On the announcement of this adjournment, the junior partner gave a loud groan. He leaped to his feet, and rushed out like one demented, shouting as he went:
Merciful heavens, then the sacrifice must still go on!
I don’t need to tell you how much business that firm did in the next three weeks.
Man, born of woman, is of a few days and no teeth. And, indeed, it would be money in his pocket sometimes if he had less of either. As for his days, he wasteth one-third of them, and as for his teeth, he has convulsions when he cuts them, and as the last one comes through, lo, the dentist is twisting the first one out, and the last end of that man’s jaw is worse than the first, being full of porcelain and a roof-plate built to hold blackberry seeds.
Stone bruises line his pathway to manhood; his father boxes his ears at home, the big boys cuff him in the play ground, and the teacher whips him in the school-room. He buyeth Northwestern at 110, when he hath sold short at 96, and his neighbor unloadeth upon him Iron Mountain at 65⅝, and it straightway breaketh down to 52¼. He riseth early and sitteth up late that he may fill his barns and store-houses, and lo! his children’s lawyers divide the spoil among themselves and say, Ha, ha! He growleth and is sore distressed because it raineth, and he beateth upon his breast and sayeth, My crop is lost! because it raineth not. The late rains blight his wheat and the frost biteth his peaches. If it be so that the sun shineth, even among the nineties, he sayeth, Woe is me, for I perish, and if the northwest wind sigheth down in forty-two below he crieth, would that I were dead! If he wear sackcloth and blue jeans men say he is a tramp, and if he goeth forth shaven and clad in purple and fine linen all the people cry, shoot the dude!
He carrieth insurance for twenty-five years, until he hath paid thrice over for all his goods, and then he letteth his policy lapse one day, and that same night fire destroyeth his store. He buildeth him a house in Jersey, and his first born is devoured by mosquitoes; he pitcheth his tent in New York, and tramps devour his substance. He moveth to Kansas, and a cyclone carrieth his house away over into Missouri, while a prairie fire and ten million acres of grasshoppers fight for his crop. He settleth himself in Kentucky, and is shot the next day by a gentleman, a colonel and a statesman, because, sah, he resembles, sah, a man, sah, he did not like, sah. Verily, there is no rest for the sole of his feet, and if he had it all to do over again he would not be born at all, for “the day of death is better than the day of one’s birth.”
Juvenile Jests
Teacher—Who can make a sentence with gruesome in it?