I sing of arms and heroes, not because I'm thrilled by what these heroes do or die for: The Colyum's readers think they make its laws, And I make out to give them what they cry for.

And since they cry for stuff about the war, Since war at this safe distance not to them's hell, I have to write of things that I abhor, And far, strange battlegrounds like Ypres and Przemysl.

War is an almost perfect rime for bore; And, 'spite my readers (who have cursed and blessed me), Some day I'll throw the war junk on the floor, And write of things that really interest me:

Of books in running brooks, and wilding wings, Of music, stardust, children, casements giving On seas unvext by wars, and other things That help to make our brief life worth the living.

I sing of arms and heroes, just because All else is shadowed by that topic fearful; But I've a mind to chuck it [Loud applause], And tune my dollar harp to themes more cheerful.

* * *

Listen, Laura, Mary, Jessica, Dorothy, and other sweet singers! Gadder Roy, who is toiling over the pitcher-and-bowl circuit, wishes that some poet would do a lyric on that salvation of the traveler, Ham and Eggs. He doubts that it can be done by anybody who has not, time out of mind, scanned a greasy menu in a greasier hashery, and finally made it h. and e.

* * *

WE FEARED WE HAD STARTED SOMETHING.

Sir: Should G. E. Thorpe's typewritten communications carrying the suggestion GET/FAT precede or follow our communications which carry EAT/ME?

E. A. T.

THEY'RE OFF!

Sir: What position in your letter file, respecting the suggestions of GET/FAT, will my typewritten letters land, as they end thusly: "HEL/NO"?

H. E. L.

SWEETLY INEFFECTIVE.

Sir: Perhaps the reason my collection letters have so little effect lately is that these cheerless communications always conclude with JAM/JAR.

J. A. M.

BUT APROPOS.

Sir: All this GET/FAT excitement reminds me of the case, so old it's probably new again, of one Simmons, who wrote letters for one Green, and signed them "Green, per Simmons."

W. S.

SORRY. THERE WERE SEVERAL IN LINE AHEAD OF YOU.

Sir: I have been waiting, very patiently, for some one to inform you that the sincerity of A. L. Lewis, manager of the country elevator department of the Quaker Oats Company, is sometimes made questionable by the initials, ALL/GAS, appearing on his business correspondence.

O. K.

* * *

THE SECOND POST.

[Received by a clothing company.]

Dear Sirs: I received the suits you sent me but in blue not gray as I said. Don't try to send me your refuss, I am sending them back. I ain't color blind or a jack ass, you shouldn't treat me as that. I understand your wife is making coats for ladies now. Have her make one (dark) for my wife who is a stout 42 with a fer neck. Now send me what I asked for, the old woman is perticular. The trousers you sent wouldn't slip over my head. Ever faithful, etc.

* * *

For Academy Ghost, or Familiar Spirit, P. D. Q. nominates Miss Bessie Spectre of Boston.

* * *

"The lake is partially frozen over and well filled with skaters."—Janesville Gazette.

Three children sliding on the ice, Upon a summer's day, As it fell out, they all fell in, The rest they ran away.

Ma Goose.

* * *

There is plenty of snap to the department of mathematics in the Shortridge high school in Indianapolis. The head of the department is Walter G. Gingery.

* * *

Wedded, in Chicago, Otho Neer and Lucille Dimond. Fashion your own setting.

* * *

Oh, dear! Rollin Pease, the singer, is around again, reminding sundry readers of the difficulty of keeping them on a knife.

* * *

"THOSE FLAPJACKS OF BROWN'S."

(Postscriptum.)

I'll write no more verses—plague take 'em!— Court neither your smiles nor your frowns, If you'll only please tell how to make 'em, Those flapjacks of Brown's.

D. W. A.

Three cupfuls of flour will do nicely, And toss in a teaspoon of salt; Next add baking powder, precisely Two teaspoons, the stuff to exalt; Of sugar two tablespoons, heaping— (All spoons should be heaping, says Neal); Then mix it with strokes that are sweeping, And stir like the Deil.

Three eggs. (Tho' the missus may sputter, You'll pay to her protest no heed.) A size-of-an-egg piece of butter, And milk as you happen to need. Now mix the whole mess with a beater; Don't get it too thick or too thin. (And I pause to remark that this meter Is awkward as sin.)

Of course there are touches that only A genius like Brown can impart; And genius is everywhere lonely, And no one but Brown has the art. I picture him stirring—a gentle Exponent of modern Romance, With his shirttails, in style Oriental, Outside of his pants.

* * *

THE DICTATERS.

Sir: I have lost a year's growth since I went into business in answering questions about the letters that appear after my communications—HAM/AND.

H. A. M.

Letters from the vice-president of the Badger Talking Machine Company of Milwaukee are signed JAS/AK. What do you make of that, Watsonius?

The following was typed at the end of a letter received t'other day: "HEE/HA."

Recurring to the dictaters, letters from the O'Meara Paper company of New York are tagged JEW/EM.

Irene, she works for David Meyer, Likes her job, not peeved a bit. But when she ends a letter she Marks it with this sign, DAM/IT.

Ferro.

* * *

Hint to students in the School of journalism: Always begin the description of a tumultuous scene by saying that it is indescribable, and then proceed to describe it until the telegraph editor chokes you off.

* * *

To our young friend who expects to operate a column: Lay off the item about Miss Hicks entertaining Carrie Dedbeete and Ima Proone; it is phony. But the wheeze about the "eternal revenue collector" is still good, and timely.

* * *

"I am a cub reporter," writes W. H. D., "and am going to conduct a column in a few weeks, I think." Zazzo? Well, you can't do better than to start with the announcement that Puls & Puls are dentists in Sheboygan. And you might add that if the second Puls is a son the firm should be Puls & Fils.

* * *

Our cub reporter friend, W. H. D., who expects to run a column presently, should not overlook the sure-fire wheeze, "Shoes shined on the inside."

* * *

Still undiscouraged by the failure of his "shoes shined on the inside" wheeze to get by, the new contrib hopefully sends us the laundry slogan: "Don't kill your wife. Let us do the dirty work."

* * *

When all the world is safe for democracy, only the aristocracy of taste will remain, and this will cover the world. There is hardly a town so small that it does not contain at least one member. All races belong to it, and its passwords are accepted in every capital. Its mysteries are Rosicrucian to persons without taste. And no other aristocracy was ever, or ever will be, so closely and sympathetically knit together.

* * *

Whether Europe and Latin America like it or not, the Monroe Doctrine must and shall be preserved. You may remember the case of the man who was accused of being a traitor. It was charged that he had spoken as disrespectfully of the Monroe Doctrine as Jeffrey once spoke of the Equator. This the man denied vigorously. He avowed that he loved the Monroe Doctrine, that he was willing to fight for it, and, if necessary, to die for it. All he had said was that he didn't know what it was about.

* * *

"There will be no speeches. The entire evening will be given over to entertainment."—Duluth News-Tribune.

At least prohibition is a check on oratory.

* * *

We have just been talking to an optimist, whose nerves have been getting shaky. We fancy that a straw vote of the rocking-chair fleet on a sanitarium porch would show a preponderance of optimists. What brought them there? Worry, which is brother to optimism. We attribute our good health and reasonable amount of hair to the fact that we never flirted with optimism, except for a period of about five years, during which time we lost more hair than in all the years since.

* * *

May we again point out that pessimism is the only cheerful philosophy? The pessimist is not concerned over the so-called yellow peril—at least the pessimist who subscribes to the theory of the degradation of energy. Europe is losing its pep, but so is Asia. There may be a difference of degree, but not enough to keep one from sleeping soundly o' nights. The twentieth or twenty-first century can not produce so energetic a gang as that which came out of Asia in the fifth century.

* * *

"If I had no duties," said Dr. Johnson, "and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a postchaise with a pretty woman." And we wonder whether the old boy, were he living now, would choose, instead, a Ford.

* * *

In time of freeze prepare for thaw. And no better advice can be given than Doc Robertson's: "Keep your feet dry and your gutters open."

* * *

There was an Irish meeting in Janesville the other night, and the press reported that "Garlic songs were sung." And we recall another report of a lecture on Yeats and the Garlic Revival. Just a moment, while we take a look at the linotype keyboard....

* * *

THINGS WORTH KNOWING.

