A FEW MORE “BEST BAD LINES.”
Why leapest thou,
Why leapest thou
So high within my breast?
Oh, stay thee now,
Oh, stay thee now,
Thou little bounder, rest!
– Ruskin (at 12).
Something had happened wrong about a bill,
Which was not drawn with true mercantile skill,
So to amend it I was told to go
To seek the firm of Clutterbuck & Co.
– George Crabbe.
But let me not entirely overlook
The pleasure gathered from the rudiments
Of geometric science.
– Wordsworth.
Israel in ancient days
Not only had a view
Of Sinai in a blaze,
But heard the Gospel too.
– Cowper.
Flashed from his bed the electric message came;
He is no better; he is much the same.
– A Cambridge prize poem.
A household hinter advises that “if the thin white curtains blow into the gas and catch fire sew small lead weights into the seams.” Before doing this, however, it would be wise to turn in an alarm.
The orchestra was playing too loud to suit the manager, so he complained to the leader. “The passage is written in forte,” said the latter. “Well, make it about thirty-five.”
SEIZE HIM, SCOUTS!
Sir: I submit for the consideration of the new school of journalism the following, recently perpetrated by an aspiring young journalist: “Information has been received that Mrs. Blank, who was spending a vacation of several weeks in Colorado, was killed in an automobile accident over long distance telephone by her husband.” Calcitrosus.
“THAT’S GOOD.”
Sir: A man and three girls were waiting for the bus. The driver slowed up long enough to call, “Full house!” “Three queens!” responded the waiting cit, and turned disgustedly away. X. T. C.
WHY BANK CLERKS ARE TIRED
Sir: Voice over the telephone: “Please send me two check books.”
B. C.: “Large or small?”
V. o. t. t.: “Well, I don’t write such very large checks, but sometimes they amount to a hundred dollars.” Jane.
“Why not make room for daddy?” queries the editor of the Emporia Gazette, with a break in his voice. Daddy, we hardly need say, is the silently suffering member of the household who hasn’t a large closet all to himself, with rows of, shiny hooks on which to hang his duds.
Ah, yes, why not make room for daddy? It is impossible to contemplate daddy’s pathetic condition without bursting into tears. Votes for women? Huh! Hooks for men!
“NATION-WIDE.”
How anybody can abide
That punk expression, “nation-wide” —
How one can view unhorrified
That vile locution, nation-wide,
I cannot see. I almost died
When first I spotted nation-wide.
On every hand, on every side,
On every page, is nation-wide.
To everything it is applied;
No matter what, it’s nation-wide.
The daily paper’s pet and pride:
They simply dote on nation-wide.
It seems if each with t’other vied
To make the most of nation-wide.
No doubt the proof-room Argus-eyed
Approves the “style” of nation-wide.
My colleagues fall for it, but I’d
Be damned if I’d use nation-wide.
It gets my goat, and more beside,
That phrase atrocious, nation-wide.
Abomination double-dyed,
Away, outrageous “nation-wide”!
Speaking of local color, B. Humphries Brown and Bonnie Blue were wedded in Indianapolis.
Married, in Evansville, Ind., Ellis Shears and Golden Lamb. Something might be added about wool-gathering.
Embarrassed by the riches of modern literature at our elbow, we took refuge in Jane Austen, and re-read “Mansfield Park,” marvelling again at its freshness. They who hold that Mark Twain was not a humorist, or that he was at best an incomplete humorist, have an argument in his lack of appreciation of Jane Austen.
One of the most delightful things about the author of “Mansfield Park” that we have seen lately is an extract from “Personal Aspects of Jane Austen,” by Miss Austen-Leigh. “Each of the novels,” she says, “gives a description, closely interwoven with the story and concerned with its principal characters, of error committed, conviction following, and improvement effected, all of which may be summed up in the word ‘Repentance.’”
Almost as good is Miss Austen-Leigh’s contradiction of the statement that sermons wearied Jane. She quotes the author’s own words: “I am very fond of Sherlock’s Sermons, and prefer them to almost any.” What a lot of amusement she must have had, shooting relatives and friends through the hat!
