IT HAS BEEN DONE.

Sir: Broke friend wife’s favorite Victrola record. Told her about it. She came back with, “Well, that’s the only record you ever broke.” Do you think she was bawling me out or was she paying me a compliment? E.P.P.

“Will the Devil complete the capture of the modern church?” inquires the Rev. Mr. Straton of New York. Why is it assumed that the Old Boy is attempting to capture it? People go to the Devil; the Devil doesn’t have to chase after them. The notion that Old Nick, is always around drumming up business is an example of the inordinate vanity of man.

[p 117]
Dean Jones of Yale is credited with this definition of freedom of speech: “The liberty to say what you think without thinking what you say.”

“ON SUCH A NIGHT…”
[From the Bethany, Mo., Clipper.]

After the serving of light refreshments the young ladies repaired to the third floor and “tripped the light fantastic” while music waved eternal wands. And then the whole company flocked in and enjoyed the beauties of this grand home, lingering and chatting, with the enchanted spell of the glorious evening still strong upon each one, until the crescent moon had veiled her face and the vain young night trembled over her own beauty. And then with expressed regrets that the hours had flown so rapidly the guests bade a fair good night to their charming hostess.

TEMPERATURE.

An idea pushed along to us by L.O.K. has no doubt been seriously considered by the Congress. It is to move the tubes of all thermometers up an inch on the scale every fall, and down an inch in the spring. This would make our winter temperature much more endurable, and our summer temp. delightful.

[p 118]
LET US PERISH, RATHER, BY DEGREES.

Sir: Before the Congress adopts the idea of L.O.K. to move the tubes of all thermometers up an inch on the scale every fall and down an inch in the spring, I rush to inquire how shall we, who possess only a two inch thermometer, on which an inch covers at least 70 degrees, be able to withstand the extremes of climate? May I not suggest that the Congress be petitioned to make the move by degrees instead of inches, and thus avoid great suffering? L.J.R.

You may have noted—nearly everybody else did—that Jean Paige and Albert Smith were married in Paris, Ill., “at the farm residence of Mr. and Mrs. Wigfall O’Hair.” The Academy of Immortals attended in a body.

Commuters discuss many interesting topics, including the collection of garbage. Mac was reminded of a Michigan lady of his acquaintance who, with a new maid, was trying to pull off a very correct luncheon. In the midst of it the maid appeared and said, “Oh, Mrs. Kennedy, the garbage man wants a dime.” The hostess, without batting an eye, replied: “We are having company to-day. Better get a quarter’s worth.”

“‘My mind is open on the question of garbage disposal,’ Alderman Link declared.”

You know what he means.

[p 119]
HYMN OF HATE.
(Reprinted at request of Mr. Hoover.)

[p 120]
Since prohibition came in, says the Onion King, Americans have taken to eating onions. As Lincoln prophesied, this nation is having a new breath of freedom.

Asked what the racket was all about, the inspired waiter at the Woman’s Athletic Club replied, “It’s the Vassar illumini.”

In a soi-disant democracy “personal liberty” is an empty phrase, bursting with nothingness. Personal liberty is to be enjoyed only under a benevolent autocracy. It is contained wholly in the code of King Pausole:

“I.—Ne nuis pas À ton voisin.

“II.—Ceci bien compris, fais ce qu’il te plaÎt.”

There are many definitions of “optimist” and “pessimist.” As good as another is one that the Hetman of the Boul Mich Cossacks is fond of quoting: “An optimist is a man who sees a great light where there is none. A pessimist is a man who comes along and blows out the light.”

“Two-piano playing is more or less of a sport, as the gardeners say,” observes Mr. Aldrich in the New York Times. And we are reminded of Philip Hale’s review of a two-piano recital. “We have heard these two gentlemen separately without being greatly stirred,” he said in effect, “but [p 121] />their combination was like bringing together the component parts of a seidlitz powder.”

Writes H.D., at present in Loz Onglaze: “Alphonse Daudet says that the sun is the real liar, that it alone is responsible for all the exaggerations of its favorite children of the south.” And you know what the sun does to Californians.

The Paris decision suggests a neat form letter for collection lawyers: “We hope that you will not place us under the necessity of envisaging the grave situation which will be created if you persist in failing to meet this obligation.”

FOR WHICH MUCH THANKS.

Sir: The Heraminer relates that James K. Hackett has refused to play the title rÔle in “Mary, Queen of Scots.” Gosh, but this is a relief! G.D.C.

