To one gadder who asked for a small coffee, the waitress in the rural hotel said, “A nickel is as small as we’ve got.” Some people try to take advantage of the bucolic innkeeper.
“I have not read American literature; I know only Poe,” confesses M. Maeterlinck. Well, that is a good start. For a long time the only French author we knew was Victor Hugo. Live and learn, say we.
“He is so funny with the patisserie,” says Mme. Maeterlinck of M. Charles Chaplin. “He is an artist the way he throw the pie.” Is he not? M. Chaplin is to Americans what the Discus Thrower was to the Greeks.
Sings, in a manner of singing, Mr. Lindsay in the London Mercury:
“I brag and chant of Bryan, Bryan, Bryan,
Candidate for President who sketched a silver Zion.”
[p 295]
]But we prefer, as simpler and more emotional, the classic containing the lines—
“But my soul is cryin’
For old Bill Bryan.”
You are familiar with the cryptic inscription “TAM HTAB,” which ceases to be cryptic when you turn the mat over; but did you ever hear about the woman who christened her child “Nosmo King,” having been taken by those names on two glass doors which stood open?