entertainment.” – Chicago Journal.
Yes. In comparison, a concert of chamber music appears trifling and almost vulgar.
At a reception in San Francisco, Mrs. Wandazetta Fuller-Biers sang and Mrs. Mabel Boone-Sooey read. Cannot they be signed for an entertainment in the Academy?
We simply cannot understand why Dorothy Pound, pianist, and Isabelle Bellows, singer, of the American Conservatory, do not hitch up for a concert tour.
Richard Strauss has been defined as a musician who was once a genius. Now comes another felicitous definition – “Unitarian: a Retired Christian.”
Dr. Hyslop, the psychical research man, says that the spirit world is full of cranks. These, we take it, are not on the spirit level.
The present physical training instructor in the Waterloo, Ia., Y. W. C. A. is Miss Armstrong. Paradoxically, the position was formerly held by Miss Goodenough. These things appear to interest many readers.
THE HUNTING OF THE PACIFIST SNARK
(With Mr. Ford as the Bellman.)
“Just the place for a Snark!” the Bellman cried,
“Just the place for a Snark, I declare!”
And he anchored the Flivver a mile up the river,
And landed his crew with care.
He had bought a large map representing the moon,
Which he spread with a runcible hand;
And the crew, you could see, were as pleased as could be
With a map they could all understand.
“Now, listen, my friends, while I tell you again
The five unmistakable marks
By which you may know, wherever you go,
The warranted pacifist Snarks.
The first is the taste, which is something like guff,
Tho’ with gammon ’twill also compare;
The next is the sound, which is simple enough —
It resembles escaping hot air.
The third is the shape, which is somewhat absurd,
And this you will understand
When I tell you it looks like the African bird
That buries its head in the sand.
The fourth is a want of the humorous sense,
Of which it has hardly a hint.
And last, but not least, this marvelous beast
Is a glutton for getting in print.
Now, Pacifist Snarks do no manner of harm,
Yet I deem it my duty to say,
Some are Boojums – ” The Bellman broke off in alarm,
For Jane Addams had fainted away.
Concerning his reference to “Demosthenes’ lantern,” the distinguished culprit, Rupert Hughes, writes us that of course he meant Isosceles’ lantern. The slip was pardonable, he urges, as he read proof on the line only seven times – in manuscript, in typescript, in proof for the magazine, in the copy for the book, in galley, in page-proof, and finally in the printed book. And heaven only knows how many proofreaders let it through. “Be that as it may,” says Rupert, “I am like our famous humorist, Archibald Ward, who refused to be responsible for debts of his own contracting. And, anyway, I thank you for calling my attention to the blunder quietly and confidentially, instead of bawling me out in a public place where a lot of people might learn of it.”
SORRY WE MISSED YOU
Sir: … There were several things I wanted to say to you, and I proposed also to crack you over the sconce for what you have been saying about us Sinn Feiners. I suppose you’re the sort that would laugh at this story:
He was Irish and badly wounded, unconscious when they got him back to the dressing station, in a ruined village. “Bad case,” said the docs. “When he comes out of his swoon he’ll need cheering up. Say something heartening to him, boys. Tell him he’s in Ireland.” When the lad came to he looked around (ruined church on one side, busted houses, etc., up stage, and all that): “Where am I?” sez he. “’S all right, Pat; you’re in Ireland, boy.” “Glory be to God!” sez he, looking around again. “How long have yez had Home Rule?” Tom Daly.
OUR BOYS
[From the Sheridan, Wyo., Enterprise.]
Our boys are off for the borders
Awaiting further orders
From our president to go
Down into old Mexico,
Where the Greaser, behind a cactus,
Is waiting to attack us.
The skies they were ashen and sober, and the leaves they were crispèd and sere, as I sat in the porch chair and regarded our neighbor’s patch of woodland; and I thought: The skies may be ashen and sober, and the leaves may be crispèd and sere, but in a maple wood we may dispense with the sun, such irradiation is there from the gold of the crispèd leaves. Jack Frost is as clever a wizard as the dwarf Rumpelstiltzkin, who taught the miller’s daughter the trick of spinning straw into gold. This young ash, robed all in yellow – what can the sun add to its splendor? And those farther tree-tops, that show against the sky like a tapestry, the slenderer branches and twigs, unstirred by wind, having the similitude of threads in a pattern – can the sun gild their refinèd gold? How delicate is the tinting of that cherry, the green of which is fading into yellow, each leaf between the two colors: this should be described in paint.
