The So-called Human Race

Is that, in our old Roman day,
My patron paid me wages.

No barren wreath of fame was mine
When Mac approved my stuff,
But casks of good Falernian wine,
And slaves and gold enough.

And last, to keep the wolf away
And guard my age from harm,
He gave me in his princely way
My little Sabine farm.

But now, forsooth, your merry crew —
O Tempora! O Mores!—
What do they ever get from you —
Your Laura, Pan, Dolores?

They fill the Line with verse and wheeze,
To them your fame is due.
What do they ever get for these?
Maecenas? Ha! Ha! You?

So as I quaff my spectral wine,
At ease beside the Styx,
Would I contribute to the Line?
Nequaquam! Nunquam! Nix!
Campion.

Our compliments to Old Man Flaccus, whose witty message reminds us to entreat contribs to be patient, as we are snowed under with offerings. For a week or more we have been trying to horn into the column with some verses of our own composing.

BRIGHT SAYINGS OF MOTHER

My respected father came to breakfast on New Year’s Day remarking that he had treated himself to a present by donning a new pair of suspenders, whereupon mother remarked: “Well braced for the New Year, as it were!” C. T. S.

After some years of editing stories of events in high society, a gentleman at an adjacent desk believes he has learned the chief duty of a butler. It is to call the police.

“THAT STRAIN AGAIN – IT HAD A DYING SNORT.”

Sir: Speaking of soft music and the pearly gates, S. T. Snortum is owner and demonstrator of the music store at St. Peter, Minnesota. S. W. E.

Warren, O., has acquired a lady barber, and dinged if her name isn’t Ethel Gillette.

No doubt the Manistee News-Advocate has its reason for running the “hogs received” news under the heading “Hotel Arrivals.”

“I see by an announcement by the Columbia Mills that window shades are down,” communicates W. H. B. “Can it be that the Columbia Mills people are ashamed of something?” Mebbe. Or perhaps they are fixing prices.

“For the lovamike,” requests the Head Scene-Shifter, “keep the Admirable Crichton out of the Column. We have twenty-five presses, and it takes a guard at each press to prevent it from appearing Admiral Crichton.”

Pittsburgh Shriners gave a minstrel show the other night, and the inspired reporter for the Post mentions that “an intermission separated the two parts and broke the monotony.”

A Bach chaconne is on the orchestra programme this week. Some one remarked that he did not care for chaconnes, which moved us to quote what some one else (we think it was Herman Devries) said: “Chaconne à son goût.”

“Pond and Pond Donate $500 to Union Pool Fund.” – Ann Arbor item.

Quite so.

If we had not been glancing through the real estate notes we should never have known that Mystical Schriek lives in Evansville, Ind.

From the Illinois Federal Reporter: “Village of Westville vs. Albert Rainwater. Mr. Rainwater is charged with violation of the ordinance in regard to the sale of soft drinks.” Can Al have added a little hard water to the mixture?

MEMORY TESTS FOR THE HOME

Sir: Friend wife was naming authors of various well known novels, as I propounded their titles. Follows the result:

Me: “The Last Days of Pompeii.” She: “Dante.”

“Les Miserables.” “Huguenot.”

“Adam Bede.” “Henry George.”

“Vanity Fair.” “Why, that’s in Ecclesiastes.”

“Ben Hur.” “Rider Haggard.”

“The Pilgrim’s Progress.” “John Barleycorn.”

“Don Quixote.” (No reply.)

“Waverly.” “Oh, did Waverly write that?”

“Anna Karenina.” “Count Leon Trotsky.” J. C.

We see by the Fargo papers that Mrs. Bernt Wick gave a dinner recently, and we hope that Miss Candle, the w. k. night nurse, was among the guests.

LEVI BEIN’ A GOOD SPORT

Sir: Levi Frost, the leading druggist of Milton Falls, Vt., set a big bottle of medicine in his show window with a sign sayin’ he’d give a phonograph to anybody who could tell how many spoonfuls there was in the bottle. Jed Ballard was comin’ downstreet, and when he seen the sign he went and he sez, sezzee, “Levi,” sezzee, “if you had a spoon big enough to hold it all, you’d have just one spoonful in that bottle.” And, by Judas Priest, Levi give him the phonograph right off. Hiram.

“Basing his sermon on the words of Gesta Romanorum, who in 1473 said, ‘What I spent I had, what I kept I lost, what I gave I have,’ the Rev. Albert H. Zimmerman,” etc. – Washington Post.

As students of the School of Journalism ought to know, the philosopher Gesta Romanorum was born in Sunny, Italy, although some historians claim Merry, England, and took his doctor’s degree at the University of Vivela, in Labelle, France. His Latin scholarship was nothing to brag of, but he was an ingenious writer. He is best known, perhaps, as the author of the saying, “Rome was not built in a day,” and the line which graced the flyleaf of his first edition, “Viae omniae in Romam adducunt.”

“It is a great misfortune,” says Lloyd George, “that the Irish and the English are never in the same temper at the same time.” Nor is that conjuncture encouragingly probable. But there is hope. Energy is required for strenuous rebellion, and energy is converted into heat and dissipated. If, or as, the solar system is running down, its stock of energy is constantly diminishing; and so the Irish Question will eventually settle itself, as will every other mess on this slightly flattened sphere.

Whenever you read about England crumbling, turn to its automobile Blue Book and observe this: “It must be remembered that in all countries except England and New Zealand automobiles travel on the wrong side of the road.”

The first sign of “crumbling” on the part of the British empire that we have observed is the welcome extended to the “quick lunch.” That may get ’em.

LOST AND FOUND