Was there ever a character more delightfully detestable than Mrs. Norris? Was there ever another character presented, so alive and breathing, in so few pen strokes? Jane Austen had no need of psychoanalysis.
As for William Lyons Phelps’ remark, which a contrib has quoted, that “too much modern fiction is concerned with unpleasant characters whom one would not care to have as friends,” how would you like to spend a week-end with the characters in “The Mayor of Casterbridge”? With the exception of the lady in “Two on a Tower,” and one or two others, Mr. Hardy’s characters are not the sort that one would care to be cast away with; yet will we sit the night out, book in hand, to follow their sordid fortunes.
“What I want to know is,” writes Fritillaria, “whether you think Jane Austen drew Edmund and Fanny for models, or knew them for the unconscionable prigs they are. I am collecting votes.” Well, we think that Jane knew they were prigs, but nevertheless had, like ourself, a warm affection for Fanny. Fanny Price, Elizabeth Bennet, and Anne (we forget her last name) are three of the dearest girls in fiction.
We are reminded by F. B. T. that the last name of the heroine of “Persuasion” was Elliott. Anne is our favorite heroine – except when we think of Clara Middleton.
Space has been reserved for us in the archæological department of the Field Museum for Pre-Dry wheezes, which should be preserved for a curious posterity. We have filed No. 1, which runs:
“First Comedian: ‘Well, what made you get drunk in the first place?’ Second Comedian: ‘I didn’t get drunk in the first place. I got drunk in the last place.’”
Our budding colyumist (who, by the way, has not thanked us for our efforts in his behalf) will want that popular restaurant gag: “Use one lump of sugar and stir like hell. We don’t mind the noise.”
“What,” queries R. W. C., “has become of the little yellow crabs that floated in the o. f. oyster stew?” Junsaypa. We never found out what became of the little gold safety pins that used to come with neckties.
An innovation at the Murdock House in Shawano, Wis., is “Bouillon in cups,” instead of the conventional tin dipper.
By the way, has any candid merchant ever advertised a Good Riddance Sale?
Much has been written about Mr. Balfour in the last twelvemonth; and Mr. Balfour himself has published a book, a copy of which we are awaiting with more or less impatience. Mr. Balfour is not considered a success as a statesman, because he has always looked upon politics merely as a game; and Frank Harris once wrote that if A. B. had had to work for a living he might have risen to original thought – whatever that may imply.
What we have always marveled at is Balfour’s capacity for mental detachment. In the first year of the war he found time to deliver, extempore, the Gifford lectures, and in the next year he published “Theism and Humanism.” It is said, of course, that he had a great gift for getting or allowing other people to do his work in the war council and the admiralty; but that does not entirely explain his brimming mind.
“There is a fine old man,” as one of our readers reported his Irish gardener as saying of A. B. “Did you know Mr. Balfour?” he was asked. “Did I know him?” was the reply. “Didn’t I help rotten-egg him in Manchester twinty-five years ago!”
Col. Fanny Butcher relates that the average reader who patronizes the New York public library prefers Conan Doyle’s detective stories to any others. Quite naturally. There is more artistry in Poe, and the tales about the Frenchman, Arsène Lupin, are ten times more ingenious than Doyle’s; but Doyle has infused the adventures of Sherlock Holmes with the undefinable something known as romance, and that has preserved them. The great majority of detective stories are merely ingenious.
Col. Butcher says she uses “The Crock of Gold” to test the minds of people. A friend of ours employs “Zuleika Dobson” for the same purpose. What literary acid do you apply?
Our compliments to Mrs. Borah, who possesses a needed sense of humor. “If,” she is reported as saying to her husband, “if it were not for the pleasures of life you might enjoy it.”
A librarian confides to us that she was visited by a young lady who wished to see a large map of France. She was writing a paper on the battlefields of France for a culture club, and she just couldn’t find Flanders’ Fields and No Man’s Land on any of the maps in her books.
A sign, reported by B. R. J., in a Cedar Rapids bank announces: “We loan money on Liberty bonds. No other security required.” Showing that here and there you will find a banker who is willing to take a chance.