No, I said; in a hardwood thicket, in October, though it were the misty mid region of Weir, one would not know the sun was lost in clouds. At that moment the sun adventured forth, in blazing denial. It was as if the woodland had burst into flame.
As a variation of the story about the merchant who couldn’t keep a certain article because so many people asked for it, we submit the following: A lady entered the rural drugstore which we patronize and said, “Mr. Blank, I want a bath spray.” “I’m sorry, Mrs. Jones,” sezze, “but the bath spray is sold.”
IN A DEPARTMENT STORE
Customer – “I want to look at some tunics.”
Irish Floorwalker – “We don’t carry musical instruments.”
That Tennessee congressman who was arrested charged with operating an automobile while pifflicated, would reply that when he voted for prohibition he was representing his constituents, not his private thirst. Have we not, many times, in the good old days in Vermont, seen representatives rise with difficulty from their seats to cast their vote for prohibition? One can be pretty drunk and still be able to articulate “Ay.”
A new drug, Dihydroxyphenylethylmethylamine, sounds as if all it needed was a raisin.
The Gluck aria, which Mme. Homer has made famous, was effectively cited by the critic Hanslick to show that in vocal music the subject is determined only by the words. He wrote:
“At a time when thousands (among whom there were men like Jean Jacques Rousseau) were moved to tears by the air from ‘Orpheus’ —
‘J’ai perdu mon Eurydice,
Rien n’égale mon malheur,’
Boyé, a contemporary of Gluck, observed that precisely the same melody would accord equally well, if not better, with words conveying exactly the reverse, thus —
‘J’ai trouvé mon Eurydice,
Rien n’égale mon bonheur.’
“We, for our part, are not of the opinion that in this case the composer is quite free from blame, inasmuch as music most assuredly possesses accents which more truly express a feeling of profound sorrow. If however, from among innumerable instances, we selected the one quoted, we have done so because, in the first place, it affects the composer who is credited with the greatest dramatic accuracy; and, secondly, because several generations hailed this very melody as most correctly rendering the supreme grief which the words express.”
Arthur Shattuck sued for appreciation in Fond du Lac the other evening, playing, according to the Reporter, “a plaintiff melody with great tenderness.” The jury returned a verdict in his favor without leaving their seats.
Reports of famine in China have recalled a remark about its excessive population. If the Chinese people were to file one by one past a given point the procession would never come to an end. Before the last man of those living to-day had gone by another generation would have grown up.
“Say it with handkerchiefs,” advertises a merchant in Goshen, Ind. That is, if the idea you wish to convey is that you have a cold in your head.
THE SOIL OF KANSAS
[From the Kansas Farmer.]
Formed by the polyps of a shallow, summer sea; fixed by the subtile chemistry of the air, and comminuted by the Æolian geology of the Great Plains, the soil of Kansas has been one of man’s richest possessions.
Why prose? The soil of Kansas, the Creator’s masterpiece, invites to song. Frinstance —
Formed by the polyps of a summer sea,
Fixed by the subtile chemistry of air,
Ground by Æolian geology,
The soil of Kansas is beyond compare!
THE GOOD OLD DAYS
Sir: An old stage hand at the Eau Claire opry house was talking. “No, sir, you don’t see the actors to-day like we used to. Why, when Booth and Barrett played here you could hear them breathe way up in the fly gallery.” E. C. M.
“WHAT THE LA HELLE!”
[From the Kankakee Republican.]
He helped tramp the old Hindenburg line, but this time, beating it on the strains of “Allons enfant de la Patrie le Jour de Gloire est de Triomphe et Arrivee!”
Here is a characteristic bit of Vermontese that we picked up. A native was besought to saw some wood, but he declined. The owner of the wood offered double price for the sawing, and still the native declined. He was pressed for a reason, and this was it: “Damned if I’ll humor a man.”
“It is not moral. It is immoral,” declared an editorial colleague; and a reader is reminded of Lex Iconles, the old Greek baker of Grammer’s Gap, Ark., who used to display in his window the enticing sign: “Doughnuts. Different and yet not the same.”
The mind of man is subject to many strange delusions, and one of these is that the stock market has a bottom.
The manufacturer of a certain automobile advertises that his vehicle “will hold five ordinary people.” And, as a matter of fact, it usually does.
The Westminster Gazette headlines “The Intolerable Dullness of Country Life in Ireland.” And Irene wonders what they would call excitement.
An advertisement of dolls mentions, superfluously, that “some may not last the day.” One does not expect them to.
