Chapter 7
Sir: That sound of hoof-beats heralds the arrival, to join the Immortals, of Royal Ryder, a mounted copper in San Francisco.
G. Gray Shus.
* * *
Thanks to fifteen or twenty observant travelers for the info that the manager of the drug department of the Alexander Drug Co. in Omaha is George Salzgiver.
* * *
MISTER TOBIN, EDUCATOR.
A gentle, kindly man is he, The soul of generosity; Our little ones he gladly gives The right to split infinitives.
The boys and girls who go to school Approve of Mister Tobin's rule. They find no cause to make complaint At learning words like das't and ain't.
Two negatives has every boy, And uses them with pride and joy And every girl has utmost skill In interchanging shall and will.
Those noble boys and girls decry The priggish use of "It is I." If you should ask, "Who was with he?" They'd answer simply, "It was me."
Pantaletta.
* * *
It is not nice of readers to try to take advantage of our innocence. M. L. J., for example, writes out the valve-handle wheeze in longhand and assures us that "it is an exact copy of a letter received by a stove manufacturing company in St. Louis, from a customer in Arkansas."
* * *
VARIANT OF THE VALVE-HANDLE WHEEZE.
(_Received by a drug concern._)
Gentlemen: Your postal received, regarding an order which you sent us and which you have not, as yet, received.
Upon referring to our records, we fail to find any record of ever having received the order in question. The last order received from your firm was for a pair of flat cylindrical lenses to match broken sample you enclosed. This was taken care of the same day as received and sent on to you, properly addressed. We would suggest that you enter tracer with the postoffice department in endeavor to locate the package.
Regretting that it is necessary for us to give you this information, we remain, etc.
P. S. Since writing the above, the order in question was received at this office--this morning.
* * *
THE VALVE-HANDLE SNEEZE.
Sir: The handle on the valve is missing, and I can't turn off the radiator. The room was hot, and I've had to "open wide the windows, open wide the door." The resultant draft has just brought a series of "kerchoos" out of me. Valve-handle sneezes, I called them.
Sim Nic.
* * *
Miss Emily Davis weds Mrs. Charles Parmele.--Wilmington, N. C., Dispatch.
Why don't the men propose, mama, why don't the men propose?
* * *
THE SANDS OF TIME.
Whenever I observe a quartette of commuters at cards I regret that the hours I gave to mastering whist were not given instead to the study of Greek.
* * *
"The military salute," says our neighbor on the left, "is a courtesy of morale when it proceeds from one fighting man to another." This was impressed in 1918 upon a colored recruit who was hauled up for not saluting his s. o. His explanation was, "Ah thought you and me had got so well acquainted Ah didn't have to salute you no mo'."
* * *
THE TRUTH AT LAST!
Sir: Socrates and Epictetus did not learn Greek at 81--they were Greeks. It was the Roman Cato who began to study Greek at 80.
C. E. C.
* * *
Now that we all know it was neither Socrates nor Epictetus who learned Greek at 81 (because, you see, being Greeks they did not have to study the language), you may like to know something about Julius Cæsar. He was, narrates a high school paper, "the noblest of English kings. He learned Latin late in life in order to translate an ecclesiastical work into the vernaculary of the common people."
* * *
We are reminded by our learned friend, W. F. Y., that Socrates began at 64 to study English, but had to give it up as a bad job. "The fact," he says, "is interestingly set forth in Montefiori's 'Eccentricities of Genius.'"
* * *
The attitude of our universities and other quasi-educational institutions toward Greek is that 81 is the proper age for beginning the study of it.
* * *
Breathing defiance of the Eighteenth Amendment, Jay Rye and Jewel Bacchus were married in Russellville, Ark., last Sunday.
* * *
The Wetmore Shop, on Belmont avenue, advertises "Everything for the baby."
* * *
Sir: I feel that the time has come to call your attention to a letter received from C. A. Neuenhahn, of St. Louis. It concludes CAN/IT.
A. E. W.
* * *
Persons who cannot compose 200 words of correct and smooth running English will write to a newspaper to criticize a "long and labored editorial." A labored editorial is one with which a reader does not agree.
* * *
THINK OF IT!
Take any life you choose and study it. Take Edgar Lee Masters': He is a lawyer and a poet; Or perhaps it is best to call him A lawyer-poet, Or a poet who was never much at law, Or t'other way around if you prefer. Whichever way 'tis put, the fact remains He wrote a poem that now sells For fifty cents plus four beans.
Think of it! Four dollars and fifty cents, Or, if you prefer, $4.50. And Elenor Murray did not have a cent on her When they found her body on the banks Of the Squeehunk river.
And the poem is out of stock at half the stores. And Villon starved and Keats, Keats-- Where am I? I don't know.