The first object of the National Parks association is “to fearlessly defend the national parks and monuments against assaults of private interests.” May we not hope that the w. k. infinitive also may be preserved intact?
A missionary from the Chicago Woman’s Club lectured in Ottawa on better English and less slang, and the local paper headed its story: “Bum Jabber Binged on Beezer by Jane With Trick Lingo.”
Young Grimes tells us that he would like to share in the advantages of Better Speech weeks, but does not know where to begin. We have started him off with the word “February.” If at the end of the week he can pronounce it Feb-ru-ary we shall give him the word “address.”
“This, being Better English week, everyone is doing their best to improve their English.” – Quincy, Mich., Herald.
Still, Jane Austen did it.
BETTER ENGLISH IN THE BEANERY
Waiter: “Small on two – well!”
Chef: “Small well on two!” Tip.
HAPPY THOUGHT
This world is so full of a number of singers,
We need not be bluffed any longer by ringers.
The Magic Kit
A FAIRY TALE FOR SYMPATHETIC ELDERS
I
Once upon a time, not far removed from yesterday, there lived a poor book reviewer named Abner Skipp. He was a kindly man and an excellent husband and a most congenial soul to chat with, for he possessed a store of information on the most remote and bootless subjects drawn from his remarkable library – an accumulation of volumes sent to him for review, and which he had been unable to dispose of to the dealers in second-hand books. For you are to understand that too little literary criticism is done on a cash basis. Occasionally a famous author, like Mr. Howells, is paid real money to write something about Mr. James, or Mr. James is substantially rewarded for writing about Mr. Howells, and heads of departments and special workers are handsomely remunerated; but the journeyman reviewer is paid in books; and these are the source of his income.
Thus, every morning in the busy season, or perhaps once a week when trade was dull, Abner Skipp journeyed from the suburbs to the city with his pack of books on his back, and made the rounds of the second-hand shops, disposing of his wares for whatever they would fetch. Novels, especially what are known as the “best sellers,” commanded good prices if they were handled, like fruit, without delay; but they were such perishable merchandise that oftentimes a best seller was dead before Abner could get it to market; and as he frequently reviewed the same novel for half a dozen employers, and therefore had half a dozen copies of it in his pack, the poor wretch was sadly out of pocket, being compelled to sell the dead ones to the junkman for a few pennies.
Abner Skipp was an industrious artisan and very skillful at his trade; working at top speed, he could review more than a hundred books in a day of eight hours. In a contest of literary critics held in Madison Square Garden, New York, Abner won first prize in all three events – reviewing by publisher’s slip, reviewing by cover, and reviewing by title page. But shortly after this achievement he had had the misfortune to sprain his right arm in reviewing a new edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which accident so curtailed his earning power that he fell behind in a money way, and was compelled to mortgage his home. But Abner Skipp was a cheerful, buoyant soul; and as his arm grew better and he was again able to wield the implements of his trade, he set bravely to work to mend his broken fortunes.
II
If Abner Skipp had had nothing but popular novels to review he would assuredly have perished of starvation, but frequently he received a medical work, or a history, or a volume of sportive philosophy by William James, or some such valuable work, which he could sell for a round sum. There was always plenty to do – all the best magazines employed him, and twice in the year – a month in spring and a month in fall – books came to him in such numbers that the expressman dumped them into the house through a shute like so many coals.
Mrs. Skipp assisted her husband all she could, but being a frail little woman she was able to work on only the lightest fiction. Angelica, the oldest daughter, cleared the book bin of a good deal of poetry and gift books, and even Grandpa Skipp was intrusted with a few juveniles.
But none of the family was more helpful than little Harold, who, after school time, worked side by side with his father, trimming the ready made review slips which publishers send out with books, and seeing that the paste pot never got empty or the paste too thick. Harold, as his father often proudly observed, was a born book reviewer. From infancy it was observed that the outside of a book always interested him more than the inside, and once when his school teacher directed him to write a sentence containing the word “book,” he wrote: “The book is attractively bound and is profusely illustrated.”