THE SECOND POST.
[An order for a picture.]

Dear Sirs: I am sending you two photos and $5. I want you to have this work done as perfect as possible, there is a little alteration which I want made, which you will see as follows. Take the man from the single picture, which is my father, and paint him standing behind my mother which is setting in the chair on the grupe picture, [p 122] />or put him setting in another chair beside the girl on the same picture whichever you think will look the best to make a good picture, but I want the four persons in one big good picture. You will see that the picture has a redish flair, please try to get the others without any of that, also you will see that our eyes in the grupe picture is raised too high, please fix them looking natural, also put our eyebrows thick and natural, and make our faces as pleasant looking as possible, also you will notice in the picture that the girls dress is not sitting good from the waist down, please fix that setting smoothly as the breeze was blowing so hard in the yard that I could not keep my skirt setting in good shape around me, so please rectefy all these foults which I mention and make me a good picture as I want it to keep in memory of my family as we are now; you may put it in rich brown or sepia pastel whichever you think suits the picture the best, let the photoes be enlarged but full stature the same as the origenal.

A FIG FOR CEREMONY!
[From the East Peoria Post.]

New Year’s Day our young friends, Miss Hattie Cochran and Mr. Elias King, without any ceremony at all were united in the bonds of holy wedlock.

[p 123]
THE SECOND POST.
[Received by the Chief of Police of Wichita, Kas.]

Der Sir: I am writing you to know if you have seen any thing of my wife in Wichita. She run off from me and a feller told me he seen her in Wichita having a big time. She is kinder Red Headed tolerable tall and has got a prety Bust in fact she is perfectly made up and you mite know of her by a Thing she has got tattooed on her rite thigh kindly in front of her leg. I think they aimed it for a Hart with L.M. in it but they kinder made a bum job of it and it is hard to make out what it is. If you here of her let me know it at wounced and I will come rite up fur her fur I want to See her bad. eny thing you let me no Surtenly will be appreciate. Yours truly, (Name on File).

P.S.—I may come rite to Wichita myself and see if I can find her, but you keep a look out fur her.

… What may interest you is that one of the Fords was owned by A.F. Fender.

OPEN THE GATES!

Sir: That sound of hoof-beats heralds the arrival, to join the Immortals, of Royal Ryder, a mounted copper in San Francisco. G. Gray Shus.

[p 124]
Thanks to fifteen or twenty observant travelers for the info that the manager of the drug department of the Alexander Drug Co. in Omaha is George Salzgiver.

MISTER TOBIN, EDUCATOR.

It is not nice of readers to try to take advantage of our innocence. M.L.J., for example, writes out the valve-handle wheeze in longhand [p 125] />and assures us that “it is an exact copy of a letter received by a stove manufacturing company in St. Louis, from a customer in Arkansas.”

VARIANT OF THE VALVE-HANDLE WHEEZE.
(Received by a drug concern.)

Gentlemen: Your postal received, regarding an order which you sent us and which you have not, as yet, received.

Upon referring to our records, we fail to find any record of ever having received the order in question. The last order received from your firm was for a pair of flat cylindrical lenses to match broken sample you enclosed. This was taken care of the same day as received and sent on to you, properly addressed. We would suggest that you enter tracer with the postoffice department in endeavor to locate the package.

Regretting that it is necessary for us to give you this information, we remain, etc.

P.S. Since writing the above, the order in question was received at this office—this morning.

THE VALVE-HANDLE SNEEZE.

Sir: The handle on the valve is missing, and I can’t turn off the radiator. The room was hot, and I’ve had to “open wide the windows, open [p 126] />wide the door.” The resultant draft has just brought a series of “kerchoos” out of me. Valve-handle sneezes, I called them. SimNic.

Miss Emily Davis weds Mrs. Charles Parmele.—Wilmington, N.C., Dispatch.

Why don’t the men propose, mama, why don’t the men propose?

THE SANDS OF TIME.

Whenever I observe a quartette of commuters at cards I regret that the hours I gave to mastering whist were not given instead to the study of Greek.

“The military salute,” says our neighbor on the left, “is a courtesy of morale when it proceeds from one fighting man to another.” This was impressed in 1918 upon a colored recruit who was hauled up for not saluting his s. o. His explanation was, “Ah thought you and me had got so well acquainted Ah didn’t have to salute you no mo’.”

THE TRUTH AT LAST!