Sir: A method of helping oneself to soda crackers, successfully employed by a traveling man, may be of interest to your boarding house readers. Slice off a small piece of butter, leaving it on the knife, then reach across the table and slap the cracker.

V.

* * *

By the way, Bismarck had a solution of the Irish problem which may have been forgotten. He proposed that the Irish and the Dutch exchange countries. The Dutch, he said, would make a garden of Ireland. "And the Irish?" he was asked. "Oh," he replied, "the Irish would neglect the dikes."

* * *

A city is known by the newspapers it keeps. They reflect the tastes of the community, and if they are lacking in this or that it is because the community is lacking. And so it is voxpoppycock to complain that a newspaper is not what a small minority thinks it ought to be. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our journals, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Dissatisfaction with American newspapers began with the first one printed, and has been increasing steadily since. In another hundred years this dissatisfaction may develop into positive annoyance.

* * *

We tried to have a sign in Los Onglaze translated into French for the benefit of Lizy, the linotype operator who sets this column in Paris, and who says she has yet to get a laugh out of it, but two Frenchmen who tried their hand at it gave it up. Perhaps the compositor at the adjacent machine can randmacnally it for Lizy. Here is the enseigne:

"Flannels washed without shrinking in the rear."

* * *

To the fair Murine: "Drink to me only with thine eyes."

* * *

"Hosiery for Easter," declares an enraptured ad writer in the Houston Post, "reaches new heights of loveliness."

* * *

If the persons who parade around with placards announcing that this or that shop is "unfair" were to change the legend to read, "God is unfair," they might get a sympathetic rise out of us. We might question the assertion that in creating men unequal the Creator was actuated by malice rather than a sense of humor, but we should not insist on the point.

* * *

THE SECOND POST.

[Received by a construction company.]

Dear Sir I an writhing you and wanted to know that can I get a book from your company which will teach me of oprating steam and steam ingean. I was fireing at a plant not long ago and found one of your catalogs and it give me meny good idol about steam. I have been opiratin stean for the last 12 years for I know that there are lots more to learn about steam and I want to learn it so I will close for this time expecting to here from you soon.

* * *

"Since Frank Harris has been mentioned," communicates C. E. L., "it would be interesting to a lot of folks to know just what standing he has in literature." Oh, not much. Aside from being one of the best editors the Saturday Review ever had, one of the best writers of short stories in English or any other language, and one of the most acute critics in the profession, his standing is negligible.

* * *

Our young friend who is about to become a colyumist should certainly include in his first string the restaurant wheeze: "Don't laugh at our coffee. You may be old and weak yourself some day."

* * *

"One sinister eye—the right one—gleamed at him over the pistol."—Baltimore Sun.

No wonder foreigners have a hard time with the American language.

* * *

BALLADE OF THE OUBLIETTE.

And deeper still the deep-down oubliette, Down thirty feet below the smiling day. —Tennyson.

Sudden in the sun An oubliette winks. Where is he? Gone. —Mrs. Browning.

Gaoler of the donjon deep— Black from pit to parapet— In whose depths forever sleep Famous bores whose sun has set, Daily ope the portal; let In the bores who daily bore. Thrust—sans sorrow or regret— Thrust them through the Little Door.

Warder of Oblivion's keep— Dismal dank, and black as jet— Through the fatal wicket sweep All the pests we all have met. Prithee, overlook no bet; Grab them—singly, by the score— And, lest they be with us yet, Thrust them through the Little Door.

Lead them to the awful leap With a merry chansonette; Push them blithely off the steep; We'll forgive them and forget. Toss them, like a cigarette, To the far Plutonian floor. Drop them where they'll cease to fret— Thrust them through the Little Door.

Keeper of the Oubliette, Wouldst thou have us more and more In thine everlasting debt— Thrust them through the Little Door.

* * *

To insure the safety of the traveling public, the Maroon Taxicab Company is putting out a line of armored cabs. These will also be equipped with automatic brakes, so that when a driver for a rival taxicab company shoots a Maroon, the cab will come to a stop.

* * *

A neat and serviceable Christmas gift is a sawed-off shotgun. Carried in your limousine, it may aid in saving your jewels when returning from the opera.

* * *

"The entertainment committee of the Union League Club," so it says, "is with considerable effort spending some of your money to please you." In the clubs to which we belong there is no observable effort.

* * *

Certain toadstools are colored a pizenous pink underneath; a shade which is also found on the cheeks of damosels and dames whom you see on the avenue. Poor kalsomining, we call it.

* * *

When we begin to read a book we begin with the title page; but many people, probably most, begin at "Chapter I." We have recommended books to friends, and they have read them; and then they have said, "Tell me something about the author." The preface would have told them, but they do not read prefaces. Do you?

* * *

Although ongweed to the extinction point by the subject of names, we have no right to assume that the subject is not of lively interest to other people. So let it be recorded that George Demon was arrested in Council Bluffs for beating his wife. Also, Miss Elsie Hugger is director of dancing in the Ithaca Conservatory of Music. Furthermore, S. W. Henn of the Iowa State College was selected as a judge for the National Poultry Show. Moreover, G. O. Wildhack is in the automobile business in Indianapolis, and Mrs. Cataract takes in washing in Peoria. Sleepy weather, isn't it?

* * *

SUCH A ONE MIGHT HAVE DRAWN PRIAM'S CURTAIN IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT, AND TOLD HIM HALF HIS TROY WAS BURNED.

[From the Eagle Grove, Ia., Eagle.]

The Rev. Winter was pastor of the M. E. Church many years ago, at the time it was destroyed by a cyclone. Engineer Sam Wood broke the news to Mr. Winter gently by shouting: "Your church has all blown to hell, Elder!"

* * *

THE ENRAPTURED REPORTER.

[From the Lewisville, Ark., Recorder.]

The evening was most propitious. The air was balmy. The fragrance of flowers was patent in the breeze. The limpid moonlight, in a glow of beauty, kissed the hills and valleys. While from the vines and bushes the merry twitter of playful birds, symphonies soft and low, entranced with other delight, the romantic party goers. Now a still other delight was in store—some fine music and good singing, which every recipient enjoyed to the highest note. Thanks and compliments for such a model evening were ornate and lavish and all left truly glad that they had been.

* * *

FULL OF HIS SUBJECT.

[From the Evansville, Ind., Courier.]

Dr. Hamilton A. Hymes, pastor of Grace Memorial Presbyterian church, has recovered from a recent illness, caused from a carbuncle on his neck. His subject for Sunday night will be "Is There a Hell?"

* * *

THAT TRIOLET DRIVEL.

Will you can it or no?— That Triolet drivel. It irritates so. Will you can it or no? For the habit may grow, And the thought makes me snivel. Will you can it or no?— That Triolet drivel.

D. A. D. Burnitt.

Yes, we'll can it or no, As the notion may seize us. If a thing is de trop, Yes; we'll can it—or no.

For we always let go When a thing doesn't please us. Yes, we'll can it, or—no, As the notion may seize us.

* * *

Sir Oliver Lodge has seen so many tables move and heard so many tambourines, that he now keeps an open mind on miracles. We hope he believes that the three angels appeared to Joan of Arc, as that is our favorite miracle. Had they appeared only once we might have doubted the apparition; but, as we remember the story, they appeared three times.

* * *

Sir Oliver may be interested in a case reported to us by L. J. S. His company had issued a tourist policy to a lady who lost her trunk on the way to Tulsa, Okla., and who put in a claim for $800. The adjuster at Dallas wrote:

"Assured is the famous mind reader, and one of her best stunts is answering questions in regard to the location of stolen property, but she was unable to be of any assistance to me."

* * *

Some of the members of the Cosmopolitan club are about as cosmopolitan as the inhabitants of Cosmopolis, Mich.

* * *

At the request of a benedick we are rushing to the Cannery by parcel-post Jar 617: "Don't they make a nice-looking couple!"

* * *

ENGLISH AS SHE IS MURDERED.

Sir: After Pedagogicus' class gets through with Senator Borah's masterpiece, it might look over this legend which the Herald and Examiner has been carrying: "Buy bonds like the victors fought."

E. E. E.

* * *

The Illinois War Savings Bulletin speaks of "personal self-interest." This means you!