One evening, in the very busiest week of the busy season, little Harold’s was the only bright face at the supper table. Abner Skipp had had a bad day in the city; Mrs. Skipp and Angelica were exhausted from reviewing and household cares, and Grandpa was peevish because Abner had taken the “Pea Green Fairy Book” away from him and given him instead a “Child’s History of the Congo Free State.”
“What is the matter, Abner?” his wife asked him when the others of the family had retired. “Does your arm hurt you again?”
“No, wife,” replied Abner Skipp. “My arm does not trouble me; I have handled only the lightest literature for the last fortnight. Alas! it is the same old worry. The interest on the mortgage will be due again next week, and in spite of the fact that the cellar is so full of books that I can scarcely get into it, we have not a dollar above the sum required to meet our monthly bills.”
III
“Alas!” exclaimed the hapless Abner Skipp, next morning, “it seems as if nothing was being published this fall except popular novels, and I obtained an average of less than twenty cents on the last sackload I took to town, not counting the dead ones which I sold to the junkman.”
“If only there were some way of keeping them alive for a few days longer!” said Mrs. Skipp. “If one could only stimulate the heart action by injecting strychnine!”
“Or even embalm them,” said Abner, sharing his wife’s grewsome humor. “But no; it is impossible to deceive a second-hand bookseller. He seems to know to the minute when a novel is dead, and declines to turn his shop into a literary morgue.” The poor man sighed. “If my employers would send me a few volumes of biography, or an encyclopedia, or a set of Shakespeare, we could easily meet the interest on the mortgage.”
“I wish, Abner, that I could be of more help to you,” said Mrs. Skipp. “If I could break myself of the habit of glancing at the last chapter of a novel before reviewing it, I could do ever so many more. Angelica is even more thoughtless than I. The poor child declares that some of the stories look so interesting that she forgets her work completely and actually begins to read them. As for Grandpa, he always was a great reader, and consequently has no head at all for reviewing.”
“If Harold were a few years older – ” mused Abner. “But there, wife, we must not spend in vain repining the scant hours allotted to us for sleep. Perhaps the expressman will bring us some scientific books to-morrow. Quite a number were on Appletree’s fall list.”
Abner Skipp kissed his wife affectionately, and presently the house was dark and still. Mrs. Skipp, worn out by the day’s work, went quickly to sleep; but Abner, haunted by the mortgage, passed a restless night. Several times he fancied he heard a noise in the cellar, as if the expressman were dumping another ton of books into the bin. At last, just before dawn, there came a loud thump, as if a volume of Herbert Spencer’s Autobiography had fallen to the floor. Getting out of bed quietly so that his weary wife should not be disturbed, Abner went to the cellar stairway and listened.
A clicking sound was distinctly audible, and a faint light gleamed below.
IV
Cautiously descending the stair, Abner Skipp came upon so strange a sight that with difficulty he restrained himself from crying out his astonishment. Little Harold was seated before a queer mechanism, which resembled a typewriter, spinning wheel, and adding machine combined, engaged in turning the tons of books around him into reviews, as the miller’s daughter spun the straw into gold, in the ancient tale of “Rumpelstiltzkin.”
“Child, what does this mean?” cried the bewildered Abner Skipp. “Father,” replied Harold, “I am lifting the mortgage. Not long ago I saw among the advertisements in the Saturday Home Herald an announcement of a Magic Kit for book reviewers, with a capacity of 300 books per hour. Fortunately I had enough money in my child’s bank to pay the first installment on this wonderful outfit which came to-day. Is it not a marvelous invention, father? Even Grandpa could work it!” Trembling with eagerness Abner Skipp bent over the Magic Kit, while little Harold explained the working of the various parts.
To review a book all that was necessary was to press a few keys, pull a lever or two, and the thing was done. Reviewing by publisher’s slip was simplicity itself; the slips were dropped into a hopper, and presently emerged neatly gummed to sheets of copy paper; and if an extract from the book were desired, a page was quickly torn out and fed in with the slip. Reviewing by title page was almost as rapid. The operator type-wrote the title, author’s name, publisher, price, and number of pages, and then pulled certain levers controlling the necessary words and phrases, such as —
“This latest work is not likely to add to the author’s reputation”; or —
“The book will appeal chiefly to specialists”; or —
“An excellent tale to while away an idle hour”; or —
“The book is attractively bound and is profusely illustrated.”
