Call a pretty girl a witch
And she’ll do her best to charm you.
Tell an old maid she’s a witch,
And she certainly will harm you.
Thus you see how hard it is to please them all.
Call a pretty maiden “Puss,”
And she’ll archly smile upon you.
Call an ancient one a “cat,”
She will grab an axe and run you.
The same name will not fit them all, at all.
If you call your girl a “mouse,”
She will think it cute and pretty.
If unto an aged spinster
You say “rats,” you have our pity.
Thus you see you need not try to please them all.
“In a lighthouse by the sea” is what the opera company sang to a forty-dollar audience in Galveston.
“Yes,” said the tramp as he accepted the dime and made for the lunch counter, “I always hollers when I’m hit and I always hits a man when I’m holler.”
Bill Nye
Bill Nye, who recently laid down his pen for all time, was a unique figure in the field of humor. His best work probably more nearly represented American humor than that of any other writer. Mr. Nye had a sense of ludicrous that was keen and judicious. His humor was peculiarly American in that it depended upon sharp and unexpected contrasts, and the bringing of opposites into unlooked-for comparison for its effect. Again, he had the true essence of kindliness, without which humor is stripped of its greatest component part.
Bill Nye’s jokes never had a sting. They played like summer lightning around the horizon of life, illuminating and spreading bright, if transitory, pictures upon the sky, but they were as harmless as the smile of a child. The brain of the man conceived the swift darts that he threw, but his great manly heart broke off their points.