ILLUSTRATIONS

The Illiterate Digest Office[Frontispiece]
Page
You Are Going to Get the Low-Down on Some of Those Birds Who Are Sending Home the Radish-Seed[26]
They Are Carpeting All the Halls of the Senate So in Case of a Fall There Will Be No Serious Loss[31]
As I Opened the Door to Let Her in 2 of Our Dogs and 4 Cats Came In[46]
Birds That Never Can Tell the Servants from the Guests[53]
I Would Invent a Triangle Shape Slide That Could Be Pushed Under the Plate[56]
Song Writers Should Be Segregated and Made to Sing Their Songs to Each Other[76]
Why Can’t I Do Something With Second-Hand Gum?[86]
The More Glasses You Used the More Eclipse You Could See[98]
I Just Happened to Remember That No One Had Said a Word for California[110]
I Want to Do Something for the Home Town Girl So She Can Stay at Home and Show How and What She Is Made Of[120]
So I Got Me Some of Those Long-Handled Wooden Hammers and Started in at Polo[130]
The Family Wash-Tub Was Dragged Up By the Fire[140]
Finally a Warden Knocked at My Dressing Room and Said: “You Die in 5 More Minutes for Kidding Your Country”[158]
I Could Just Sorter Nonchalantly Step on the Bride’s Train[170]
If Mr. Ford Had Been Elected We Would Have Been the Mouthpiece of the Administration[192]
He Started at Four or Five Years of Age and Has Worked on New Stunts Every Day of His Life[202]
If a Rider Hit on His Head, It Was Me[211]
It’s a Bigger Thing for Washington Than the Shriners’ Convention[216]
They Not Only Have to Be Lawyers, But Political Lawyers[219]
They Are from Tulsa. I Will Be Right Out[226]
I Object to the Senator from Massachusetts’ Slurring Remarks[236]
“There’s a Bellboy at My Hotel and He Just Got It From the Chauffeur of a Prominent Oil-Man”[248]
They Rehearsed Their Old Act Here Yesterday[268]
“You Wasn’t Here and You Know Them as Well as I Do”[278]
Well, I Guess You Heard About My Presidential Boom[286]
The Deaths from Old Age Among the Delegates Is About Offset by the Birthrate[291]
“If They Haven’t Got Enough Water in There to Fill the Harbor, We Will Have to Ask the Neighbors to Drain Their Corn Liquor”[322]
“If You Don’t Get Well and Throw Away Your Crutches I Get Nothing Out of It”[344]

INTRODUCTION

This book should have been long before now on the Bookshelves of every reader of worth while Literature in the English speaking World, in addition to being well worn in our best reference Libraries, and should have been already translated into every known and unknown tongue. What you will immediately ask delayed such an important event? Well the principal reason is it had not been written, and the next is We had no introduction for it. You let a Book go out without an Alibi by some other writer, and it is practically a commercial suicide. When the Publishers were all clamoring for a Book from me, and were practically annihilating (Boy there is a word I never used before in my life and I hope it fits in, I read it in some War Novel) each other for the Publishing rights and assured profits, they of course felt that through my wide Literary acquaintance, gained during years of association at the Democratic National Convention, and the late World Series with some of the best contemporary Writers of modern times, I should through my Literary standing and personal friendship, allow some of them to have the honor of penning the introduction to this Time Table of National Catastrophes.

William Emporia Allen White was my first thought, on account of his having a middle name, which always sounds Literary, even if its owner is not. Then I had heard he himself had written a Book once, and by now should know what Introductions should not be. Then he went home and announced himself as a Candidate for Governor. So that eliminated him from my thoughts. To have a big broad-minded book have any narrow Political endorsement would mean certain calamity among people who think. To run for Governor is bad enough, But to run for Governor of Kansas and then write an Introduction of my worthy efforts, would simply make the book a laughing stock.

Then my thoughts turned to Arthur Brisbane, I don’t know what I could have been eating that my thoughts should have done such a mental somersault. But I guess it was because I had known Arthur for years,—I knew him before William Randolph Hearst started working for him. I approached him on it, and he said, Sorry Will but what I write must point a moral, there must be a lesson in every paragraph; mine must not only be news but it must be instructive news. For instance, I read China will not go to war on rainy days. What does that bit of news mean to the individual that dont think? Nothing! What does it mean to me? It means that a Chinaman would rather get shot than wet. It points a moral to peace: Have all so-called civilized Nations stop wars on rainy days. Then hold all wars in Portland, Oregon where it rains every day, and you will eliminate Wars and have universal Peace.

So he could see no particular Moral in writing an Introduction to my book, unless it was that Books should not depend entirely on their introductions as they do now. So I next thought of my friend Irvin Cobb. I had set next to him at so many Speakers Tables, at banquets, and had always given him any little extras that I might not want. Ice Cream and Sweets and things like that he just loves and ruins them at a Banquet. Well he was going Duck shooting down in Louisiana and said he wouldn’t miss one Duck for the pleasure of writing the Introduction to the Encyclopedia Brittanica. So you just let the old fat thing try to get my Ice Cream at another Banquet.

Of course Ring Lardner was one of my very first thoughts, because I knew he could add the little touch of comedy that the book really needed. I went to him and told him that I only wanted something light and airy, maybe just one good joke would do the trick and take away from the serious nature of the Book. He is not only a Humorist but has got plenty money to show that he is. He said before he shook hands with me, What is there in it? I said well this is just a kind of an honorary thing, a kind of courtesy from one Author to another. He then asked me why should he give me a joke for nothing? He could put the joke into his Sunday Newspaper Article; then he could put the joke into his weekly Newspaper Cartoon; then he could sell it to a Musical Comedy and they would tell it so bad it would sound new. Then the Movies would buy it and make a drama out of it; then he would still hold the Phonograph, and broadcasting rights, and after it got well enough known write a Song around it. So he said I would be a fine egg to give you a joke for nothing.

I wish that Spaniard Ibanez, that wrote the 4 Horsemen was over here, I know him well, I had read 5 or 6 of his Books and I was to a big reception given to him in Los Angeles, and during our conversations through an Interpreter he learned I had read so many of his Books. No one else he met there even among the Literary ones had ever read any but the 4 Horsemen, So when he went home he sent me an Autographed Copy which read “To an American Cowboy, the only person in America I found who had read all my Books.” The funny thing about it is that he is the only Author I ever read. Now if he was here he would write me an Introduction, But of course it would be in Spanish and nobody could read it, so I would be just as bad off as I am now.

I also know Elinor Glyn, I met her when she was out in California looking around for some one to cast as Paul in “Three Weeks.” She sent for me but I had just started on another new Picture. She could have cooked me up a hot Introduction. She would have draped the first few paragraphs with Tiger skins, and described me in such a way that I would have really looked like something. So I just says to myself, why monkey with these writers, why not write my own Introduction? So here goes.