“Father,” said little Harold, his face glowing, “to-morrow we will hire a furniture van and take all these books to the city.”
“My boy,” cried Abner Skipp, folding his little son in his arms, “you are the little fairy in our home. Surely no other could have done this job more neatly or with greater dispatch; and no fairy wand could be more wonder-working than this truly Magic Kit.”
A LINE-O’-TYPE OR TWO
“Fay ce que vouldras.”
TO B. L. T
(Quintus Horatius Flaccus loquitur.)
Maecenas sprang from royal line,
You spring a Line diurnal.
(Perhaps my joke is drawn too fine
For readers of your journal.)
But what I started out to say,
Across the gulf of ages,
Is that, in our old Roman day,
My patron paid me wages.
No barren wreath of fame was mine
When Mac approved my stuff,
But casks of good Falernian wine,
And slaves and gold enough.
And last, to keep the wolf away
And guard my age from harm,
He gave me in his princely way
My little Sabine farm.
But now, forsooth, your merry crew —
O Tempora! O Mores!—
What do they ever get from you —
Your Laura, Pan, Dolores?
They fill the Line with verse and wheeze,
To them your fame is due.
What do they ever get for these?
Maecenas? Ha! Ha! You?
So as I quaff my spectral wine,
At ease beside the Styx,
Would I contribute to the Line?
Nequaquam! Nunquam! Nix!
Campion.
Our compliments to Old Man Flaccus, whose witty message reminds us to entreat contribs to be patient, as we are snowed under with offerings. For a week or more we have been trying to horn into the column with some verses of our own composing.
BRIGHT SAYINGS OF MOTHER
My respected father came to breakfast on New Year’s Day remarking that he had treated himself to a present by donning a new pair of suspenders, whereupon mother remarked: “Well braced for the New Year, as it were!” C. T. S.
After some years of editing stories of events in high society, a gentleman at an adjacent desk believes he has learned the chief duty of a butler. It is to call the police.
“THAT STRAIN AGAIN – IT HAD A DYING SNORT.”
Sir: Speaking of soft music and the pearly gates, S. T. Snortum is owner and demonstrator of the music store at St. Peter, Minnesota. S. W. E.
Warren, O., has acquired a lady barber, and dinged if her name isn’t Ethel Gillette.
No doubt the Manistee News-Advocate has its reason for running the “hogs received” news under the heading “Hotel Arrivals.”
“I see by an announcement by the Columbia Mills that window shades are down,” communicates W. H. B. “Can it be that the Columbia Mills people are ashamed of something?” Mebbe. Or perhaps they are fixing prices.
“For the lovamike,” requests the Head Scene-Shifter, “keep the Admirable Crichton out of the Column. We have twenty-five presses, and it takes a guard at each press to prevent it from appearing Admiral Crichton.”
Pittsburgh Shriners gave a minstrel show the other night, and the inspired reporter for the Post mentions that “an intermission separated the two parts and broke the monotony.”
A Bach chaconne is on the orchestra programme this week. Some one remarked that he did not care for chaconnes, which moved us to quote what some one else (we think it was Herman Devries) said: “Chaconne à son goût.”
“Pond and Pond Donate $500 to Union Pool Fund.” – Ann Arbor item.
Quite so.
If we had not been glancing through the real estate notes we should never have known that Mystical Schriek lives in Evansville, Ind.
From the Illinois Federal Reporter: “Village of Westville vs. Albert Rainwater. Mr. Rainwater is charged with violation of the ordinance in regard to the sale of soft drinks.” Can Al have added a little hard water to the mixture?
MEMORY TESTS FOR THE HOME
Sir: Friend wife was naming authors of various well known novels, as I propounded their titles. Follows the result:
Me: “The Last Days of Pompeii.” She: “Dante.”
“Les Miserables.” “Huguenot.”
“Adam Bede.” “Henry George.”
“Vanity Fair.” “Why, that’s in Ecclesiastes.”