* * *

"Graduation from the worst to the best stuff," is Mr. W. L. George's method of acquiring literary taste. Something can be said for the method, and Mr. George says it well, and we are sorry, in a manner of speaking, not to believe a word of it; unless, as is possible, we both believe the same thing fundamentally. Taste, in literature and music, and in other things, is, we are quite sure, natural. It can be trained, but this training is a matter of new discoveries. A taste that has to be led by steps from Owen Meredith to George Meredith, which could not recognize the worth of the latter before passing through the former, is no true taste. Graduation from the simple to the complex is compatible with a natural taste, but this simple may be first class, as much music and literature is. New forms of beauty may puzzle the possessor of natural taste, but not for long. He does not require preparation in inferior stuff.

* * *

Speaking of George Meredith, we are told again (they dig the thing up every two or three years) that, when a reader for Chapman & Hall, he turned down "East Lynne," "Erewhon," and other books that afterward became celebrated. What of it? Meredith may not have known anything about literature, but he knew what he liked. Moreover, he was a marked and original writer, and as that tolerant soul, Jules Lemaitre, has noted, the most marked and original of writers are those who do not understand everything, nor feel everything, nor love everything, but those whose knowledge, intelligence, and tastes have definite limitations.

* * *

BUT WOULD IT NOT REQUIRE A GEOLOGIC PERIOD?

Sir: You are kind enough to refer to my lecture on "Literary Taste and How to Acquire It." I venture to suggest that your summary—viz.: "It is to read only first-class stuff," not only fails to meet the problem, but represents exactly the view that I am out to demolish. If, as I presume, you mean that the ambitious person who now reads Harold Bell Wright should sit down to the works of Shakespeare, I can tell you at once that the process will be a failure. My method is one of graduation from the worst to the best stuff.

W. L. George.

* * *

We do not wish to crab W. L. George's act, "Literary Taste and How to Acquire It," but we know the answer. It is to read only first-class stuff. Circumstances may oblige a man to write second-class books, but there is no reason why he should read such.

* * *

THE STORM.

(By a girl of ten years.)

It lightnings, it thunders And I go under, And where do I go, I wonder.

I go, I go— I know. Under the covers, That's where I go.

The little poet of the foregoing knew where she was going, which is more than can be said for many modern bards.

* * *

THE EIGHTH VEIL.

(By J-mes Hun-k-r.)

There was a wedding under way. From the bright-lit mansion came the evocations of a loud bassoon. Ulick Guffle, in whom the thought of matrimony always produced a bitter nausea, glowered upon the house and spat acridly upon the pave. "Imbeciles! Humbugs! Romantic rot!" he raged.

Three young men drew toward the scene. Ulick barred their way, but two of the trio slipped by him and escaped. The third was nailed by Guffle's glittering eye. Ulick laid an ineluctable hand upon the stranger's arm. "Listen!" he commanded. "Matrimony and Art are sworn and natural foes. Ingeborg Bunck was right; there are no illegitimate children; all children are valid. Sounds like Lope de Vega, doesn't it? But it isn't. It is Bunck. Whitman, too, divined the truth. Love is a germ; sunlight kills it. It needs l'obscurite and a high temperature. As Baudelaire said—or was it Maurice Barres?—dans la nuit tous les chats sont gris. Remy de Gourmont..."

The wedding guest beat his shirtfront; he could hear the bassoon doubling the cello. But Ulick continued ineluctably. "Woman is a sink of iniquity. Only Gounod is more loathsome. That Ave Maria—Grand Dieu! But Frederic Chopin, nuance, cadence, appoggiatura—there you have it. En amour, les vieux fous sont plus fous que les jeunes. Listen to Rochefoucauld! And Montaigne has said, C'est le jouir et non le posseder qui rend heureux. And Pascal has added, Les affaires sont les affaires. As for Stendhal, Flaubert, Nietzsche, Edgar Saltus, Balzac, Gautier, Dostoievsky, Rabelais, Maupassant, Anatole France, Bourget, Turgenev, Verlaine, Renan, Walter Pater, Landor, Cardinal Newman and the Brothers Goncourt..."

Ulick seized his head with both hands, and the wedding guest seized the opportunity to beat it, as the saying is. "Swine!" Ulick flung after him. "Swine, before whom I have cast a hatful of pearls!" He spat even more acridly upon the pave and turned away. "After all," he growled, "Stendhal was right. Or was it Huysmans? No, it was neither. It was Cambronne."

* * *

Though there has been little enough to encourage it, the world is growing kinder; at least friendliness is increasing. Every other day we read of some woman living pleasantly in a well appointed apartment, supplied with fine raiment and an automobile, the fruit of Platonism. "No," she testifies, "there was nothing between us. He was merely a friend."

* * *

What heaven hath cleansed let no man put asunder. Emma Durdy and Raymond Bathe, of Nokomis, have been j. in the h. b. of w.

* * *

THE TRACERS ARE AT WORK.

Sir: Please consult the genealogical files of the Academy and advise me if Mr. Harm Poppen of Gurley, Nebraska, is a lineal descendant of the w. k. Helsa Poppen, famous in profane history.

E. E. M.

* * *

Our opinion, already recorded, is that if Keats had spent fifteen or twenty minutes more on his Grecian Urn, all of the stanzas would be as good as three of them. And so we think that if A. B. had put in, say, a half hour more on her sonnet she would not have rhymed "worldliness" and "moodiness." Of the harmony, counterpoint, thoroughbass, etc., of verse we know next to nothing—we play on our tin whistle entirely by ear—but there are things which we avoid, perhaps needlessly. One of these is the rhyming of words like utterly, monody, lethargy, etc.; these endings seem weak when they are bunched. Our assistants will apprehend that we are merely offering a suggestion or two, which we hope they will follow up by exploring the authorities.

* * *

Music like Brahms' Second Symphony is peculiarly satisfying to the listener. The first few measures disclose that the composer is in complete control of his ideas and his expression of them. He has something to say, and he says it without uncertainty or redundancy. Only a man who has something to say may dare to say it only once.

* * *

Those happy beings who "don't know a thing about art, but know what they like," are restricted to the obvious because of ignorance of form; their enjoyment ends where that of the cultivated person begins. Take music. The person who knows what he likes takes his pleasure in the tune, but gets little or nothing from the tune's development; hence his favorite music is music which is all tune.

We recall a naive query by the publisher of a magazine, at a musicale in Gotham. Our hostess, an accomplished pianist, had played a Chopin Fantasia, and the magazine man was expressing his qualified enjoyment. "What I can't understand," said he, "is why the tune quits just when it's running along nicely." This phenomenon, no doubt, has mystified thousands of other "music lovers."

* * *

A Boston woman complains that school seats have worn out three pairs of pants (her son's) in three months. "Is a wheeze about the seat of learning too obvious?" queries Genevieve. Oh, quite too, my dear!

* * *

Mr. Frederick Harrison at 89 observes: "May my end be early, speedy, and peaceful! I regret nothing done or said in my long and busy life. I withdraw nothing, and, as I said before, am not conscious of any change in mind. In youth I was called a revolutionary; in old age I am called a reactionary; both names alike untrue.... I ask nothing. I seek nothing. I fear nothing. I have done and said all that I ever could have done and said. There is nothing more. I am ready, and await the call."

A very good prose version of Henley's well known poem. As for regretting nothing, a man at forty would be glad to unsay and undo many things. At seventy, and decidedly at eighty-nine, these things have so diminished in importance that it is not worth while withdrawing them.

* * *

A DAY WITH LORD DID-MORE.

"Mr. Hearst is the home brew; no other hope." —The Trib.

At his usual hour Lord Did-More rose— Renewed completely by repose— His pleasant duty to rehearse Of oiling up the universe.

Casting a glance aloft, he saw That, yielding to a natural law, The sun obediently moved Precisely as he had approved.

If mundane things would only run As regularly as the Sun! But Earth's affairs, less nicely planned, Require Lord Did-More's guiding hand.

This day, outside Lord Did-More's door, There waited patiently a score Of diplomats from far and near Who sought his sympathetic ear.

Each brought to him, that he might scan, The latest governmental plan, And begged of him a word or two Approving what it hoped to do.

Lord Did-More nodded, smiled or frowned, Some word of praise or censure found, Withheld or added his "O. K." And sent the ministers away.

These harmonized and sent away, Lord Did-More finished up his day By focusing his cosmic brain On our political campaign.

