SUNDAY
The solemn Sabbath air was wracked by strident cries from "de gang," engaged in a game of one-eyed cat. Finally the good lady of the house ventured a protest and suggestion.
"Boys," she said, "don't you know that it is Sunday and you mustn't play ball in the front-yard? Go in the back-yard and play, if you must."
"Hey, youse!" yelled the leader to his followers. "Come on in the back-yard. It ain't Sunday there."
Sunday the Thirteenth
Must the new morn
Be a Blue morn?
Must we backward turn to find
The kind of day
To while away
The stalwart modern mind?
Must the Sun day
Be the one day
When the sun is banned to all?
Must our play day
Be a gray day
Locked behind a prison wall?
Must the rest day
Be a pest day?
Must we bore ourselves to death
By boding ill
From sitting still
To curb each merry breath?
Must the feast day
Be the least day,
Robbed of all the things we'd seek?
Must our proud day
Be a shroud day
With rehearsals once a week?
—Mabel Haughton Collyer.
Keeping Calm
I have my share of grief and care,
Beyond the slightest doubt;
I have enough of dreadful stuff
Each day to fret about.
So when I see prepared for me
A line of stuff like this:
"The Sabbath gang now want to hang
The man who steals a kiss!
They'd kill the joy of man and boy,
Who'd spend the Sabbath day
By motoring where song birds sing,
And put all fun away!"
I do not fret and get upset,
And let that frighten me;
Let others storm—that's one reform
That's never going to be!
—Edgar A. Guest.
Recent clerical utterances against Sunday amusements raise the question of whether a clergyman, with six days for outdoor recreation, is the one best qualified to pass on a Sabbath schedule of toilers who work from sun to sun six days a week.
LADY (to small boy who is fishing)—"I wonder what your father would say if he caught you fishing on Sunday?"
BOY—"I don't know. You'd better ask him. That's him a little farther up the stream."
FOND MOTHER—"Oh, Reginald! Reginald! I thought I told you not to play with your soldiers on Sunday."
REGINALD—"But I call them the Salvation Army on Sunday."
"Helen, I really cannot permit you to read novels on the Sabbath."
"But, grandma, this one is all right; it tells about a girl who was engaged to three Episcopal clergymen all at once."
Enforcement of the blue laws would make Sunday not a day of resting but of arresting.
When the New York National League ball club was playing in Boston, a local clergyman called at the hotel where the players were stopping one Sunday to congratulate Mathewson on his stand against playing on the Sabbath.
The clerk made a few mysterious inquiries and then said: "Sorry, sir, but Mr. Mathewson is out playing golf."—Everybody's.