“Ben Hur.” “Rider Haggard.”
“The Pilgrim’s Progress.” “John Barleycorn.”
“Don Quixote.” (No reply.)
“Waverly.” “Oh, did Waverly write that?”
“Anna Karenina.” “Count Leon Trotsky.” J. C.
We see by the Fargo papers that Mrs. Bernt Wick gave a dinner recently, and we hope that Miss Candle, the w. k. night nurse, was among the guests.
LEVI BEIN’ A GOOD SPORT
Sir: Levi Frost, the leading druggist of Milton Falls, Vt., set a big bottle of medicine in his show window with a sign sayin’ he’d give a phonograph to anybody who could tell how many spoonfuls there was in the bottle. Jed Ballard was comin’ downstreet, and when he seen the sign he went and he sez, sezzee, “Levi,” sezzee, “if you had a spoon big enough to hold it all, you’d have just one spoonful in that bottle.” And, by Judas Priest, Levi give him the phonograph right off. Hiram.
“Basing his sermon on the words of Gesta Romanorum, who in 1473 said, ‘What I spent I had, what I kept I lost, what I gave I have,’ the Rev. Albert H. Zimmerman,” etc. – Washington Post.
As students of the School of Journalism ought to know, the philosopher Gesta Romanorum was born in Sunny, Italy, although some historians claim Merry, England, and took his doctor’s degree at the University of Vivela, in Labelle, France. His Latin scholarship was nothing to brag of, but he was an ingenious writer. He is best known, perhaps, as the author of the saying, “Rome was not built in a day,” and the line which graced the flyleaf of his first edition, “Viae omniae in Romam adducunt.”
“It is a great misfortune,” says Lloyd George, “that the Irish and the English are never in the same temper at the same time.” Nor is that conjuncture encouragingly probable. But there is hope. Energy is required for strenuous rebellion, and energy is converted into heat and dissipated. If, or as, the solar system is running down, its stock of energy is constantly diminishing; and so the Irish Question will eventually settle itself, as will every other mess on this slightly flattened sphere.
Whenever you read about England crumbling, turn to its automobile Blue Book and observe this: “It must be remembered that in all countries except England and New Zealand automobiles travel on the wrong side of the road.”
The first sign of “crumbling” on the part of the British empire that we have observed is the welcome extended to the “quick lunch.” That may get ’em.
LOST AND FOUND
[Song in the manner of Laura Blackburn.]
Whilst I mused in vacant mood
By a wild-thyme banklet,
Love passed glimmering thro’ the wood,
Lost her golden anklet.
Followed I as fleet as dart
With the golden token;
But she vanished – and my heart,
Like the clasp, is broken.
Such a little hoop of gold!
She … but how compare her?
Till Orion’s belt grow cold
I shall quest the wearer.
Next my heart I’ve worn it since,
More than life I prize it,
And, like Cinderella’s prince,
I must advertise it.
Would you mind contributing a small sum, say a dollar or two, to the Keats Memorial Fund. We thought not. It is a privilege and a pleasure. The object is to save the house in which the poet lived during his last years, and in which he did some of his best work. The names of all contributors will be preserved in the memorial house, so it would be a nice idea to send your dollar or two in the name of your small child or grandchild, who may visit Hampstead when he grows up. Still standing in the garden at Hampstead is the plum tree under which Keats wrote,
“Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down.”
Americans who speak at French should confine their conversation to other Americans similarly talented. They should not practise on French people, whose delicate ear is no more proof against impure accent than a stone is proof against dripping water. The mistake which English speaking people make is assuming that French is merely a language, whereas, even in Paris, the speaking of it as much as accomplishment as singing, or painting on china. Many gifted Frenchmen, like M. Viviani, Anatole France, and some other Academicians, speak French extremely well, but even these live in hope of improvement, of some day mastering the finest shades of nasality and cadence, the violet rays of rhythm.
