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.
[p 129]
]The headline, “U. S. to Seize Wet Doctors,” has led many readers to wonder whether the government will get after the nurses next.
We have always been in sympathy with President Wilson’s idea of democracy. He expressed it perfectly when he was president of Princeton. “Unless I have entire power,” said he, “how can I make this a democratic college?”
The complete skeptic is skeptical about skepticism; and there is one day in the round of days, this one, when he may lay aside his glasses, faintly tinted blue, and put on instead, not the rose-colored specs of Dr. Pangloss, but a glass that blurs somewhat the outlines of men and things; and these he may wear until midnight. The only objects which this glass does not blur are children. Seen through blue, or rose, or white, children are always the same. They have not changed since Bethlehem.
A very good motto for any family is that which the Keiths of Scotland selected a-many years ago: “They say. What say they? Let them say.” It might even do for the top of this Totem-Pole of Tooralay.
A frequent question since the war began is, “Why are there so many damn fools in the faculties of American universities?” Chancellor [p 130] />]Williams of Wooster turns light on the mystery. Eminent educators who are also damn fools are hypermorons, who are intellectual but not truly intelligent. He says of these queer beings:
“The hypermoron may laugh in imitation of others, but he has no original humor and very little original wit. The cause for this is that original wit and humor require unusual combinations of factors; but the very nature of the hypermoron is that he does not arrange and perceive such combinations. When the hypermoron does cause laughter from some speech or action, usually he resents it. But when a normal man unconsciously does or says something laughable, he himself shares in making sport of himself. Though at times amiable, the hypermoron invariably takes himself so seriously as in a long acquaintance to become tiresome.”
THE ENRAPTURED SOCIETY EDITOR.
[From the Charlotte, Ky., Chronicle.]
The lovely and elegant home of that crown prince of hospitality, the big hearted and noble souled Ab. Weaver, was a radiant scene of enchanting loveliness, for Cupid had brought one of his finest offerings to the court of Hymen, for the lovable Miss Maude, the beautiful daughter of Mr. Weaver and his refined and most excellent wife, who is a lady of rarest charms and sweetest [p 131] />]graces, dedicated her life’s ministry to Dr. James E. Hobgood, the brilliant and gifted and talented son of that ripe scholar and renowned educator, the learned Prof. Hobgood, the very able and successful president of the Oxford Female college.
THE MISCHIEVOUS MAKE-UP MAN.
[From the Markesan, Wis., Herald.]
It is a wise man who knows when he has made a fool of himself.
A baby boy was born to Mr. and Mrs. Emil Zimmerman of Mackford yesterday.
WHY THE MAKE-UP MAN LEFT TOWN.
[From the Grinnell Review.]
Born, April 19, to Professor and Mrs. J. P. Ryan, a daughter.
This experience suggests that simple scientific experiments performed by college students would furnish a very interesting program of entertainment in any community.
COOL, INDEED!
[From the Tuttle, N. D., Star.]
At the burning of a barn in Steele recently, our superintendent displayed some nerve and pluck. Miss Sherman did not wait for the men to get there but hastened to the barn without stopping [p 132] />]to dress, and in bare feet untied the horses before they had become unmanageable thus saving them with little trouble. There is not a man, we venture to say, in all Steele but would have stopped to put on his pants before venturing out into the crisp air, but she did not, her whole thought being of the dumb animals imperiled, and it was, indeed, a nervy and cool-headed performance.
RHYMED DEVOTION.
[Robert Louis Stevenson to his wife.]
When my wife is far from me
The undersigned feels all at sea.
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.
[p 133]
]Lacking the equipment of the monk in Daudet’s tale, an amateur distiller is gauging his output with an instrument used for testing the fluid in his motor car’s radiator. “Yesterday,” reports P. D. P., “he confided to me that he had some thirty below zero stuff.”
Fish talk to each other, Dr. Bell tells the Geographic society; a statement which no one will doubt who has ever seen a pair of goldfish in earnest conversation.
According to Dr. Eliot, Americans are more and more becoming subject to herd impulses, gregarious impulses, common emotions, and he is considerably annoyed. Heaven be praised if what he says be true! He would have individuality released; which is precisely what we do not want. Americans are not individuals, and they are not free; but they think they are. Therefore is America, in these troublous times, an island in chaos, where civilization, like Custer, will make its last stand.
Doctors disagree as to whether 70 degrees is the proper temperature for an apartment. This will intrigue a friend of ours who, preferring 60 degrees himself, is obliged to maintain a temperature of almost 80 because of his mother-in-law.
[p 134]
]“Women,” says Dr. Ethel Smyth, of London (perhaps you know Ethel), “women have undoubtedly invaluable work to do as composers.” Quite so. And any time they are ready to begin we’ll sit up and take notice.
Sh-h-h! On Main street in Buffalo, near the Hotel Iroquois, you can have “Tattooing Done Privately Inside.”
Shall we not revise Shakespeare:
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 [p 135] />]good all around yellow pine office man of broad wholesale experience, well posted on both ends.”
Among the new publications of Richard G. Badger we lamp, “Nervous Children: Their Prevention and Management.”
Unrelieved pessimism rather shocks us. In spite of everything we are willing to look on the bright side. We are willing to agree that, in some previous incarnation, we may have inhabited a crookeder world than this.
The valued News, of New York, dismisses lightly the fear that the Puritan Sabbath will be restored. Ten or twenty years ago people dismissed as lightly the fear that Prohibition would be saddled on the country. On his way to the compulsory Wednesday-evening prayer meeting, a few years hence, the editor of the News will recall his cheerful and baseless prediction in 1920.
Fired by liquor, men maltreat their wives. These wretches deserve public flogging; hanging were a compliment to some of them. On the other hand, men made emotional by liquor have conceived an extravagant fondness for their wives. We have not read about liquor floating the matrimonial bark over the shallows of domestic [p 136] />]discord; yet men who have fared homeward with unsteady footsteps under the blinking stars, know that in such moments they are much more humane than in sober daylight; they are appalled by their own unworthiness, and thinking of their wives moves them almost to tears—quite, not infrequently. They resolve to become better husbands and fathers. The spirit of the wine in them captains “an army of shining and generous dreams,” an army that is easily routed, an army that the wife too often puts to flight with an injudicious criticism. It is said that since Prohibition came in the cases of cruelty to wives have increased greatly in number. We do not disbelieve this. Bluebeard was a dry.
WHAT DO YOU SUPPOSE HE WANTS?
[Received by Farm Mechanics.]
Gentlemen: Will you please send me a specimen copy of the Farm Mechanics. I would like a sample of the Farm Mechanics very much. I sincerely trust that you will mail me a sample copy of Farm Mechanics as I want to see a specimen of your Farm Mechanics very much. Yours very truly, etc.
Although Mrs. Elizabeth Hash has retired from the hotel business, Mrs. Peter Lunch has undertaken to manage the Metropole cafeteria in Fargo, N. D.
[p 137]
]POEMS OF SENTIMENT AND REFLECTION.
Sioux Falls
[From the Sioux Falls Press.]
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.”
[p 138]
]“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.