Divers correspondents advise us that the trade classics we have been printing are old stuff. Yes; that is the peculiar thing about a classic. Extraordinary, when you come to think of it.
“Timerio,” which is simpler than Esperanto, “will enable citizens of all nations to understand one another, provided they can read and write.” The inventor has found that 7,006 figures are enough to express any imaginable idea. But we should think that a picture book would be simpler.
“You can go to any hotel porter in the world,” says the perpetrator of Timerio, “and make yourself understood by simply handing him a slip of paper written in my new language.” But you can do as well with a picture of a trunk and a few gestures. The only universal language that is worth a hoot is the French phrase “comme ça.”
DENATURED LIMERICKS.
There was a young man of Constantinople,
Who used to buy eggs at 35 cents the dozen.
When his father said, “Well,
This is certainly surprising!”
The young man put on his second best waistcoat.
[p 294]
]“The maddest man in Arizona,” postcards J. U. H., who has got that far, “was the one who found, after ten miles’ hard drive from his hotel, that he had picked up the Gideon Bible instead of his Blue Book.” Still, they are both guide books, and they might be interestingly compared.