Yseult Potts.
* * *
The headline, "U. S. to Seize Wet Doctors," has led many readers to wonder whether the government will get after the nurses next.
* * *
We have always been in sympathy with President Wilson's idea of democracy. He expressed it perfectly when he was president of Princeton. "Unless I have entire power," said he, "how can I make this a democratic college?"
* * *
The complete skeptic is skeptical about skepticism; and there is one day in the round of days, this one, when he may lay aside his glasses, faintly tinted blue, and put on instead, not the rose-colored specs of Dr. Pangloss, but a glass that blurs somewhat the outlines of men and things; and these he may wear until midnight. The only objects which this glass does not blur are children. Seen through blue, or rose, or white, children are always the same. They have not changed since Bethlehem.
* * *
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.]
Gentlemen: Will you please send me a specimen copy of the Farm Mechanics. I would like a sample of the Farm Mechanics very much. I sincerely trust that you will mail me a sample copy of Farm Mechanics as I want to see a specimen of your Farm Mechanics very much. Yours very truly, etc.
* * *
Although Mrs. Elizabeth Hash has retired from the hotel business, Mrs. Peter Lunch has undertaken to manage the Metropole cafeteria in Fargo, N. D.
* * *
POEMS OF SENTIMENT AND REFLECTION.
Sioux Falls
[From the Sioux Falls Press.]
What if we don't have palaces, With damp and musty walls? We have the great Sioux River, And greater yet, Sioux Falls.
We don't have to go abroad, God's beauties just to see, But stay at home And take a trip Around Sioux Falls with me.
We confess a fondness for verse like the foregoing, and hope some day to find a poem as good as that masterpiece--
"I've traveled east, I've traveled west, I've been to the great Montana, But the finest place I've ever seen Is Attica, Indiana."
Another popular pome of sentiment and reflection, heard by L. M. G. in Wisconsin lumber camps, is--
"I've traveled east, I've traveled west, As far as the town of Fargo, But the darndest town I ever struck Is the town they call Chicargo."
* * *
"USELESS VERBIAGE."
[From an abstract of title.]
"That said Mary Ann Wolcott died an infant, 2 or 3 years old, unmarried, intestate, and that she left no husband, child, or children."
* * *
INGENIOUS CALIFORNIA PARADOX.
[From the Oakland Post.]
The Six-Minute Ferry route across the bay will take only eighteen to twenty minutes.
* * *
ALMOST.
Sir: S. Fein has put his name on the door of his orange-colored taxicab. Can you whittle a wheeze out of that?
R. A. J.
* * *
Knut Hamsun, winner of the Nobel prize for literature, used to be a street-car conductor in Chicago. This is a hint to column conductors. Get a transfer.
The Witch's Holiday.
A TALE FOR CHILDREN ONLY.
I.
Matters had gone ill all the day; and, to cap what is learnedly called the perverseness of inanimate things, it came on to rain just as the Boy, having finished his lessons, was on the point of setting out for a romp in the brown fields.
"Isn't it perfectly mean, Mowgli?" he complained to his dog. The water spaniel wagged a noncommittal tail and stretched himself before the wood fire with a deep drawn sigh. The rain promised to hold, so the Boy took down a book and curled up in a big leather chair.
It was a very interesting book--all about American pioneers, trappers, and Indians; and although the writer of it was a German traveler, no American woodsman would take advantage of a worthy German globe trotter and tell him things which were not exactly so. For example, if you and a trapper and a dog were gathered about a campfire, and the dog were asleep and dreaming in his sleep, and the trapper should affirm that if you tied a handkerchief over the head of a dreaming dog and afterwards tied it around your own head, you would have the dog's dream,--if the trapper should tell you this with a perfectly serious face, you naturally would believe him, especially if you were a German traveler.
The Boy got up softly and began the experiment. Mowgli opened an inquiring eye, stretched himself another notch, and fell asleep again. His master waited five minutes, then unloosed the handkerchief and knotted it under his own chin.
For a while Mowgli's slumbers were untroubled as a forest pool, his breathing as regular as the tick-tock of the old wooden clock under the stair. Out of doors the rain fell sharply and set the dead leaves singing. The wood fire dwindled to a glow. Tick-tock! tick-tock! drummed the ancient timepiece. The Boy yawned and settled deeper in the leather chair.
Tick-tock! Tick-tock!
Mowgli was breathing out of time. He was twitching, and making funny little smothered noises, which, if he were awake, would probably be yelps. Something exciting was going on in dreamland.
Tick-tock! Tick----
+Hullo!+ There goes a woodchuck!
II.