Mr. Masefield, the poet, does not believe that war times nourish the arts. The human brain does its best work, he says, when men are happy. How perfectly true! Look at ancient Greece. She was continually at war, and what did the Grecians do for art? A few poets, a few philosophers and statesmen, a few sculptors, and the story is told. On the other hand, look at England in Shakespeare’s time. The English people were inordinately happy, for there were no wars to depress them, barring a few little tiffs with the French and the Spanish, and one or two domestic brawls. The human brain does its best work when men are happy, indeed. There was Dante, a cheery old party. But why multiply instances?
Having read a third of H. M. Tomlinson’s “The Sea and the Jungle,” we pause to offer the uncritical opinion that this chap gets as good seawater into his copy as Conrad, and that, in the item of English, he can write rings around Joseph.
Like others who have traversed delectable landscapes and recorded their impressions, in memory or in notebooks, we have tried to communicate to other minds the “incommunicable thrill of things”: a pleasant if unsuccessful endeavor. When you are new at it, you ascribe your failure to want of skill, but you come to realize that skill will not help you very much. You will do well if you hold the reader’s interest in your narrative: you will not, except by accident, make him see the thing you have seen, or experience the emotion you experienced.
So vivid a word painter as Tomlinson acknowledges that the chance rewards which make travel worth while are seldom matters that a reader would care to hear about, for they have no substance. “They are no matter. They are untranslatable from the time and place. Such fair things cannot be taken from the magic moment. They are not provender for notebooks.”
He quotes what the Indian said to the missionary who had been talking to him of heaven. “Is it like the land of the musk-ox in summer, when the mist is on the lakes, and the loon cries very often?” These lakes are not charted, and the Indian heard the loon’s call in his memory; but we could not better describe the delectable lands through which we have roamed. “When the mist is on the lakes and the loon cries very often.” What traveler can better that?
Old Bill Taft pulled a good definition of a gentleman t’other day. A gentleman, said he, is a man who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.
Mr. Generous is the claim agent for the New Haven railroad at New Britain, Conn., but a farmer whose cow wandered upon the rails tells us that he lost money by the settlement.
William Benzine, who lives near Rio, Wis., was filling his flivver tank by the light of a lantern when – But need we continue?
Our notion of a person of wide tastes is one who likes almost everything that isn’t popular.
Speaking of the Naval Station, you may have forgotten the stirring ballad which we wrote about it during the war. If so —
YEO-HEAVE-HO!
It was a gallant farmer lad
Enlisted in the navy.
“Give me,” said he, “the deep blue sea,
The ocean wide and wavy!”
A sailor’s uniform he’d don,
And never would he doff it.
He packed his grip, and soon was on
His way to Captain Moffett.
In cap of white and coat of blue
He labored for the nation,
A member of the salty crew
That worked the Naval Station.
He soon became the best of tars,
A seaman more than able,
By sweeping streets, and driving cars,
And waiting on the table.
He guarded gates, and shoveled snow,
And worked upon the highway.
“All lads,” said he, “should plough the sea,
And would if I had my way.”
Week-end he took a trolley car,
And to the city hied him,
Alongside of another tar
Who offered for to guide him.
The train rolled o’er a trestle high,
The river ran below him.
“Well, I’ll be blamed!” our tar exclaimed,
And grabbed his pal to show him.
“Yes, dash my weeping eyes!” he cried.
“That’s water, sure, by gravy!
The first blue water I have spied
Since joining of the navy!”
* * * * *
Now, “landsmen all,” the moral’s plain:
Our navy still is arming,
And if you’d plough the well known main,
You’d best begin by farming.
If you would head a tossing prow
Among our navigators,
Get up at morn and milk the cow,
And yeo-heave-ho the ’taters.
Do up your chores, and do ’em brown,
And learn to drive a flivver;
And some day, when you go to town,
You’ll see the raging river.
The speaker of the House of Commons, who, “trembling slightly with emotion,” declared the sitting suspended, needs in his business the calm of the late Fred Hall. While Mr. Hall was city editor of this journal of civilization an irate subscriber came in and mixed it with a reporter. Mr. Hall approached the pair, who were rolling on the floor, and, peering near-sightedly at them, addressed the reporter: “Mr. Smith, when you have finished with this gentleman, there is a meeting at the Fourth Methodist church which I should like to have you cover.”