The London Mendicity Society estimates that £100,000 is given away haphazard every year to street beggars, and that the average beggar probably earns more than the average working man. There is talk of the beggars forming a union. A beggars’ strike would be a fearsome thing.
I want to be a diplomat
And with the envoys stand,
A-wetting of my whistle in
A desiccated land.
The London Busman Story
I. – As George Meredith might have related it
“Stop!” she signalled.
The appeal was comprehensible, and the charioteer, assiduously obliging, fell to posture of checking none too volant steeds.
You are to suppose her past meridian, nearer the twilight of years, noteworthy rather for matter than manner; and her visage, comparable to the beef of England’s glory, well you wot. This one’s descent was mincing, hesitant, adumbrating dread of disclosures – these expectedly ample, columnar, massive. The day was gusty, the breeze prankant; petticoats, bandbox, umbrella were to be conciliated, managed if possible; no light task, you are to believe.
“’Urry, marm!”
The busman’s tone was patiently admonitory, dispassionate. A veteran in his calling, who had observed the ascending and descending of a myriad matrons, in playful gales.
“’Urry, marm!”
The fellow was without illusions; he had reviewed more twinkling columns than a sergeant of drill. Indifference his note, leaning to ennui. He said so, bluntly, piquantly, in half a dozen memorable words, fetching yawn for period.
The lady jerked an indignant exclamation, and completed, rosily precipitate, her passage to the pave.
II. – As Henry James might have written it
We, let me ask, what are we, the choicer of spirits as well as the more frugal if not the undeservedly impoverished, what, I ask, are we to do now that the hansom has disappeared, as they say, from the London streets and the taxicab so wonderfully yet extravagantly taken its place? Is there, indeed, else left for us than the homely but hallowed ’bus, as we abbreviatedly yet all so affectionately term it – the ’bus of one’s earlier days, when London was new to the unjaded sensorium and “Europe” was so wonderfully, so beautifully dawning on one’s so avid and sensitive consciousness?
And fate, which has left us the ’bus – but oh, in what scant and shabby measure! – has left us, too, the weather that so densely yet so congruously “goes with it” – the weather adequately enough denoted by the thick atmosphere, the slimy pavements, the omnipresent unfurled umbrella and the stout, elderly woman intent upon gaining, at cost of whatever risk or struggle, her place and portion among the moist miscellany to whom the dear old ’bus – But perhaps I have lost the thread of my sentence.
Ah, yes – that “stout, elderly woman”; so superabundant whether as a type or as an individual; so prone – or “liable” – to impinge tyrannously upon the consciousness of her fellow-traveller, and in no less a degree upon that of the public servant, who, from his place aloft, guides, as it is phrased, the destinies of the conveyance. It was, indeed, one of the most notable of these – a humble friend of my own – who had the fortune to make the acute, recorded, historic observation which, with the hearty, pungent, cursory brevity and point of his class and métier– the envy of the painstaking, voluminous analyst and artist of our period – But again I stray.
She was climbing up, or climbing down, perplexed equally, as I gather, by the management of her parapluie and of her —enfin, her petticoats. The candid anxiety of her round, underdone face, as she so wonderfully writhed to maintain the standard of pudicity dear – even vital – to the matron of the British Isles appealed – vividly, though mutely – to the forbearance that, seeing, would still seem not to see, her foot, her ankle, her mollet– as I early learned to say in Paris, where, however, so exigent a modesty is scarcely … well, scarcely.
“Madam,” the gracious fellow said in effect, “ne vous gênez pas.” Then he went on to assure her briefly that he was an elderly man; that he had “held the ribbons,” as they phrase it, for several years; that many were the rainy days in London; that each of these placed numerous women – elderly or younger – in the same involuntary predicament as that from which she herself had suffered; and that so far as he personally was concerned he had long since ceased to take any extreme delight in the – Bref, he was charming; he renewed my fading belief – fading, as I had thought, disastrously but immitigably – in the capacity of the Anglo-Saxon for esprit; and I am glad indeed to have taken a line or so to record his mot.
III. – As finally elucidated by Arnold Bennett
Maria Wickwyre, of the Five Towns, emerged from muddy Bombazine Lane and stood in the rain and wind at Pie Corner, eighty-four yards from the door of St. Jude’s chapel, in the Strand. She was in London! Yes, she was on that spot, she and none other. It might have been somewhere else; it might have been somebody else. But it wasn’t. Wonderful! The miracle of Life overcame her.