And night and morning, thro' the land, The public prints at his command Proclaimed, in type that fairly burst, The doughty deeds of Did-More Hearst.

* * *

THE SECOND POST.

[From a genius in Geneseo, Ill.]

Dear sir: I am the champion Cornhusker I have given exhibitions in different places and theater managers and moveing picture men have asked me why I dont have my show put into moves (Film). I beleave it would make a very interesting Picture. We could have it taken right in the Cornfield and also on the stage. It would be very interesting for farmer boys and would be a good drawing card in small towns. I beleave we could make 1000 feet of it by showing me driveing into the field with my extra made wagon. then show them my style and speed of husking and perheps let a common husker husk a while. I could also give my exibition on the stage in a theater includeing the playing of six or eight different Instruments. For instence when I plow with a traction engine or tresh I also lead bands and Orchestra's.

* * *

There is a stage in almost everybody's musical education when Chopin's Funeral March seems the most significant composition in the world.

* * *

The two stenogs in the L coach were discussing the opera. "I see," said one, "that they're going to sing 'Flagstaff.'" "That's Verdi's latest opera," said the other. "Yes," contributed the gentleman in the adjacent seat, leaning forward; "and the scene is laid in Arizona."

* * *

Mr. Shanks voxpops that traffic should be relieved, not prevented, as "the automobile is absolutely important in modern business life." Now, the fact is that the automobile has become a nuisance; one can get about much faster and cheaper in the city on Mr. Shanks' w. k. mare. Life to-day is scaled to the automobile, whereas, as our gossip Andy Rebori contends, it ought to be scaled to the baby carriage. Many lines of industry are short of labor because this labor has been withdrawn for the care of automobiles.

* * *

"Do you remember," asks a fair correspondent (who protests that she is only academically fair), "when we used to read 'A Shropshire Lad,' and A. E., and Arthur Symons, and Yeats? And you used to print so many of the beautiful things they wrote?" Ah, yes, we do remember; but that, my dear, was a long, long time ago, in the period which has just closed, as Bennett puts it. How worth while those things used to seem, and what pleasant days those were. Men say that they will come again. But men said that Arthur would come again.

* * *

Our method: We select only things that interest us, assuming that other people will be interested; if they are not—why, chacun a son gout, as the cannibal king remarked, adding a little salt. We printed "The Spires of Oxford" a long time ago because it interested us exceedingly.

* * *

A valued colleague quotes the emotional line—

"This is my own, my native land!"—

as palliation, if not justification, for the "simple, homely, and comprehensive adjuration, 'Own Your Own Home.'" We acknowledge the homeliness and comprehensiveness, but we deny the value of poetic testimony. Said Dr. Johnson:

"Let observation with extensive view Survey mankind from China to Peru,"

which, De Quincey or Tennyson declared, should have run: "Let observation with extended observation observe mankind extensively." Poets and tautology go walking like the Walrus and the Carpenter.

* * *

BOLSHEVISM OF LONG AGO.

"A radical heaven is a place where every man does what he pleases, and there is a general division of property every Saturday night."—George S. Hillard (1853).

* * *

LULLABY.

In Woodman, Wis., the Hotel Lull Is where a man may rest his skull. All care and fret is void and null When one puts up at Hotel Lull. Ah, might I wing it as a gull Unto the mansion kept by Lull— By W. K. Lull, the w. k. Lull, Who greets the guests at Hotel Lull.

* * *

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever." But if, miraculously, it happens in Chicago, it can, despite the poet's word, "pass into nothingness." The old Field Museum, seen beneath a summer moon, when the mist is on the lake, is as beautiful as anything on the earth's crust. Not to preserve the exterior were a sin against Beauty, which is the unforgivable sin.

* * *

"LEMME UP, DARLING! LEMME UP!"

[From the Detroit Free Press.]

My advertisement of Feb. 24 was error. I will be responsible for my wife's debts.

Leo Tyo.

* * *

"I'll make the Line some day or jump into Great Salt Lake," warns C. W. O. Pick out a soft spot, friend. We jumped into it one day and sprained an ankle.



Alice in Cartoonland.

I.

"Hello!" said the Hatter. "I haven't seen you for a long time."

"No," said Alice; "I've been all over—in Wonderland, in Bookland, in Stageland, and forty other lands. People must be tired of my adventures. Where am I now? I never know."

"In Cartoonland," said the Hatter.

"And what are you doing here?" inquired Alice.

"I'm searching for an original cartoon idea," replied the Hatter. "Would you like to come along?"

"Ever so much," said Alice.

"The first thing we have to do is to get across that chasm," said the Hatter, pointing.

Alice saw a huge legend on the far wall of the chasm, and spelled it out—"O-b-l-i-v-i-o-n."

"Yes, Oblivion," said the Hatter. "That's where they dump defeated candidates and other undesirables. Come on, we can cross a little below here."

He indicated a thin plank that lay across the Chasm of Oblivion.

"Will it hold us?" said Alice.

"It has held the G. O. P. Elephant and the Democratic Donkey, and all sorts of people and things. Let's hurry over, as here comes the Elephant now, with Mr. Taft riding it, and the plank might give way."

II.

"By the way," said the Hatter, "here is my hat store."

There were only two kinds in the window—square paper caps and high silk hats. Alice had never seen paper caps before.

"They're worn by the laboring man," said the Hatter; "but you never see them outside of Cartoonland. The plug hats are for Capitalists. I also keep whiskers; siders for Capital and ordinary for Labor."

"O, there's a railroad train!" said Alice, suddenly.

"No use taking that train," said the Hatter; "it doesn't go. Did you ever see an engine like that outside Cartoonland? And even if it did work we shouldn't get very far, as the rock Obstruction is always on the track."

"I'd just as soon walk," said Alice.

III.

"Mercy! there's a giant!" exclaimed Alice.

"Don't be alarmed," said the Hatter; "he's perfectly good natured."

"What an awful-looking creature!" said Alice.

"He's awfully out of drawing," said the Hatter, critically; "but, then, almost everything in Cartoonland is. It's the idea that counts."

"You said you were searching for an original idea," Alice reminded him.

"But I don't expect to find one," the Hatter replied. "You see, it wouldn't be any use; nobody would understand it. People like the old familiar things, you know."

"Still, we might happen on one," said Alice. "Let's walk along."

IV.

Suddenly a door opened, and a great quantity of rubbish was swept briskly into the street.

"That's the New Broom," said the Hatter. "There's been another election. Evidently the Democrats won, as there goes the Donkey, waving his ears and hee-hawing."

"Oh, is that a fruit store?" asked Alice.

"No; the Republican headquarters," replied the Hatter. "That huge cornucopia you see is a symbol of Prosperity. Prosperity in Cartoonland is always represented by a horn of plenty with a pineapple in the muzzle. You've heard the expression, 'The pineapple of prosperity.'"

"No," said Alice, "but I've heard about the 'pineapple of politeness.'"

"That," said the Hatter, "is something else again."

V.

Presently they came to a collection of factories, the tall chimneys of which poured out smoke in great volume.

"Those are the Smoking Stacks of Industry," said the Hatter.

"What do they manufacture here?" asked Alice.

"Cartoonatums," said the Hatter. "A cartoonatum," he explained, "is a combination of wheels, rods, cogs, hoppers, cranks, etc., which sometimes looks like a sausage grinder and sometimes like a try-your-weight machine. It couldn't possibly go, any more than the locomotives in Cartoonland."

"Why don't the Cartoonlanders have machines that can go?" inquired Alice.

"That," replied the Hatter, "would require a little study and observation."

VI.

As Alice and the Hatter walked along they passed many curious things, such as Wolves in Sheep's Clothing, the skin of a Tiger nailed to a barn door, St. George and the Dragon, Father Knickerbocker, barrels of political mud, a huge serpent labeled "Anarchy," a drug store window full of bottles of Political Dope and boxes of Political Pills, an orchard of Political Plum Trees, and other objects which the Hatter said were as old as the hills. "I'm afraid there's nothing to hold us here," he declared.

Alice's attention was suddenly attracted by a little girl in a thin and ragged dress who, with an empty basket on her arm, was gazing wistfully at the goodies in a bakeshop window.

"She represents Poverty," said the Hatter. "When she isn't staring at a bakeshop she's looking at a proclamation by the ice trust, or something like that."

