Bert Leston Taylor

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.

“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 [p 311] />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 [p 312] />thriving village, although some of the houses need paint.”

pointing hand Old readers detour here—

YES, YES.

Sir: Herbert F. Antunes is a piano tuner in Evanston. L.L.B.

pointing hand 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.”

[p 313]
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.”

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 [p 314] />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.

[p 315]
THE RIDER AND THE ADDER.

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.

[p 316]
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.”

[p 317]
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.

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.”

[p 318]
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.

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.

ROMEO.

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.

[p 321]
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.

[p 322]
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 [p 323] />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.