She had arms. Two of them. They were big and round, like herself. One held a large parcel (“package” for the American edition); the other, an umbrella. She also had two legs. She stood on them. If they had been absent, or if they had weakened, she would have collapsed. But they held her up. Ah, the mysteries of existence! More than ever was she conscious of her firm, strong underpinning. Maria waved her umbrella and her parcel and stopped a ’bus. The driver was elderly, wrinkled, weatherbeaten. Maria got in and rode six furlongs and some yards to Mooge Road, and then she stopped the ’bus to get out.
If she was conscious of her upper members and their charges, she was still more conscious of her lower ones. If she had her parcel and her umbrella to think about, she also had her stockings and petticoats to consider. The wind blew, the rain drizzled, the driver looked around, wondering why Maria didn’t get out and have done with it.
“If he should see them!” she gasped. (You know what she meant by “them.”) Her round, broad face mutely implored the ’busman to look the other way.
He wearily closed his eyes. He had been rumbling through the Strand for thirty years. “Lor’, mum,” he said, “legs ain’t no treat to me!”
Maria collapsed, after all, and took the 4:29 for home that same afternoon.
A LINE-O’-TYPE OR TWO
Hew to the Line, let the quips fall where they may.
APRILLY
Whan that Aprillè with hise shourès soote
The droghte of March had percèd to the roote,
I druv a motor thro’ Aprillè’s bliz
Somme forty mile, and dam neere lyke to friz.
Harriet reports the first trustworthy sign of spring: friend husband on the back porch Sunday morning removing last year’s mud from his golf shoes.
Old Doc Oldfield of London prescribes dandelion leaves, eggs, lettuce, milk, and a few other things for people who would live long, and a Massachusetts centenarian offers, as her formula, “Don’t worry and don’t over-eat.” But we, whose mission is to enlighten the world, rather than to ornament it, are more influenced by the experiment of Herbert Spencer. Persuaded to a vegetarian diet, he stuck at it for six months. Then reading over what he had written during that time, he thrust the manuscript into the fire and ordered a large steak with fried potatoes and mushrooms.
“SPRING HAS COME …”
The trees were rocked by April’s blast;
A frozen robin fell,
And twittered, as he breathed his last,
“Lykelle, lykelle, lykelle.”
BYRON WROTE MOST OF THIS
[From the Monticello Times.]
Julf Husman, who has been busy for the past several months, building a fine new house and barn, celebrated their completion with a barn dance Wednesday night. “The beauty and chivalry” of Wayne and adjoining townships attended, and did “chase the glowing hours with flying feet,” with as much enthusiasm and pleasure as did the guests “When Belgium’s capital had gathered then and bright the lamps shone over fair women and brave men.”
A CANNERY DANCE
[From the Iowa City Press.]
“Fair women and brave men” circled hither and thither in the maze of the stately waltz and the festal two-step, and the dainty slippers kept graceful time with the strains of the exceptionally fine music of the hour. Lovely young women, with roses in their cheeks and their hair, caught the reflection of the radiant electric lights and the glory of the superb decorations, and their natural pulchritude was enhanced in impressiveness thereby. The “frou frou” of silks and satins; the enchanting orchestral offerings; the brilliant illuminations; the alluring decorations, and the intoxication of the dance made the event one of the most markedly successful in the history of the university.
FOR THE LAST DAY OF MARCH
Just before you go to bed,
Push the clock an hour ahead.
Little Mary.
Don’t forget to set the time locks on your safes ahead an hour. Otherwise you’ll be all mixed up.
At Ye Olde Colonial Inn, according to the Aurora Beacon-News, a special “Table de Haute” dinner was served last Sunday. And the Gem restaurant in St. Louis tells the world: “Our famous steaks tripled our seating capacity.”
CHANCES, 2; ERRORS, 2
Sir: While in the Hotel Dyckman I noted a sign recommending the 85c dinner in the “Elizabethian Room.” After a search I found the place, duly labeled “Elizabethean Room.” D. K. M.
Just what does the trade jargon mean, “Experience essential but not necessary”? We see it frequently in the advertising columns.
A variant of the form, “experience essential but not necessary,” is used by the Racine Times-Call, as follows:
“Wanted, secretary-treasurer for a local music corporation; must also have a knowledge of music, but not essential.”
As curious as the advertising form, “experience essential but not necessary,” is the form used by the Daily News: “Responsible for no debts contracted by no other than myself.”
The provincialism indicated by the title of the pop song, “Good bye, Broadway! Hello, France!” reminds us of the headline in a New York paper some years ago: “Halley’s Comet Rushing on New York.”