Alice spoke to the child and learned that she was one of a large family. Her father, she said, was a New York cartoonist who one day had been visited by an Original Idea.

"Where is he?" cried the Hatter excitedly.

"He dropped dead!" replied the child, weeping bitterly.

"Good night!" said the Hatter, and walked away.



A LINE-O'-TYPE OR TWO

Quicquid agunt homines nostri est farrago libelli. —Juvenal.

Question:

Who is this Juvenal wheezer? Readers inquire every day. Give us a line on the geezer— What is he trying to say? Do you expect us to get stuff That is clear over our bean? What is that "Quicquid, et cet." stuff? What does the gibberish mean?

Reply:

If you're too lazy to look for Juvenal's name in the Dic, Why should I go to the book for Such a cantankerous kick? Still, to avoid all dissension, And my good nature to prove, I am quite willing to mention One or two things about Juve.

Juve was a Roman humdinger, Writer of satires and sich. He was consid'rable stinger— Rare were his sallies and rich. High his poetic position, Lofty his manner and brow; Lived in the time of Domitian;— That's all I think of just now.

As for that "Quicquid, and so forth," I have but space to advise If you'd decipher it go forth, Look in the Dic and be wise. Make it a point, in your reading, Always to look up what's new. That is a simple proceeding: Why not adopt it? I do.

* * *

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.

* * *

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.

* * *

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.

* * *

HYMN OF HATE.

(Reprinted at request of Mr. Hoover.)

Cranberry pie, or apricot— We love them not, we hate them not. Of all the victuals in pot or plate, There's only one that we loathe and hate. We love a hundred, we hate but one, And that we'll hate till our race is run— BREAD PUDDING!

It's known to you all, it's known to you all, It casts a gloom, and it casts a pall; By whatso name they mark the mess, You take one taste and you give one guess. Come, let us stand in the Wailing Place, A vow to register, face to face: We will never forego our hate Of that tasteless fodder we execrate— BREAD PUDDING!

Cranberry pie, or apricot— Some folks like 'em, and some folks not. They're not so bad if they're made just right, Tho' they don't enkindle our appetite. But you we hate with a lasting hate, And never will we that hate abate: Hate of the tooth and hate of the gum, Hate of palate and hate of tum, Hate of the millions who've choked you down, In country kitchen or house in town. We love a thousand, we hate but one, With a hate more hot than the hate of Hun— BREAD PUDDING!

* * *

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 a ton voisin.

"II.—Ceci bien compris, fais ce qu'il te plait."

* * *

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 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 role 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, 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.

* * *

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.

* * *

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.

A gentle, kindly man is he, The soul of generosity; Our little ones he gladly gives The right to split infinitives.

The boys and girls who go to school Approve of Mister Tobin's rule. They find no cause to make complaint At learning words like das't and ain't.

Two negatives has every boy, And uses them with pride and joy And every girl has utmost skill In interchanging shall and will.

Those noble boys and girls decry The priggish use of "It is I." If you should ask, "Who was with he?" They'd answer simply, "It was me."

Pantaletta.

* * *

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 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 wide the door." The resultant draft has just brought a series of "kerchoos" out of me. Valve-handle sneezes, I called them.

Sim Nic.

* * *

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 at 80.

C. E. C.

* * *

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 Caesar. 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.

* * *

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!

Take any life you choose and study it. Take Edgar Lee Masters': He is a lawyer and a poet; Or perhaps it is best to call him A lawyer-poet, Or a poet who was never much at law, Or t'other way around if you prefer. Whichever way 'tis put, the fact remains He wrote a poem that now sells For fifty cents plus four beans.

Think of it! Four dollars and fifty cents, Or, if you prefer, $4.50. And Elenor Murray did not have a cent on her When they found her body on the banks Of the Squeehunk river.

And the poem is out of stock at half the stores. And Villon starved and Keats, Keats— Where am I? I don't know.

Yseult Potts.

* * *

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 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 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 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.]

When my wife is far from me The undersigned feels all at sea.

R. L. S.

I was as good as deaf When separate from F.

I am far from gay When separate from A.

I loathe the ways of men When separate from N.

Life is a murky den When separate from N.

My sorrow rages high When separate from Y.

And all things seem uncanny When separate from Fanny.

* * *

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.

* * *

"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:

The chariest maid is prodigal enough If she unmask her beauty on the Boul.

* * *

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 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 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.

* * *

POEMS OF SENTIMENT AND REFLECTION.

Sioux Falls

[From the Sioux Falls Press.]

What if we don't have palaces, With damp and musty walls? We have the great Sioux River, And greater yet, Sioux Falls.

We don't have to go abroad, God's beauties just to see, But stay at home And take a trip Around Sioux Falls with me.

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

"I've traveled east, I've traveled west, I've been to the great Montana, But the finest place I've ever seen Is Attica, Indiana."

Another popular pome of sentiment and reflection, heard by L. M. G. in Wisconsin lumber camps, is—

"I've traveled east, I've traveled west, As far as the town of Fargo, But the darndest town I ever struck Is the town they call Chicargo."

* * *

"USELESS VERBIAGE."

[From an abstract of title.]

"That said Mary Ann Wolcott died an infant, 2 or 3 years old, unmarried, intestate, and that she left no husband, child, or children."

* * *

INGENIOUS CALIFORNIA PARADOX.

[From the Oakland Post.]

The Six-Minute Ferry route across the bay will take only eighteen to twenty minutes.

* * *

ALMOST.

Sir: S. Fein has put his name on the door of his orange-colored taxicab. Can you whittle a wheeze out of that?

R. A. J.

* * *

Knut Hamsun, winner of the Nobel prize for literature, used to be a street-car conductor in Chicago. This is a hint to column conductors. Get a transfer.



The Witch's Holiday.

A TALE FOR CHILDREN ONLY.

I.

Matters had gone ill all the day; and, to cap what is learnedly called the perverseness of inanimate things, it came on to rain just as the Boy, having finished his lessons, was on the point of setting out for a romp in the brown fields.

"Isn't it perfectly mean, Mowgli?" he complained to his dog. The water spaniel wagged a noncommittal tail and stretched himself before the wood fire with a deep drawn sigh. The rain promised to hold, so the Boy took down a book and curled up in a big leather chair.

It was a very interesting book—all about American pioneers, trappers, and Indians; and although the writer of it was a German traveler, no American woodsman would take advantage of a worthy German globe trotter and tell him things which were not exactly so. For example, if you and a trapper and a dog were gathered about a campfire, and the dog were asleep and dreaming in his sleep, and the trapper should affirm that if you tied a handkerchief over the head of a dreaming dog and afterwards tied it around your own head, you would have the dog's dream,—if the trapper should tell you this with a perfectly serious face, you naturally would believe him, especially if you were a German traveler.

The Boy got up softly and began the experiment. Mowgli opened an inquiring eye, stretched himself another notch, and fell asleep again. His master waited five minutes, then unloosed the handkerchief and knotted it under his own chin.

For a while Mowgli's slumbers were untroubled as a forest pool, his breathing as regular as the tick-tock of the old wooden clock under the stair. Out of doors the rain fell sharply and set the dead leaves singing. The wood fire dwindled to a glow. Tick-tock! tick-tock! drummed the ancient timepiece. The Boy yawned and settled deeper in the leather chair.

Tick-tock! Tick-tock!

Mowgli was breathing out of time. He was twitching, and making funny little smothered noises, which, if he were awake, would probably be yelps. Something exciting was going on in dreamland.

Tick-tock! Tick——

Hullo! There goes a woodchuck!

II.

The Boy gave chase across the fields, only to arrive, out of breath, at the entrance to a burrow down which the woodchuck had tumbled. He had not a notion where he was. He seemed to have raced out of the world that he knew into one which was quite unfamiliar. It was a broad valley inclosed by high hills, through which a pleasant little river ran; and the landscape wore an odd aspect—the hills were bluer than hills usually are, the trees were more fantastically fashioned, and the waving grass and flowers were more beautiful than one commonly sees.

"Good morning, young sir!"

On the other side of the stream stood a tall man wrapped in a cloak and leaning with both hands upon a staff. He was well past the middle years, as wrinkles and a beard turned gray gave evidence; but his eyes were youthful and his cheeks as ruddy as a farm lad's. His clothing was worn and dust-laden, but of good quality and unpatched, and there was an air about him that said plainly, "Here is no common person, I can tell you."