Sir: Socrates and Epictetus did not learn Greek at 81—they were Greeks. It was the Roman Cato who began to study Greek at80. C.E.C.

[p 127]
Now that we all know it was neither Socrates nor Epictetus who learned Greek at 81 (because, you see, being Greeks they did not have to study the language), you may like to know something about Julius CÆsar. He was, narrates a high school paper, “the noblest of English kings. He learned Latin late in life in order to translate an ecclesiastical work into the vernaculary of the common people.”

We are reminded by our learned friend, W.F.Y., that Socrates began at 64 to study English, but had to give it up as a bad job. “The fact,” he says, “is interestingly set forth in Montefiori’s ‘Eccentricities of Genius.’”

The attitude of our universities and other quasi-educational institutions toward Greek is that 81 is the proper age for beginning the study of it.

Breathing defiance of the Eighteenth Amendment, Jay Rye and Jewel Bacchus were married in Russellville, Ark., last Sunday.

The Wetmore Shop, on Belmont avenue, advertises “Everything for the baby.”

Sir: I feel that the time has come to call your attention to a letter received from C.A. Neuenhahn, of St. Louis. It concludes CAN/IT. A.E.W.

[p 128]
Persons who cannot compose 200 words of correct and smooth running English will write to a newspaper to criticize a “long and labored editorial.” A labored editorial is one with which a reader does not agree.

THINK OF IT!

[p 129]
The headline, “U.S. to Seize Wet Doctors,” has led many readers to wonder whether the government will get after the nurses next.

We have always been in sympathy with President Wilson’s idea of democracy. He expressed it perfectly when he was president of Princeton. “Unless I have entire power,” said he, “how can I make this a democratic college?”

The complete skeptic is skeptical about skepticism; and there is one day in the round of days, this one, when he may lay aside his glasses, faintly tinted blue, and put on instead, not the rose-colored specs of Dr. Pangloss, but a glass that blurs somewhat the outlines of men and things; and these he may wear until midnight. The only objects which this glass does not blur are children. Seen through blue, or rose, or white, children are always the same. They have not changed since Bethlehem.

A very good motto for any family is that which the Keiths of Scotland selected a-many years ago: “They say. What say they? Let them say.” It might even do for the top of this Totem-Pole of Tooralay.

A frequent question since the war began is, “Why are there so many damn fools in the faculties of American universities?” Chancellor [p 130] />Williams of Wooster turns light on the mystery. Eminent educators who are also damn fools are hypermorons, who are intellectual but not truly intelligent. He says of these queer beings:

“The hypermoron may laugh in imitation of others, but he has no original humor and very little original wit. The cause for this is that original wit and humor require unusual combinations of factors; but the very nature of the hypermoron is that he does not arrange and perceive such combinations. When the hypermoron does cause laughter from some speech or action, usually he resents it. But when a normal man unconsciously does or says something laughable, he himself shares in making sport of himself. Though at times amiable, the hypermoron invariably takes himself so seriously as in a long acquaintance to become tiresome.”

THE ENRAPTURED SOCIETY EDITOR.
[From the Charlotte, Ky., Chronicle.]

The lovely and elegant home of that crown prince of hospitality, the big hearted and noble souled Ab. Weaver, was a radiant scene of enchanting loveliness, for Cupid had brought one of his finest offerings to the court of Hymen, for the lovable Miss Maude, the beautiful daughter of Mr. Weaver and his refined and most excellent wife, who is a lady of rarest charms and sweetest [p 131] />graces, dedicated her life’s ministry to Dr. James E. Hobgood, the brilliant and gifted and talented son of that ripe scholar and renowned educator, the learned Prof. Hobgood, the very able and successful president of the Oxford Female college.

THE MISCHIEVOUS MAKE-UP MAN.
[From the Markesan, Wis., Herald.]

It is a wise man who knows when he has made a fool of himself.

A baby boy was born to Mr. and Mrs. Emil Zimmerman of Mackford yesterday.

WHY THE MAKE-UP MAN LEFT TOWN.
[From the Grinnell Review.]

Born, April 19, to Professor and Mrs. J.P. Ryan, a daughter.

This experience suggests that simple scientific experiments performed by college students would furnish a very interesting program of entertainment in any community.

COOL, INDEED!
[From the Tuttle, N.D., Star.]