“The love, the worship of truth is the most essential thing in journalism,” says the editor of Le Matin. Or, as the ads read, “love of truth essential but not necessary.”
The Hopkinsville, Ky., News is a Negro paper, and its motto is: “Man is made of clay, and like a meerschaum pipe is more valuable when highly colored.”
From the letter of a colored gentleman of leisure, apropos of his wife’s suit for divorce: “P. S.: Also, honey, i hope while others have your company i may have your heart.” Here is a refrain for a sentimental song.
SMACK! SMACK!
Sir: May I suggest that the matrimonial bureau of the Academy take steps to introduce Miss Irene V. Smackem of Washington, D.C., and Mr. Kissinger of Fergus Falls, Minn.? They would make a perfect pair. Kaye.
MARCH
With heart of gold and yellow frill,
Arcturus, like a daffodil,
Now dances in the field of gray
Upon the East at close of day;
A joyous harbinger to bring
The many promises of spring!
W.
If no one else cares, the compositor and proof reader will be interested to know that Ignacy Seczupakiewicz brought suit in Racine against Praxida Seczupakiewicz.
Referring to Beethoven’s anniversary, Ernest Newman remarks that “a truly civilized community would probably celebrate a centenary by prohibiting all performances of the master’s works for three or five years, so that the public’s deadening familiarity with them might wear off. That would be the greatest service it could do him.”
Newman, by the way, is a piano-player fan, contending that when the principles of beautiful tone production are understood, mechanical means will probably come nearer to perfection than the human hand. Mr. Arthur Whiting, considering the horseless pianoforte some time ago, was also enthusiastic. The h. p. is entirely self-possessed, and has even more platform imperturbability than the applauded virtuoso. “After a few introductory sounds, which have nothing to do with the music, and without relaxing the lines of its inscrutable face, the insensate artist proceeds to show its power. Its security puts all hand playing to shame; it never hesitates, it surmounts the highest difficulties without changing a clutch.”
Dixon’s Elks were entertained t’other evening by the Artists Trio, and the Telegraph observes that “one of the remarkable facts concerning this company is that while they are finished artists they nevertheless are delightful entertainers.”
We seldom listen to a canned-music machine, but when we do we realize the great educational value of the discs. They advise us (especially the records of singing comedians) what to avoid.
The prejudices against German music will deprive many gluttons for punishment of the opportunity to hear “Parsifal.” We remember one lady who was concerned because Dalmorés stood for a long time with his back to the audience. “Why does he have to do that?” she asked her companion. “Because,” was the answer, “he shot the Holy Grail.”
At a concert in Elmira, N. Y., according to the Telegram, William Kincade sang “Tolstoi’s Good Bye.” Some one sings it every now and then.
Among the forty-six professors removed from the universities of Greece were, we understand, all those holding the chair of Greek. Another blow at the classics.
LITERATURE
A great deal of very good writing has been done by invalids, but it is not likely that anybody ever produced a line worth remembering while suffering with a plain cold.
We were saying to our friend Dr. Empedocles that we kept our enthusiasms green by never taking anything very seriously. “That’s interesting,” said he: “I, too, have kept my enthusiasm fresh, and I have always taken everything seriously.” The two notions seemed irreconcilable, but we presently agreed that by having a great number and variety of enthusiasms one is not likely to ride any of them to death. We all know persons who wear out an enthusiasm by taking it as solemnly as they would a religious rite.
We were sure that the headline, “Mint at Chicago Greatly Needed, Houston Says,” would inspire more than one reader to remark that the mint is the least important part of the combination.
We are reminded of the experience of a friend who has a summer place in Connecticut. At church the pastor announced a fund for some war charity, and asked for contributions. Our friend sent in fifty dollars, and a few days later inquired of the pastor how much money had been raised, “Fifty-five dollars and seventy-five cents,” was the answer. The pastor had contributed five dollars.
SONG
[In the manner of Laura Blackburn.]
I quested Love with timid feet,
And many qualms and perturbations —
Hoping yet fearing we should meet,
Because I knew my limitations.
When Love I spied I fetched a sigh —
A sigh a Tristan might expire on:
“I must apologize,” said I,
“For not resembling Georgie Byron.”
Love laughed and said, “You know I’m blind,”
And pinched my ear, the little cutie!
“Her heart and yours shall be entwined,
Tho’ you were twice as shy on beauty.”
Throwing self-interest to the winds, a Chicago sweetshop advertises: “That we may have a part in the effort to bring back normal conditions and reduce the high cost of living, our prices on chocolates and bon-bons are now one dollar and fifty cents per pound.”