"You are wondering who I may be," he observed. "Well, then, I am known as the Knight of the Dusty Thoroughfare."

"A queer sort of knight, this!" thought the Boy.

"And you—may I ask whither you are bound?" said the stranger. "We may be traveling the same road."

The Boy made answer that he had set forth to chase a woodchuck, and that having failed to catch it he had no better plan than to return home.

At the word "home" the Knight put on a melancholy smile, and cutting a reed at the river edge he fashioned it into a pipe and began to play. A wonderful tune it was. Tom the Piper's Son knew the way of it, and to the same swinging melody the Pied Piper footed the streets of Hamelin town; for the burden of the tune was "Over the Hills and Far Away," and the Boy's feet stirred at the catch of it.

"That," said the Knight, "is the tune I have marched to for many a year, and a pretty chase it has led me." He put down the pipe. "Knocking about aimlessly does very well for an old man, but youth should have a definite goal."

The Boy did not agree with this. With that magic melody marching in his head it was hey for the hills and the westering sun, and the pleasant road to Anywhere.

"What lies yonder?" he queried, pointing to a deep notch in the skyline.

"The Kingdom of Rainbow's End," replied the Knight. "It is an agreeable territory, and you would do very well to journey thither. The King of the country is no longer young, and as he has nothing to say about affairs of state, or anything else for that matter, he spends his time tramping about from place to place, in much the same fashion as myself."

"And who governs while he is away?"

"She!" said the Knight solemnly—"She That Bosses Everybody!"

III.

"You see," said the Knight of the Dusty Thoroughfare, "the King made a grave mistake some years ago. It is a foolish saying that when a man marries his troubles begin; but it is the law of Rainbow's-End that when a man marries he may chloroform his mother-in-law or not, just as he pleases. But if he forfeit the right he may never again claim it, and the deuce take him for a soft-hearted simpleton."

The Boy thought it a barbarous law and so declared.

"There is something to be said for it," returned the Knight. "A mother-in-law is like the little girl with the little curl. It so happens that the King's mother-in-law is a very unpleasant old party, and the King made a sad mess of it when he threw the chloroform bottle out of the window."

"Tell me about Rainbow's-End," the Boy entreated. "Is there a beautiful Princess, with many suitors for her hand?"

"The Princess Aralia is a very pretty girl, as princesses go." The Knight opened a locket attached to a long gold chain and exhibited an exquisite miniature. "I don't mind saying," said he, "that the Princess Aralia and I are on very good terms, and a word from me will procure you a cordial reception. The question is, how shall we set about it? You can't present yourself at court as you are; you must have a horse and a fine costume, and all that sort of thing."

"Perhaps there's a good fairy in the neighborhood," said the Boy hopefully.

The Knight shook his head. "Not within a dozen leagues. But stop a bit—it is just possible that Aunt Jo can manage the matter. Aunt Jo is the sister of my wife's mother, and one of the cleverest witches in the country. She stands very high in her profession and is thoroughly schooled in every branch of deviltry; and with the exception of my wife's mother, I can think of no person whose society is less desirable. But one day in each year she takes a day off, during which she is as affable and benevolent an old dame as you can possibly imagine; really, you would never know it was the same person. These annual breathing spells do her a world of good, she tells me; for incessant wickedness is just as monotonous and wearisome as unbroken goodness."

"And to-day is the Witch's holiday?"

"Yes, it so happens; and I always make it a point to spend the night at her cottage if I am in this part of the country."

The Knight of the Dusty Thoroughfare rose and put his cloak about his shoulders, and with the Boy set forward through the valley.

IV.

Presently they came to the Witch's cottage, snuggled away in a hollow and hidden from the road by a tangle of witch hazel shrubs. The Boy rather expected a dark, forbidding hut of sinister outlines, but here was as pretty a cabin as ever you saw, weathered a pleasing gray, with green blinds and a tiny porch overrun with Virginia-creeper.

The Knight strode boldly up the path, the Boy following less confidently. No one answering the summons at the porch, they tried the kitchen door. It was open, and they stepped inside. The Witch was not at home, but evidently she was not far away, for a fire was crackling in the stove and a kettle singing over the flames. An enormous black cat got up lazily from the hearth and rubbed himself against the visitors with a purr like a small dynamo.

With the familiarity of a relative the Knight led the way about the house. One door was locked. "This," said he, "is Aunt Jo's dark room, in which she develops her deviltry. This"—opening the door of a little shed—"is the garage."

The Boy peeped in and saw two autobroomsticks.

"The small green one is her runabout. The big red one is a touring broomstick, high power and very fast; you can hear her coming a mile off."

They returned to the sitting room, and the Boy became greatly taken with Aunt Jo's collection of books. Some of these were: "One Hundred and One Best Broths," "Witchcraft Self-Taught," "The Black Art—Berlitz Method," and "Burbank's Complete Wizard." The Boy took down the "Complete Wizard," but he was not able to do more than glance at the absorbing contents before the clicking of the gate announced that the Witch had returned.

Aunt Jo was a sprightly dame of more than seventy years, very thin, but straight and supple, and with hair still jet black. Her eyes were gray-green or green-gray, as the light happened to strike them; her cheeks were hollow, and a long sharp chin slanted up to meet a long sharp nose. Ordinarily, as the Knight had hinted, she was no doubt an unholy terror, but to-day she was in the best of humors, and her eyes twinkled with good nature.

"I just stepped out," she explained, "to carry some jelly and cake to one of my neighbors, a woodcutter's wife. The poor woman has been ill all the summer! Mercy! if I haven't had a day of it!" She dropped into a chair, brushing a fly from the tip of her nose with the tip of her tongue. "How is everything in Rainbow's-End?" she asked. "I suppose She is as bad as ever."

"Worse," replied the Knight, fetching a sigh. "And She never takes a day off, as you do."

"Well, Henry, it's your own fault, as I've told you a thousand times. If you hadn't been so soft-hearted— But mercy! that's no way to be talking on my holiday."

"So!" said the Boy to himself. "This wandering knight is the King of Rainbow's-End and the father of the Princess. I have a friend at court indeed."

V.

"And how is the Princess Aralia?" asked the Witch. "As pretty as ever, I suppose, and with no prospect of a husband, thanks to her grandmother and the silly tasks she sets for the suitors."

"That brings us to the business of our young friend here," said the Knight of the Dusty Thoroughfare. "He wishes to present himself at court, and is in great need of a horse and wardrobe."

"You've come to the wrong shop for horses and fine feathers," said the Witch. "Those things are quite out of my line."

The Boy looked his disappointment.

"The best I can do," said Aunt Jo kindly, "is to give you a letter to a Mr. Burbank, an excellent wizard of my acquaintance. He has recently invented a skinless grape and a watermelon that is all heart, and is quite the cleverest man in the business. Such a trifle as changing a pig into a horse will give him no trouble whatever. Have you seen my garden, Henry?"

"No, but I should like to," said the Knight rising.

"Meanwhile," said the Witch, "I will start the supper if our young friend will fetch the wood."

The Boy responded with such cheerful readiness that Aunt Jo patted him on the cheek and said: "You're the lad for the Princess Aralia, and have her you shall if Aunt Jo can bring it about. And now go out in the garden and pick me a hatful of Brussels sprouts."

It was impossible to imagine a more appetizing supper than that which the three sat down to. Everything was prepared to a nicety, and the Knight could not say enough in praise of the raised biscuits and home made currant jell. As for the doughnuts, "Such doughnuts can't be made without witchcraft, Jo," he declared.

"Nonsense!" said the old lady. "I don't put a thing into them that any good cook doesn't use. Making doughnuts always was an art by itself. You must both take some with you when you go."

After supper the Knight wiped the dishes while the Witch washed them, Aunt Jo declaring it a shame that a man so domestically inclined should be compelled to wander from one end of the rainbow to the other just because of a foolish tender-heartedness in days gone by. While the pair discussed this fruitful topic the Boy dipped into the fascinating chapters of the "Complete Wizard."

"Time for bed," announced the Knight an hour later; and he added for the Boy's ear: "We must make an early start in the morning."

"I for one shall sleep soundly," Aunt Jo declared. "I've run my legs off to-day, as I never use a broomstick on my holiday."

