Watch the flies on cold mornings; that is the way you will feel and act when you are old.
There is nothing so well known as that we should not expect something for nothing, but we all do and call it hope.
When half the men become fond of doing a thing, the other half prohibit it by law.
Sometimes I think that I have nothing to be thankful for, but when I remember that I am not a woman I am content. Any one who is compelled to kiss a man and pretend to like it is entitled to sympathy.
Somehow every one hates to see an unusually pretty girl get married. It is like taking a bite out of a very fine-looking peach.
What people say behind your back is your standing in the community in which you live.
A really busy person never knows how much he weighs.
Walt Mason is another Kansas philosopher-humorist. Recently he published in "Collier's Weekly" an article describing life, particularly with regard to prohibition and its effects, in his "hum town," Emporia.
Emporia is probably as well known as any town of its size in the land. It has, as Mason puts it, "ten thousand people, including William Allen White." Including Walt Mason, then, it must have about eleven thousand. Mason's article told how Stubbs, on becoming Governor of Kansas, enforced the prohibition laws, and of the fine effect of actual prohibition in Emporia. "No town in the world," he declares, "wears a tighter lid. There is no drunkenness because there is nothing to drink stiffer than pink lemonade. You will see a unicorn as soon as you will see a drunken man in the streets of the town. Emporia has reared a generation of young men who don't know what alcohol tastes like, who have never seen the inside of a saloon. Many of them never saw the outside of one. They go forth into the world to seek their fortunes without the handicap of an acquired thirst. All Emporia's future generations of young men will be similarly clean, for the town knows that a tight lid is the greatest possible blessing and nobody will ever dare attempt to pry it loose."
Having spent a year in the prohibition State of Maine, I was skeptical as to the feasibility of a practical prohibition. Prohibition in Maine, when I was there, was simply a joke—and a bad joke at that, for it involved bad liquor. Every man in the State who wanted drink knew where to get it, so long as he was satisfied with poor beer, or whisky of about the quality of spar varnish. Never have I seen more drunkenness than in that State. The slight added difficulty of getting drink only made men want it more, and it seemed to me that, when they got it, they drank more at a sitting than they would have, had liquor been more generally accessible.
In Kansas it is different. There the law is enforced. Blind pigs hardly exist, and bootleggers are rare birds who, if they persist in bootlegging, are rapidly converted into jailbirds. The New York "Tribune" printed, recently, a letter stating that prohibition is a signal failure in Kansas, that there is more drinking there than ever before, and that "under the seats of all the automobiles in Kansas there is a good-sized canteen." Whether there is more drinking in Kansas than ever before, I cannot say. I do know, however, both from personal observation and from reliable testimony, that there is practically no drinking in the portions of the State I visited. As I am not a prohibitionist, this statement is nonpartizan. But I may add, after having seen the results of prohibition in Kansas, I look upon it with more favor. Indeed, I am a partial convert; that is, I believe in it for you. And whatever are your views on prohibition, I think you will admit that it is a pretty temperate State in which a girl can grow to womanhood and say what one Kansas girl said to me: that she never saw a drunken man until she moved away from Kansas.
Three religious manifestations occurred while I was in Kansas. A negro preacher came out with a platform declaring definitely in favor of a "hot hell," another preacher affirmed that he had the answer to the "six riddles of the universe," and William Allen White came out with the news that he had "got religion."
Now, if William Allen White of the Emporia "Gazette" really has done that, a number of consequences are likely to occur. For one thing, a good many Americans who follow, with interest, Mr. White's opinions, are likely also to follow him in this; and if they fail to do so voluntarily, they are likely to get religion stuffed right down their throats. If White decides that it is good for them, they'll get it, never fear! For White's the kind of man who gives us what is good for us, even if it kills us. Another probable result of White's coming out in the "Gazette" in favor of religion would be the simultaneous appearance, in the "Gazette," of anti-religious propaganda by Walt Mason. That is the way the "Gazette" is run. White is the proprietor and has his say as editor, but Walt Mason, who is associated with him on the "Gazette," also has his say, and his say is far from being dictated by the publisher. White, for instance, favors woman suffrage; Mason does not. White is a progressive; Mason is a standpatter. White believes in the commission form of government, which Emporia has; Mason does not. Mason believes in White for Governor of Kansas, whereas White, himself, protests passionately that the "Gazette" is against "that man White."
Says a "Gazette" editorial, apropos of a movement to nominate White on the Progressive ticket: