The So-called Human Race

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.