At the burning of a barn in Steele recently, our superintendent displayed some nerve and pluck. Miss Sherman did not wait for the men to get there but hastened to the barn without stopping [p 132] />to dress, and in bare feet untied the horses before they had become unmanageable thus saving them with little trouble. There is not a man, we venture to say, in all Steele but would have stopped to put on his pants before venturing out into the crisp air, but she did not, her whole thought being of the dumb animals imperiled, and it was, indeed, a nervy and cool-headed performance.

RHYMED DEVOTION.
[Robert Louis Stevenson to his wife.]

[p 133]
Lacking the equipment of the monk in Daudet’s tale, an amateur distiller is gauging his output with an instrument used for testing the fluid in his motor car’s radiator. “Yesterday,” reports P.D.P., “he confided to me that he had some thirty below zero stuff.”

Fish talk to each other, Dr. Bell tells the Geographic society; a statement which no one will doubt who has ever seen a pair of goldfish in earnest conversation.

According to Dr. Eliot, Americans are more and more becoming subject to herd impulses, gregarious impulses, common emotions, and he is considerably annoyed. Heaven be praised if what he says be true! He would have individuality released; which is precisely what we do not want. Americans are not individuals, and they are not free; but they think they are. Therefore is America, in these troublous times, an island in chaos, where civilization, like Custer, will make its last stand.

Doctors disagree as to whether 70 degrees is the proper temperature for an apartment. This will intrigue a friend of ours who, preferring 60 degrees himself, is obliged to maintain a temperature of almost 80 because of his mother-in-law.

[p 134]
“Women,” says Dr. Ethel Smyth, of London (perhaps you know Ethel), “women have undoubtedly invaluable work to do as composers.” Quite so. And any time they are ready to begin we’ll sit up and take notice.

Sh-h-h! On Main street in Buffalo, near the Hotel Iroquois, you can have “Tattooing Done Privately Inside.”

Shall we not revise Shakespeare:

A NEW FIRM IN FISH.
[From the Kearney Neb., Democrat.]

Fresh Smoked Finn & Haddies at Keller’s Market.

Our interest in baseball has waned, but we still can watch workmen on a skyscraper throwing and catching red-hot rivets.

The dinosaur, having two sets of brains (as we once pointed out in imperishable verse), was able to reason a priori and a posteriori with equal facility. But what we started to mention was an ad in the American Lumberman calling for “a [p 135] />good all around yellow pine office man of broad wholesale experience, well posted on both ends.”

Among the new publications of Richard G. Badger we lamp, “Nervous Children: Their Prevention and Management.”

Unrelieved pessimism rather shocks us. In spite of everything we are willing to look on the bright side. We are willing to agree that, in some previous incarnation, we may have inhabited a crookeder world than this.

The valued News, of New York, dismisses lightly the fear that the Puritan Sabbath will be restored. Ten or twenty years ago people dismissed as lightly the fear that Prohibition would be saddled on the country. On his way to the compulsory Wednesday-evening prayer meeting, a few years hence, the editor of the News will recall his cheerful and baseless prediction in 1920.

Fired by liquor, men maltreat their wives. These wretches deserve public flogging; hanging were a compliment to some of them. On the other hand, men made emotional by liquor have conceived an extravagant fondness for their wives. We have not read about liquor floating the matrimonial bark over the shallows of domestic [p 136] />discord; yet men who have fared homeward with unsteady footsteps under the blinking stars, know that in such moments they are much more humane than in sober daylight; they are appalled by their own unworthiness, and thinking of their wives moves them almost to tears—quite, not infrequently. They resolve to become better husbands and fathers. The spirit of the wine in them captains “an army of shining and generous dreams,” an army that is easily routed, an army that the wife too often puts to flight with an injudicious criticism. It is said that since Prohibition came in the cases of cruelty to wives have increased greatly in number. We do not disbelieve this. Bluebeard was a dry.

WHAT DO YOU SUPPOSE HE WANTS?
[Received by Farm Mechanics.]

Gentlemen: Will you please send me a specimen copy of the Farm Mechanics. I would like a sample of the Farm Mechanics very much. I sincerely trust that you will mail me a sample copy of Farm Mechanics as I want to see a specimen of your Farm Mechanics very much. Yours very truly, etc.

Although Mrs. Elizabeth Hash has retired from the hotel business, Mrs. Peter Lunch has undertaken to manage the Metropole cafeteria in Fargo, N.D.

[p 137]
POEMS OF SENTIMENT AND REFLECTION.
Sioux Falls
[From the Sioux Falls Press.]

We confess a fondness for verse like the foregoing, and hope some day to find a poem as good as that masterpiece—