She conducted her guests to a tiny bedchamber above stairs. "I will leave a bag of doughnuts on the table, Henry," said she, "as I suppose you will be off before I am up. Good-night!"

When she had gone below the Knight said: "We must be moving with the first streak of day. Aunt Jo's holiday ends with sun-up, and you would find her a vastly different old party, I can tell you."

VI.

"I don't think I should be afraid of her," said the Boy.

The Knight chuckled, and without further speech got into bed and was soon wrapped in a deep slumber. Next to a clear conscience and the open road, a good bed at night is something to set store by.

But the Boy could not sleep for the exciting pictures that danced in his head, and he was impatient for the morning light, that he might be on his way to Rainbow's-End. The moon peeped in the window; the breeze made a pleasant sound in the poplar trees; from somewhere came the music of a little brook. To all these gentle influences the Boy finally yielded.

He was awakened by a plucking at his sleeve.

"Time to be moving," said the Knight in a hoarse whisper. "We can put on our shoes after we leave the house."

They crept down the stair, which creaked in terrifying fashion, but a gentle snoring from the Witch's bedroom reassured them. After they had tiptoed out of the house and gained the road they discovered that they had forgotten the bag of doughnuts. The Knight declared that he would not return for a million doughnuts, but the Boy, remembering how delicious they tasted, stole back to the door and lifted the latch softly. Aunt Jo was still snoring, but, just as he laid hold of the doughnuts, Pluto the cat came leaping in from the kitchen, and the Boy had barely time to put the door between its sharp claws and himself. He ran down the path, vaulted the gate, and looked about for the Knight. Away down the road was a rapidly diminishing figure.

The Boy was a good runner, and he was fast overtaking the Knight, when the latter, who had been casting anxious glances over his shoulder as he ran, suddenly plunged into the bushes at one side of the road. The Boy thought it wise to follow his example.

And not a moment too soon. A small whirring sound grew louder and louder, and Aunt Jo went whizzing by on her high power autobroomstick, leaving in her wake a horrible reek of gasoline and brimstone. But not the Aunt Jo of the evening before. Her green eyes flashed behind the goggles, and her face was something dreadful to behold. On her shoulder perched Pluto, every hair erect, and spitting fire.

The Boy gasped, and hoped he had seen the last of the terrible hag, when the whirring noise announced that she was coming back. She stopped her broomstick directly opposite the hiding-place and began cutting small circles in the air, the while peering sharply about.

As the Boy plunged into the thicket, he fell. As he lay there, something cold pressed against his hand.

It was Mowgli's nose. The dog's eyes questioned his master, who had cried out in his sleep.

"Oh, Mowgli!" he exclaimed, taking the spaniel by his shaggy ears, "did you dream all that wonderful dream? Or did you stop at the woodchuck hole? What a shame, Mowgli, if there shouldn't really be a Knight of the Dusty Thoroughfare, and a Princess Aralia and a Witch who makes wonderful doughnuts!"



A LINE-O'-TYPE OR TWO

"Nous ne trouvons guere de gens de bon sens que ceux qui sont de notre avis." —La Rochefoucauld.

"THE FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE."

Old Amicus Pop Is the friend of the Wop, The friend of the Chink and the Harp, The friend of all nations And folk of all stations, The friend of the shark and the carp. He sits in his chair With his feet on the table, And lists to the prayer Of Minerva and Mabel, Veritas, Pro Bono, Taxpayer, and the rest, Who wail on his shoulder and weep on his breast.

Old Amicus Pop Is the solace and prop Of all who are weary of life. He straightens the tangles And jangles and wrangles That breed in this city of strife. Whatever your "beef," You may pour him an earful; Unbottle your grief Be it ever so tearful. Oh, weep all you wish—he is there with the mop. Bring all of your troubles to Amicus Pop.

* * *

When we think of the countless thousands who peruse this Cro'-nest of Criticism, a feeling of responsibility weighs heavily upon us, and almost spoils our day. Frezzample, one writes from St. Paul: "We have twenty confirmed readers of the Line in this 'house.'" The quotation marks disturb us. Can it be a sanitarium?

* * *

Most of the trouble in this world is caused by people who do not know when they are well off. The Germans did not know when they were well off. Your cook, who left last week, as little apprehended her good fortune. Nor will the Filipinos be happy till they get it.

* * *

Those who stand in awe of persons with logical minds will be reassured by Henry Adams' pertinent reflection that the mind resorts to reason for want of training. His definition of philosophy is also reassuring: "Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems."

* * *

Among those who have guessed at the meaning of "the freedom of the seas" was Cowper:

"Without one friend, above all foes, Britannia gives the world repose."

* * *

Maxwell Bodenheim has published a book of poems, and the critics allow that Max Boden's brays are bonnie.

* * *

IF YOU MUST KISS, KISS THE DOCTOR.

[From "How to Avoid Influenza."]

Avoid kissing, as this habit readily transmits influenza. If physician is available, it is best to consult him.

* * *

QUICK, WATSON, THE PLUMBER!

[From the Cedar Rapids Gazette.]

Mrs. T. M. Dripps gave a dinner Friday in honor of Mrs. D. L. Leek of South Dakota.

* * *

"Kind Captain, I've important information." Mr. Honkavaarra runs an automobile livery in Palmer, Mich.

* * *

"The first child, Lord Blandford, was born in 1907; the second was born in 1898."—Chicago American.

This so annoyed the Duke, that a reconciliation was never possible.

* * *

When your friend points with pride to a picture that, in your judgment, leaves something to be desired, or when he exhibits the latest addition to his family, you may be perplexed to voice an opinion that will satisfy both him and your conscience. An artist friend of ours is never at a loss. If it is a picture, he exclaims, "Extraordinary!" If it is an infant, he remarks, "There is a baby!"

He might add, with the English wit, "one more easily conceived than described."

* * *

The advantages of a classical education are so obvious that the present-day battle in its behalf seems a waste of energy. Frezzample, without a classical education how could you appreciate the fact that Mr. Odessey is now running a Noah's Ark candy kitchen in St. Peter, Wis.?

* * *

One may believe that the "gift of healing" is nothing more than the application of imaginary balm to non-existent disease, but if one says so he gets into a jolly row with people who consider an open mind synonymous with credulity. Our own state of mind was accurately described by Charles A. Dana: "I don't believe in ghosts," said he, "but I've been afraid of them all my life."

* * *

The congregation will rise and sing:

Bill Bryan's heart is a-mouldering in the grave, But his lungs go marching on.

* * *

The astronomer Hamilton "made an expedition to Dublin to substitute a semi-colon for a colon"; but, reports J. E. R., "my wife's brother's brother-in-law's doctor charged him $600 for removing only part of a colon."

* * *

Few readers realize how much time is expended in making certain that commas are properly distributed. Thomas Campbell walked six miles to a printer's to have a comma in one of his poems changed to a semi-colon.

* * *

Following a bout with the gloves, a Seattle clubman is reported "in a state of comma." A doctor writes us that infection by the colon bacillus can be excluded, but we should say that what the patient needs is not a doctor but a proof reader.

* * *

"She played Liszt's Rhapsodie No. 2 with remarkable speed," relates the Indianapolis News. In disposing of Liszt's Rhapsodies it is all right to step on the accelerator, as the sooner they are finished the better.

* * *

GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY CLIMATE, AND FORGIVE US OUR DROPS IN TEMPERATURE!

[From the Pasadena Star-News.]

To put it in another form of expression, Mother Nature maintains poise and evenness of temper in this state far better than in most regions on this terrestrial ball. If you haven't thanked God to-day that you are privileged to live in California it is not yet too late to do so. Make it a daily habit. The blessing is worth this frequent expression of gratitude to the All High.

* * *

VARIANT OF A MORE OR LESS WELL KNOWN STORY.

[From the Exeter, Neb., News.]

Whoever took the whole pumpkin pie from Mrs. W. H. Taylor's kitchen the night of the party was welcome to it as the cat had stepped in it twice and it could not be used. Many thanks for the pan, she says.

* * *

THE WORLD'S GREATEST WINTER RESORT.

"Because of high temperatures and chinooks Medicine Hat is menaced with an ice famine."

They bask in the sunshine and purr like a cat, The fortunate people of Medicine Hat.