The Boy gave chase across the fields, only to arrive, out of breath, at the entrance to a burrow down which the woodchuck had tumbled. He had not a notion where he was. He seemed to have raced out of the world that he knew into one which was quite unfamiliar. It was a broad valley inclosed by high hills, through which a pleasant little river ran; and the landscape wore an odd aspect--the hills were bluer than hills usually are, the trees were more fantastically fashioned, and the waving grass and flowers were more beautiful than one commonly sees.
"Good morning, young sir!"
On the other side of the stream stood a tall man wrapped in a cloak and leaning with both hands upon a staff. He was well past the middle years, as wrinkles and a beard turned gray gave evidence; but his eyes were youthful and his cheeks as ruddy as a farm lad's. His clothing was worn and dust-laden, but of good quality and unpatched, and there was an air about him that said plainly, "Here is no common person, I can tell you."
"You are wondering who I may be," he observed. "Well, then, I am known as the Knight of the Dusty Thoroughfare."
"A queer sort of knight, this!" thought the Boy.
"And you--may I ask whither you are bound?" said the stranger. "We may be traveling the same road."
The Boy made answer that he had set forth to chase a woodchuck, and that having failed to catch it he had no better plan than to return home.
At the word "home" the Knight put on a melancholy smile, and cutting a reed at the river edge he fashioned it into a pipe and began to play. A wonderful tune it was. Tom the Piper's Son knew the way of it, and to the same swinging melody the Pied Piper footed the streets of Hamelin town; for the burden of the tune was "Over the Hills and Far Away," and the Boy's feet stirred at the catch of it.
"That," said the Knight, "is the tune I have marched to for many a year, and a pretty chase it has led me." He put down the pipe. "Knocking about aimlessly does very well for an old man, but youth should have a definite goal."
The Boy did not agree with this. With that magic melody marching in his head it was hey for the hills and the westering sun, and the pleasant road to Anywhere.
"What lies yonder?" he queried, pointing to a deep notch in the skyline.
"The Kingdom of Rainbow's End," replied the Knight. "It is an agreeable territory, and you would do very well to journey thither. The King of the country is no longer young, and as he has nothing to say about affairs of state, or anything else for that matter, he spends his time tramping about from place to place, in much the same fashion as myself."
"And who governs while he is away?"
"+She!+" said the Knight solemnly--"+She That Bosses Everybody!+"
III.
"You see," said the Knight of the Dusty Thoroughfare, "the King made a grave mistake some years ago. It is a foolish saying that when a man marries his troubles begin; but it is the law of Rainbow's-End that when a man marries he may chloroform his mother-in-law or not, just as he pleases. But if he forfeit the right he may never again claim it, and the deuce take him for a soft-hearted simpleton."
The Boy thought it a barbarous law and so declared.
"There is something to be said for it," returned the Knight. "A mother-in-law is like the little girl with the little curl. It so happens that the King's mother-in-law is a very unpleasant old party, and the King made a sad mess of it when he threw the chloroform bottle out of the window."
"Tell me about Rainbow's-End," the Boy entreated. "Is there a beautiful Princess, with many suitors for her hand?"
"The Princess Aralia is a very pretty girl, as princesses go." The Knight opened a locket attached to a long gold chain and exhibited an exquisite miniature. "I don't mind saying," said he, "that the Princess Aralia and I are on very good terms, and a word from me will procure you a cordial reception. The question is, how shall we set about it? You can't present yourself at court as you are; you must have a horse and a fine costume, and all that sort of thing."
"Perhaps there's a good fairy in the neighborhood," said the Boy hopefully.
The Knight shook his head. "Not within a dozen leagues. But stop a bit--it is just possible that Aunt Jo can manage the matter. Aunt Jo is the sister of my wife's mother, and one of the cleverest witches in the country. She stands very high in her profession and is thoroughly schooled in every branch of deviltry; and with the exception of my wife's mother, I can think of no person whose society is less desirable. But one day in each year she takes a day off, during which she is as affable and benevolent an old dame as you can possibly imagine; really, you would never know it was the same person. These annual breathing spells do her a world of good, she tells me; for incessant wickedness is just as monotonous and wearisome as unbroken goodness."
"And to-day is the Witch's holiday?"
"Yes, it so happens; and I always make it a point to spend the night at her cottage if I am in this part of the country."
The Knight of the Dusty Thoroughfare rose and put his cloak about his shoulders, and with the Boy set forward through the valley.
IV.
Presently they came to the Witch's cottage, snuggled away in a hollow and hidden from the road by a tangle of witch hazel shrubs. The Boy rather expected a dark, forbidding hut of sinister outlines, but here was as pretty a cabin as ever you saw, weathered a pleasing gray, with green blinds and a tiny porch overrun with Virginia-creeper.