The So-called Human Race

Lead them to the awful leap
With a merry chansonette;
Push them blithely off the steep;
We’ll forgive them and forget.
Toss them, like a cigarette,
To the far Plutonian floor.
Drop them where they’ll cease to fret —
Thrust them through the Little Door.

Keeper of the Oubliette,
Wouldst thou have us more and more
In thine everlasting debt —
Thrust them through the Little Door.

To insure the safety of the traveling public, the Maroon Taxicab Company is putting out a line of armored cabs. These will also be equipped with automatic brakes, so that when a driver for a rival taxicab company shoots a Maroon, the cab will come to a stop.

A neat and serviceable Christmas gift is a sawed-off shotgun. Carried in your limousine, it may aid in saving your jewels when returning from the opera.

“The entertainment committee of the Union League Club,” so it says, “is with considerable effort spending some of your money to please you.” In the clubs to which we belong there is no observable effort.

Certain toadstools are colored a pizenous pink underneath; a shade which is also found on the cheeks of damosels and dames whom you see on the avenue. Poor kalsomining, we call it.

When we begin to read a book we begin with the title page; but many people, probably most, begin at “Chapter I.” We have recommended books to friends, and they have read them; and then they have said, “Tell me something about the author.” The preface would have told them, but they do not read prefaces. Do you?

Although ongweed to the extinction point by the subject of names, we have no right to assume that the subject is not of lively interest to other people. So let it be recorded that George Demon was arrested in Council Bluffs for beating his wife. Also, Miss Elsie Hugger is director of dancing in the Ithaca Conservatory of Music. Furthermore, S. W. Henn of the Iowa State College was selected as a judge for the National Poultry Show. Moreover, G. O. Wildhack is in the automobile business in Indianapolis, and Mrs. Cataract takes in washing in Peoria. Sleepy weather, isn’t it?

SUCH A ONE MIGHT HAVE DRAWN PRIAM’S CURTAIN IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT, AND TOLD HIM HALF HIS TROY WAS BURNED

[From the Eagle Grove, Ia., Eagle.]

The Rev. Winter was pastor of the M. E. Church many years ago, at the time it was destroyed by a cyclone. Engineer Sam Wood broke the news to Mr. Winter gently by shouting: “Your church has all blown to hell, Elder!”

THE ENRAPTURED REPORTER

[From the Lewisville, Ark., Recorder.]

The evening was most propitious. The air was balmy. The fragrance of flowers was patent in the breeze. The limpid moonlight, in a glow of beauty, kissed the hills and valleys. While from the vines and bushes the merry twitter of playful birds, symphonies soft and low, entranced with other delight, the romantic party goers. Now a still other delight was in store – some fine music and good singing, which every recipient enjoyed to the highest note. Thanks and compliments for such a model evening were ornate and lavish and all left truly glad that they had been.

FULL OF HIS SUBJECT

[From the Evansville, Ind., Courier.]

Dr. Hamilton A. Hymes, pastor of Grace Memorial Presbyterian church, has recovered from a recent illness, caused from a carbuncle on his neck. His subject for Sunday night will be “Is There a Hell?”

THAT TRIOLET DRIVEL

Will you can it or no? —
That Triolet drivel.
It irritates so.
Will you can it or no?
For the habit may grow,
And the thought makes me snivel.
Will you can it or no? —
That Triolet drivel.
D. A. D. Burnitt.

Yes, we’ll can it or no,
As the notion may seize us.
If a thing is de trop,
Yes; we’ll can it – or no.
For we always let go
When a thing doesn’t please us.
Yes, we’ll can it, or – no,
As the notion may seize us.

Sir Oliver Lodge has seen so many tables move and heard so many tambourines, that he now keeps an open mind on miracles. We hope he believes that the three angels appeared to Joan of Arc, as that is our favorite miracle. Had they appeared only once we might have doubted the apparition; but, as we remember the story, they appeared three times.

Sir Oliver may be interested in a case reported to us by L. J. S. His company had issued a tourist policy to a lady who lost her trunk on the way to Tulsa, Okla., and who put in a claim for $800. The adjuster at Dallas wrote:

“Assured is the famous mind reader, and one of her best stunts is answering questions in regard to the location of stolen property, but she was unable to be of any assistance to me.”

Some of the members of the Cosmopolitan club are about as cosmopolitan as the inhabitants of Cosmopolis, Mich.

At the request of a benedick we are rushing to the Cannery by parcel-post Jar 617: “Don’t they make a nice-looking couple!”

ENGLISH AS SHE IS MURDERED

Sir: After Pedagogicus’ class gets through with Senator Borah’s masterpiece, it might look over this legend which the Herald and Examiner has been carrying: “Buy bonds like the victors fought.” E. E. E.

The Illinois War Savings Bulletin speaks of “personal self-interest.” This means you!

“Graduation from the worst to the best stuff,” is Mr. W. L. George’s method of acquiring literary taste. Something can be said for the method, and Mr. George says it well, and we are sorry, in a manner of speaking, not to believe a word of it; unless, as is possible, we both believe the same thing fundamentally. Taste, in literature and music, and in other things, is, we are quite sure, natural. It can be trained, but this training is a matter of new discoveries. A taste that has to be led by steps from Owen Meredith to George Meredith, which could not recognize the worth of the latter before passing through the former, is no true taste. Graduation from the simple to the complex is compatible with a natural taste, but this simple may be first class, as much music and literature is. New forms of beauty may puzzle the possessor of natural taste, but not for long. He does not require preparation in inferior stuff.

Speaking of George Meredith, we are told again (they dig the thing up every two or three years) that, when a reader for Chapman & Hall, he turned down “East Lynne,” “Erewhon,” and other books that afterward became celebrated. What of it? Meredith may not have known anything about literature, but he knew what he liked. Moreover, he was a marked and original writer, and as that tolerant soul, Jules Lemaitre, has noted, the most marked and original of writers are those who do not understand everything, nor feel everything, nor love everything, but those whose knowledge, intelligence, and tastes have definite limitations.

BUT WOULD IT NOT REQUIRE A GEOLOGIC PERIOD?

Sir: You are kind enough to refer to my lecture on “Literary Taste and How to Acquire It.” I venture to suggest that your summary – viz.: “It is to read only first-class stuff,” not only fails to meet the problem, but represents exactly the view that I am out to demolish. If, as I presume, you mean that the ambitious person who now reads Harold Bell Wright should sit down to the works of Shakespeare, I can tell you at once that the process will be a failure. My method is one of graduation from the worst to the best stuff. W. L. George.

We do not wish to crab W. L. George’s act, “Literary Taste and How to Acquire It,” but we know the answer. It is to read only first-class stuff. Circumstances may oblige a man to write second-class books, but there is no reason why he should read such.

THE STORM

(By a girl of ten years.)

It lightnings, it thunders
And I go under,
And where do I go,
I wonder.