Its climate is balmy in spite of the lat.; You have a wrong notion of Medicine Hat.

At Christmas they sit on their porches and chat, For it never gets chilly in Medicine Hat.

The Medicine Hatters all spoil for a spat With any defamer of Medicine Hat;

They're ready and anxious to go to the mat With any one scoffing at Medicine Hat.

The birds never migrate—they know where they're at, For it always is summer in Medicine Hat.

No day that you can't use a heliostat; Sunlight is eternal in Medicine Hat.

They're swatting the fly and the skeeter and gnat, As frost never kills them in Medicine Hat.

His nature is skeptic, he's blind as a bat Who can't see the beauties of Medicine Hat.

All jesting is flatulent, futile, and flat That libels the climate of Medicine Hat.

Away with the knockers who knock it, and drat The jokers who joke about Medicine Hat.

In short, it's the one, the ideal habitat. Boy! buy me a ticket to Medicine Hat!

* * *

According to the Milford Herald a young couple were married "under the strain of Mendelssohn's wedding march."

* * *

THE VILLAGE OMAR LOSES HIS OUTFIT.

[From the Fort Dodge Messenger.]

Lost—Grass rug and ukulele between Shady Oaks and Fort Dodge. Finder notify Messenger.

* * *

"Thelander-Eckblade Wedding Solomonized," reports the Batavia Herald. Interesting and unusual.

* * *

"TWEET! TWEET!" GOES THE ENRAPTURED REPORTER.

[From the Sterling Gazette.]

The wedding party wended its way to the grove south of the river and there, in a lovely spot, where pleasant hours of courtship have been passed, the wedding ceremony was performed. No stately church edifice built by man, no gilded altar, no polished pews nor polished floors were there; no stately organ or trained choir; there was an absence of ushers, bridesmaids and parson heavily gowned. No curious crowd thronged without the portal. In place of this display and grandeur they were surrounded by an edifice of nature's planting—the stately forest tree, while the green sward of the verdant grove furnished a velvety carpet. There, in this beautiful spot, where the Creator ordained such events to occur, the young couple, true lovers of the simple life, took upon themselves the vows which united them until "death itself should part." The rustle of the leaves in the treetop murmured nature's sweet benediction, while the bluebird, the robin, and the thrush sang a glorious doxology.

* * *

Wedded, in Clay county, Illinois, Emma Pickle and Gay Gerking. A wedding gift from Mr. Heinz or Squire Dingee would not be amiss.

* * *

A SPLENDID RECOVERY.

[Waukesha, Wis., item.]

Mr. and Mrs. J. Earl Stallard are the proud parents of an eight pound boy, born at the Municipal hospital this morning. Mr. Stallard will be able to resume his duties as county agricultural agent by to-morrow.

* * *

HOW FAST THE LEAVES ARE FALLING!

[From the Waterloo Courier.]

Frank Fuller, night operator at the Illinois Central telegraph office, has been kept more than busy to-day, all because of a ten pound boy who arrived at his home last evening. Mr. Fuller has decided that he will spend all of his evenings at his home in the future.

* * *

HOW SOON IT GETS DARK THESE DAYS!

[From the Pillager, Minn., Herald.]

That stork is a busy bird. It left a 10-lb baby girl at Ned Mickles last Thursday night. Ned is a neighbor of Cy Deaver.

* * *

UPON JULIA'S ARCTICS.

Whenas galoshed my Julia goes, Unbuckled all from top to toes, How swift the poem becometh prose! And when I cast mine eyes and see Those arctics flopping each way free, Oh, how that flopping floppeth me!

* * *

"We are all in the dark together," says Anatole France; "the only difference is, the savant keeps knocking at the wall, while the ignoramus stays quietly in the middle of the room." We used to be intensely interested in the knocking of the savants, but as nothing ever came of it, we have become satisfied with the middle of the room.

* * *

A GOOD MOTTO.

I was conversing with Mr. Carlton the Librarian, and he quoted from memory a line from Catulle Mendes that seemed to me uncommonly felicitous: "La vie est un jour de Mi-Careme. Quelques-uns se masquent; moi, je ris."

* * *

In his declining years M. France has associated himself with the bunch called "Clarte," a conscious group organized by Barbusse, the object of which is the "union of all partisans of the true right and the true liberty." How wittily the Abbe Coignard would have discussed "Clarte," and how wisely M. Bergeret would have considered it! Alas! it is sad to lose one's hair, but it is a tragedy to lose one's unbeliefs.

* * *

Chicago, as has been intimated, rather broadly, is a jay town; but it is coming on. A department store advertises "cigarette cases and holders for the gay sub-deb and her great-grandmother," also "a diary for 'her' if she leads an exciting life."

* * *

We infer from the reviews of John Burroughs' "Accepting the Universe" that John has decided to accept it. One might as well. With the reservation that acceptance does not imply approval.

* * *

It is possible that Schopenhauer wrote his w. k. essay on woman after a visit to a bathing beach.

* * *

We heard a good definition of a bore. A bore is a man who, when you ask him how he is, tells you.

* * *

The sleeping sickness (not the African variety) is more mysterious than the flu. It will be remembered that two things were discovered about the flu: first, that it was caused by a certain bacillus, and, second, that it was not caused by that bacillus. But all that is known about the sleeping sickness is that it attacks, by preference, carpenters and plumbers.

* * *

Slangy and prophetic Merimee, who wrote, in "Love Letters of a Genius": "You may take it from me that ... short dresses will be the order of the day, and those who are blessed with natural advantages will be at last distinguished from those whose advantages are artificial only."

* * *

Happy above all other writing mortals we esteem him who, like Barrie, treads with sure feet the borderland 'twixt fact and faery, stepping now on this side, now on that. One must write with moist eyes many pages of such a fantasy as "A Kiss for Cinderella." There are tears that are not laughter's, nor grief's, but beauty's own. A lovely landscape may bring them, or a strain of music, or a written or a spoken line.

* * *

All we can get out of a Shaw play is two hours and a half of mental exhilaration. We are, inscrutably, denied the pleasure of wondering what Shaw means, or whether he is sincere.

* * *

WHY THE MAKE-UP FLED.

[From the Dodge Center Record.]

Mr. and Mrs. Umberhocker returned yesterday from an over Sunday visit with their son and family in Minneapolis.

They are in hopes to soon land them in jail as they did the hog thieves, who were to have a hearing but waved it and trial will be held later.

* * *

"It isn't hard to sit up with a sick friend when he has a charming sister," reports B. B. But if it were a sick horse, Venus herself would be in the way.

* * *

"Saving the penny is all right," writes a vox-popper to the Menominee News, "but saving the dollar is 100 per cent better." At least.

* * *

MUSIC HATH CHAHMS.

What opus of Brahms' is your pet?— A concerto, a trio, duet, Sonate No. 3 (For Viol. and P.), Or the second piano quartette?

Sardi.

Our favorite Brahms? We're not sur, For all are so classique et pur; But we'll mention an opus With which you may dope us— One Hundred and Sixteen, E dur.

* * *

BRAHMS, OPUS 116.

I care for your pet, One Sixteen (Your choice proves your judgment is keen); But in E, you forget, see, It has two intermezzi; Please, which of these twain do you mean?

Sardi.

Which E? Can you ask? Must we tell? Doth it not every other excel— The ineffable one, Of gossamer spun, The ultimate spirituelle.

* * *

A candid butcher in Battle Creek advertises "Terrible cuts."

* * *

Another candid merchant in Ottumwa, Ia., advises: "Buy to-day and think to-morrow."

* * *

MUSIC HINT.

Sir: P. A. Scholes, in his "Listener's Guide to Music," revives two good laughs—thus: "A fugue is a piece in which the voices one by one come in and the people one by one go out." Also he quotes from Sam'l Butler's Note Books: "I pleased Jones by saying that the hautbois was a clarinet with a cold in its head, and the bassoon the same with a cold in its chest." The cor anglais suffers slightly from both symptoms. Some ambitious composer, by judicious use of the more diseased instruments, could achieve the most rheumy musical effects, particularly if, a la Scriabin, he should have the atmosphere of the concert hall heavily charged with eucalyptus.

E. Pontifex.

* * *

"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 highbrow 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 crisped 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 crisped and sere, but in a maple wood we may dispense with the sun, such irradiation is there from the gold of the crisped 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 refined 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.