The So-called Human Race

A bachelor complains to us that prohibition has ruined his life. His companions have deserted their haunts – all, all are gone, the old familiar faces – and he can find no one to talk to; and he talks very well, too. Now, we have as much compassion for him as it is possible to have for any bachelor, and yet we do not esteem his case utterly hopeless. As Mr. Lardner has suggested, when he repairs to his hotel at night he can open the clothespress and talk to his other suit of clothes.

Tolstoi’s “Power of Darkness” reminds P. G. Wodehouse of a definition of Greek tragedy – the sort of drama in which one character comes to another and says, “If you don’t kill mother, I will!”

“The jehu of the rubber-neck wagon,” reports a gadder from Loz Onglaze, “called out: ‘We are now in the center of the old aristocratic center. That palatial residence on our left is the home of Fatty Arbuckle.’”

MORNING IN IOWA

A cold, rough, gloomy morning!
’Gainst yellow dawn the smoke
Of neighbors’ chimneys stains the air,
Reminding me that yon grim, white-capped cone,
Which like a second Rainier stands in my backyard,
Like him of ash and cinders built, now calls
For more upbuilding. That white bloom
Which last night’s snow hath left upon
His smooth and awful sides must now
Be sicklied o’er with more and yet more
Ashes.

What’s that I smell – buckwheats?
And What’s-his-name’s pig sausage?
It is? Aha!
Gee, what a peach of a morning!
Abd-el-Kader.

AN EVENING WITH SHAKESPEARE

Sir: Overheard at the Studebaker: “What’s put him off his nut?” Lady, answering: “He ain’t really bugs – it’s a stall. The old guy [Polonius] thinks he’s got something on him.” P. S. D.

YOURS, ETC

Sir: The height of efficiency is attained by Mervin L. Lane, Insurance Service, New York, who prints on his letterhead, “Unnecessary terms of politeness as well as assurances of self-evident esteem are omitted from our letters.” E. A. D.

“It costs 30,000 Lenin rubles a day for food alone,” says Prof. Zeidler of Viborg, referring to so-called life in Russia. Apparently, then, Lenin has not yet succeeded in making money utterly worthless.

HE OUGHT TO BE DEPORTED

Sir: Gum Boot Charlie, an Alaska native, was discussing the present h. c. l. with a group of citizens of Yakutat, and while condemning the present administration and conditions generally, he was interrupted by a Swede who said: “You dam native, if you don’t like this country, why don’t you go back where you came from?” W. W. K.

A Carbondale youth was arrested for hunting out of season, and the possession of a gun and a dog is considered, by the Free Press, “facsimile evidence.”

Then, as D. B. B. reminds, there are the writers of apostrophic verse who skip lightly from ‘you’ to ‘thou’ and ‘thee,’ and from ‘thy’ to ‘your.’ A language less rugged than the English would have been destroyed long ago.

We learn from the Monticello, Ind., Journal that a couple narrowly escaped being asphyxicated by gas from an anthricate coal stove. Young Grimes must be reporting for that gazette.

Overheard in an osteopath’s office: “When does it hurt you most, when you set or when you lay?”

NOTES OF THE ACADEMY OF IMMORTALS

The following nominations have been received:

For greenskeeper on the Academy links: Mr. Launmore of Pittsburgh. Nom. by S. C. B.

For bugler: Mr. Mescall of Chicago. Nom. by Circle W.

For legal counsel: Atty. Frank Lawhead of Detroit. Nom. by H. D. T.

For any vacancy: Mr. Void Null of Centralia, Mo. Nom. by E. J. C.

Miss Seitsinger is organizing a chorus and glee club in the schools of Northwood, Ia. Yes, very.

BUTCHER TO THE ACADEMY

Bill Bull, the Butcher, of Bartlett, Ill.,
Says: “Trade with me. Cut down your bill.”
A. G. C.

The membership committee of the Academy has received numerous protests against the admission of Charles Ranck, the skunk trapper of Ellsworth, Neb., and J. K. Garlick, the “practical horseshoer” of Sublette, Ill.

ACADEMY NOTES

The nominations were considered of Ananias Deeds of Guthrie Center, Ia., and Mrs. Tamer Lyons of Upton, Ind. The Academy then resumed work on the Dictionary of Names.

“For goodness’ sake!” exclaims Frank Harris in Pearson’s, expressing his joy in the growth of Lenine’s state, “for goodness’ sake let us have new experiments on this old earth.” For goodness’s sake, let’s! But why not have one on a grand scale? Let’s dig a hole a mile deep and a mile across, fill it with dynamite, and see whether we can’t finish the world in one good bang.

“Learned Class of Europe In Hard Straits.”

They are in hard straits everywhere. The more learned you are, the worse you’re off.

“Budapest Hungriest of Cities in all Europe.” – South Bend Tribune.

The headliner must have his little joke.

WE DON’T LIKE TO THINK OF IT!

[From the Cambridge Review.]

Think of the portrait that Rembrandt painted of his mother hanging in the living-room of his parents’ simple home.

Our blithesome contemporary, F. P. A., is not disturbed by the steel strike, as he uses a gold pen; and for a like reason our withers are unwrung. Eugene Field of fragrant memory used a steel pen. A friend of ours was speaking of having dropped in on the poet just as he was fitting a new pen to the holder. “You can’t write anything new,” said Field, “unless you have a new pen.”

THE SECOND POST

[Received by a mail order house.]

Dear Sir: The peeaney you shipped me sum time ago come duly recd. My, is we souposed to pay the frate charge onit. When we bot this peeanney you claimed to lie it down to me. I want you two send me quick as hell a receet for 2.29 for same. Besyds the kees on sum dont work a tall. Is them ivory finger boards. Are dealer here sed we got beet on this deel. Wer is the thing you seet on? Is it eeen that box on the platform at the depo? That luks two small for it. Yours truely, etc.

P. S. – Wen you rite tel me how two tune it.