Persons who are so o. f. as to like rhyme with their poetry may discover another reason for their preference in the following passage, which Edith Wyatt quotes from Oscar Wilde:
“Rime, that exquisite echo which in the Muse’s hollow hill creates and answers its own voice; rime, which in the hands of the real artist becomes not merely a material element of material beauty, but a spiritual element of thought and passion also, waking a new mood, it may be, or stirring a fresh train of ideas, or opening by mere sweetness and suggestion of sound some golden door at which the Imagination itself had knocked in vain; rime which can turn man’s utterance to the speech of gods” —
We promised Miss Wyatt that the next time we happened on the parody of Housman’s “Lad,” we would reprint it; and yesterday we stumbled on it. Voila! —
THE BELLS OF FROGNAL LANE
They sound for early Service
The bells of Frognal Lane;
And I am thinking of the day
I shot my cousin Jane.
At Frognal Lane the Service
Begins at half-past eight,
And some folk get there early
While others turn up late.
But, come they late or early,
I ne’er shall be again
The careless chap of days gone by
Before I murdered Jane.
We have been looking over “Forms Suggested for Telegraph Messages,” issued by the Western Union. While more humorous than perhaps was intended, they fall short of the forms suggested by Max Beerbohm, in “How Shall I Word It?” As for example:
LETTER IN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF WEDDING PRESENT
Dear Lady Amblesham,
Who gives quickly, says the old proverb, gives twice. For this reason I have purposely delayed writing to you, lest I should appear to thank you more than once for the small, cheap, hideous present you sent me on the occasion of my recent wedding. Were you a poor woman, that little bowl of ill-imitated Dresden china would convict you of tastelessness merely; were you a blind woman, of nothing but an odious parsimony. As you have normal eyesight and more than normal wealth, your gift to me proclaims you at once a Philistine and a miser (or rather did so proclaim you until, less than ten seconds after I had unpacked it from its wrappings of tissue paper, I took it to the open window and had the satisfaction of seeing it shattered to atoms on the pavement). But stay! I perceive a flaw in my argument. Perhaps you were guided in your choice by a definite wish to insult me. I am sure, on reflection, that this is so. I shall not forget.
Yours, etc.
Cynthia Beaumarsh.
PS. My husband asks me to tell you to warn Lord Amblesham to keep out of his way or to assume some disguise so complete that he will not be recognized by him and horsewhipped.
PPS. I am sending copies of this letter to the principal London and provincial newspapers.
We hope that Max Beerbohm read far enough in Bergson to appreciate what Mr. Santayana says of that philosopher. He seems to feel, wrote G. S. (we quote from memory), that all systems of philosophy existed in order to pour into him, which is hardly true, and that all future systems would flow out of him, which is hardly necessary.
To a great number of people all reasoning and comment is superficial that is not expressed in the jargon of sociology and political economy. Expand a three-line paragraph in that manner and it becomes profound.
SING A SONG OF SPRINGTIME
Sing a song of springtime, things begin to grow;
Four and twenty bluebirds darting to and fro;
When the morning opened the birds began to sing.
Wasn’t that a pretty day to set before a king!
The King was on the golf links, chopping up the ground;
The Queen was in the garden, planting seeds around.
When the King returned, after many wasted hours,
“Don’t ever say,” the Queen exclaimed, “that you are fond of flowers.”
Mike Neckyoke drives a taxi in Rhinelander, Wis., and you have only one guess at what he used to drive.
From Philadelphia comes word of the nuptials of Mr. Tunis and Miss Fisch. Tunis, we leapingly conclude, is the masculine form!
We have the card of another chimney sweep, who is “sole agent for wind in chimneys and furnaces.” His name is MacDraft, which may be another nom de flume.
The anti-fat brigade may be intrigued to learn that Mr. George Squibb of Wareham, Eng., sought death in the sea at Swanage, but was unable to stay under the water because of his corpulence.
Not long ago a mule broke a leg by kicking a man in the head, and this week a horse broke a leg in the same way; in each case the man was not seriously injured. Is this merely luck, or is evolution modifying the human coco?
More building is the solution of the unemployment problem. The unemployed are never so occupied and contented as when watching the construction of a sky-scraper.
Her publishers having announced that Ellen Glasgow has “gone into leather,” Keith Preston explains that going into leather is “like receiving the accolade, taking the veil, or joining the American Academy of Arts and Letters.” And we suppose that when one goes into ooze leather, or is padded, one may be said to be fini.