The So-called Human Race

A very good motto for any family is that which the Keiths of Scotland selected a-many years ago: “They say. What say they? Let them say.” It might even do for the top of this Totem-Pole of Tooralay.

A frequent question since the war began is, “Why are there so many damn fools in the faculties of American universities?” Chancellor Williams of Wooster turns light on the mystery. Eminent educators who are also damn fools are hypermorons, who are intellectual but not truly intelligent. He says of these queer beings:

“The hypermoron may laugh in imitation of others, but he has no original humor and very little original wit. The cause for this is that original wit and humor require unusual combinations of factors; but the very nature of the hypermoron is that he does not arrange and perceive such combinations. When the hypermoron does cause laughter from some speech or action, usually he resents it. But when a normal man unconsciously does or says something laughable, he himself shares in making sport of himself. Though at times amiable, the hypermoron invariably takes himself so seriously as in a long acquaintance to become tiresome.”

THE ENRAPTURED SOCIETY EDITOR

[From the Charlotte, Ky., Chronicle.]

The lovely and elegant home of that crown prince of hospitality, the big hearted and noble souled Ab. Weaver, was a radiant scene of enchanting loveliness, for Cupid had brought one of his finest offerings to the court of Hymen, for the lovable Miss Maude, the beautiful daughter of Mr. Weaver and his refined and most excellent wife, who is a lady of rarest charms and sweetest graces, dedicated her life’s ministry to Dr. James E. Hobgood, the brilliant and gifted and talented son of that ripe scholar and renowned educator, the learned Prof. Hobgood, the very able and successful president of the Oxford Female college.

THE MISCHIEVOUS MAKE-UP MAN

[From the Markesan, Wis., Herald.]

It is a wise man who knows when he has made a fool of himself.

A baby boy was born to Mr. and Mrs. Emil Zimmerman of Mackford yesterday.

WHY THE MAKE-UP MAN LEFT TOWN

[From the Grinnell Review.]

Born, April 19, to Professor and Mrs. J. P. Ryan, a daughter.

This experience suggests that simple scientific experiments performed by college students would furnish a very interesting program of entertainment in any community.

COOL, INDEED!

[From the Tuttle, N. D., Star.]

At the burning of a barn in Steele recently, our superintendent displayed some nerve and pluck. Miss Sherman did not wait for the men to get there but hastened to the barn without stopping to dress, and in bare feet untied the horses before they had become unmanageable thus saving them with little trouble. There is not a man, we venture to say, in all Steele but would have stopped to put on his pants before venturing out into the crisp air, but she did not, her whole thought being of the dumb animals imperiled, and it was, indeed, a nervy and cool-headed performance.

RHYMED DEVOTION

[Robert Louis Stevenson to his wife.]

When my wife is far from me
The undersigned feels all at sea.

    R. L. S.
I was as good as deaf
When separate from F.

I am far from gay
When separate from A.

I loathe the ways of men
When separate from N.

Life is a murky den
When separate from N.

My sorrow rages high
When separate from Y.

And all things seem uncanny
When separate from Fanny.

Lacking the equipment of the monk in Daudet’s tale, an amateur distiller is gauging his output with an instrument used for testing the fluid in his motor car’s radiator. “Yesterday,” reports P. D. P., “he confided to me that he had some thirty below zero stuff.”

Fish talk to each other, Dr. Bell tells the Geographic society; a statement which no one will doubt who has ever seen a pair of goldfish in earnest conversation.

According to Dr. Eliot, Americans are more and more becoming subject to herd impulses, gregarious impulses, common emotions, and he is considerably annoyed. Heaven be praised if what he says be true! He would have individuality released; which is precisely what we do not want. Americans are not individuals, and they are not free; but they think they are. Therefore is America, in these troublous times, an island in chaos, where civilization, like Custer, will make its last stand.

Doctors disagree as to whether 70 degrees is the proper temperature for an apartment. This will intrigue a friend of ours who, preferring 60 degrees himself, is obliged to maintain a temperature of almost 80 because of his mother-in-law.

“Women,” says Dr. Ethel Smyth, of London (perhaps you know Ethel), “women have undoubtedly invaluable work to do as composers.” Quite so. And any time they are ready to begin we’ll sit up and take notice.

Sh-h-h! On Main street in Buffalo, near the Hotel Iroquois, you can have “Tattooing Done Privately Inside.”

Shall we not revise Shakespeare:

The chariest maid is prodigal enough
If she unmask her beauty on the Boul.

A NEW FIRM IN FISH

[From the Kearney Neb., Democrat.]

Fresh Smoked Finn & Haddies at Keller’s Market.

Our interest in baseball has waned, but we still can watch workmen on a skyscraper throwing and catching red-hot rivets.

The dinosaur, having two sets of brains (as we once pointed out in imperishable verse), was able to reason a priori and a posteriori with equal facility. But what we started to mention was an ad in the American Lumberman calling for “a good all around yellow pine office man of broad wholesale experience, well posted on both ends.”

Among the new publications of Richard G. Badger we lamp, “Nervous Children: Their Prevention and Management.”

Unrelieved pessimism rather shocks us. In spite of everything we are willing to look on the bright side. We are willing to agree that, in some previous incarnation, we may have inhabited a crookeder world than this.

The valued News, of New York, dismisses lightly the fear that the Puritan Sabbath will be restored. Ten or twenty years ago people dismissed as lightly the fear that Prohibition would be saddled on the country. On his way to the compulsory Wednesday-evening prayer meeting, a few years hence, the editor of the News will recall his cheerful and baseless prediction in 1920.

Fired by liquor, men maltreat their wives. These wretches deserve public flogging; hanging were a compliment to some of them. On the other hand, men made emotional by liquor have conceived an extravagant fondness for their wives. We have not read about liquor floating the matrimonial bark over the shallows of domestic discord; yet men who have fared homeward with unsteady footsteps under the blinking stars, know that in such moments they are much more humane than in sober daylight; they are appalled by their own unworthiness, and thinking of their wives moves them almost to tears – quite, not infrequently. They resolve to become better husbands and fathers. The spirit of the wine in them captains “an army of shining and generous dreams,” an army that is easily routed, an army that the wife too often puts to flight with an injudicious criticism. It is said that since Prohibition came in the cases of cruelty to wives have increased greatly in number. We do not disbelieve this. Bluebeard was a dry.

WHAT DO YOU SUPPOSE HE WANTS?

[Received by Farm Mechanics.]