The So-called Human Race

LIMERIK

There was a young man from Art Creek
Who went around dressed in Batik.
When they asked, “Are you well?”
He replied, “Ain’t it hell?
But in Art it’s the very last shriek.”

Received by a Missouri teacher: “Please excuse Frank for being absent. I kneaded him at home.” In the woodshed? Ouch, Maw!

How could the teacher rebuke Emil when she read this excuse from his father? “The only excuse I have for Emil being late was nine o’clock came sooner than we expected.”

For our part, we are moved to protest against the growing practice among parents of rebuking their children for playing with the children of prohibitionists. We should not visit upon the little ones the sins of their intemperate progenitors.

“Attention, Members!” postcards the house committee of the Chicago Real Estate Board. “Get your feet under the table and you are putting your shoulder behind your board.” This is another good reducing exercise.

With the return of the railroads to private control, we look for an immediate improvement in the service. For, as the dining-car waiter said, when requested to brush the crumbs from a table: “We’s workin’ for the government now. We don’t have to brush no crumbs off no more.” Well, he’ll brush some crumbs off some more now, or he’ll be fired.

One may send “harmless live animals” by parcel post, with the chances eight to five that the animal will be reduced to pulp or die of old age.

THE CHIGGER

When the enterprising chigger is a-chigging
And maturing his felonious little plan,
He loves to climb the lingerie and rigging
And tunnel into Annabel and Ann.

The chigger then with chloroform they smother,
His little hour of pleasure then is o’er,
So take this consideration with the other,
A chigger’s life is pretty much a bore.

A VERSATILE CHAP

[From the Turton, S. D., Trumpet.]

Victor LaBrie gave several fine selections on the piano. Victor is a splendid musician. When he plays he has full control of the piano, and has splendid harmony to his selections.

Victor LaBrie started dragging Monday afternoon. He used the tractor and stated that it worked up fine.

“Seeing is believing,” says the vender of a piano player. But perhaps you would prefer auricular evidence.

“The only fad I have had for the last twenty-six years is my husband.” – Mrs. Harding.

This is one of the very few really worthy fads that women have ever taken up.

ACT II., SCENE II

JULIET

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.

ROMEO

Thou sayest a mouthful, love. And yet how come
That Myra Tinkelpaugh, of Cobleskill,
New York, conducts therein The Music Shop?

Mr. Sink having resigned as plumber to the Immortals, we are recommending in his place the plumbing firm of Jamin & Jerkin, of St. Petersburg, Fla.

“Buy a communication ticket,” advises a restaurant. This, understands E. S., gives you the privilege of talking with the waitresses.

“Every American man has a mental picture of his wife standing behind the door with a rolling-pin.” – Blasco Ibanez.

We fear the gifted Spaniard has acquired an idea of American domestic life from Mr. Tom Powers’ sketches and other back-page comics.

A reader wonders what we can find in a book so childishly egotistical as Margot Asquith’s Autobiography. Answer: much that is interesting. When we read an autobiography we are interested in the people written about rather than in the writer. There are exceptions, of course; for example, Henry Adams and Jacques Casanova.

THE JANITOR ENTERTAINS

[Iowa City Item.]

An unusual function for men in business circles was that which John Voelkel, janitor of the First National bank, supervised, Saturday evening. He gave a dinner, card party and a smoker to all the officers of the bank. Invitations were issued to every member of the staff, from president to clerk, and those who assembled at the custodian’s home made merry for several hours at an event probably without a duplicate in banking history in Iowa City.

VARIANT OF THE V. H. W

Sir: Please send me a copy of the famous valve handle wheeze. I have heard so much about it. I hope this reaches you before your limited supply is exhausted. O. G. C.

P. S. – One of the fellows in the office just told me the joke, so you need not bother to send me a copy. O. G. C.

CRUELLE ET INSOLITE

[Transfer slip, Peninsular Railway Co.]

This ticket is good for one continuous passage only in the direction shown by conductor’s punch in the face hereof.

HIGH, LOW, JACK, AND THE GAME

Sir: While visiting in a New England family I accused them of being “highbrows,” and they gave me these modern synonyms for highbrow and lowbrow, taken from a Boston paper:

Highbrow: Browning, anthropology, economics, Bacon, the string quartette, the uplift, inherent sin, Gibbon, fourth dimension, Euripides, “eyether,” pâté de fois gras, lemon phosphate, Henry Cabot Lodge, Woodrow Wilson.

Low-highbrow: Municipal government, Kipling, socialism, Shakespeare, politics, Thackeray, taxation, golf, grand opera, bridge, chicken à la Maryland, “eether,” stocks and bonds, gin rickey, Theodore Roosevelt, chewing gum in private.

High-lowbrow: Musical comedy, euchre, baseball, moving pictures, small steak medium, whisky, Robert W. Chambers, purple socks, chewing gum with friends.

Lowbrow: Laura Jean Libbey, ham sandwich, haven’t came, pitch, I and her, melodrama, hair oil, the Duchess, beer, George M. Cohan, red flannels, toothpicks, Bathhouse John, chewing gum in public. E. S.