The So-called Human Race. Taylor Bert Leston

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ there be any test you can’t survive,

      The present test will mean your crucifying;

      But I am laying odds of eight to five

      That you’ll come thro’ with all your colors flying.

      It is chiefly a matter of temperament. And more impudence and assurance is required to crack a safe or burglarize a dwelling than to cancel a shipment of goods in order to avoid a loss; but one is as honest a deed as the other. Or it would be better to say that one is as poor policy as the other. For it is not claimed that man is an honest animal; it is merely agreed that honesty profits him most in the long run.

ACADEMY JOTTINGS

      J. P. W.: “I present Roley Akers of Boone, Ia., as director of the back-to-the-farm movement.”

      C. M. V.: “For librarian to the Immortals I nominate Mrs. Bessie Hermann Twaddle, who has resigned a similar position in Tulare county, California.”

      This world cannot be operated on a sentimental basis. The experiment has been made on a small scale, and it has always failed; on a large scale it would only fail more magnificently. People who are naturally kind of heart, and of less than average selfishness, wish that the impossible might be compassed, but, unless they are half-witted, or are paid agitators, they recognize that the impossible is well named. Self-interest is the core of human nature, and before that core could be appreciably modified, if ever, the supply of heat from the sun would be so reduced that the noblest enthusiasm would be chilled. The utmost achievable in this sad world is an enlightened self-interest. This we expect of the United States when the peace makers gather. Anything more selfish would be a reproach to our professed principles. Anything less selfish would be a reproach to our intelligence.

I SHOT AN ARROW INTO THE AIR, IT WENT RIGHT THROUGH MISS BURROUGHS’ HAIR[From the Dallas Bulletin.]

      We quote Miss Burroughs: “I don’t think B. L. T. is so good any more – it takes an intelligent person to comprehend his meaning half the time.”

      The world is running short of carbonic acid, the British Association is told by Prof. Petrie. “The decomposition of a few more inches of silicates over the globe will exhaust the minute fraction of carbonic acid that still remains, and life will then become impossible.” But cheer up. The Boston Herald assures us that “there is no immediate cause of alarm.” Nevertheless we are disturbed. We had figured on the sun growing cold, but if we are to run out of carbonic acid before the sun winds up its affairs, a little worry will not be amiss. However, everybody will be crazy as a hatter before long, so what does it matter? Ten years ago Forbes Winslow wrote, after studying the human race and the lunacy statistics of a century: “I have no hesitation in stating that the human race has degenerated and is still progressing in a downward direction. We are gradually approaching, with the decadence of youth, a near proximity to a nation of madmen.”

AS JOYCE KILMER MIGHT HAVE SAID[Kit Morley in the New York Evening Post.]“The Chicago Tribune owns forests of pulp wood.”– Full-page advt.

      I think that I shall never see

      Aught lovely as a pulpwood tree.

      A tree that grows through sunny noons

      To furnish sporting page cartoons.

      A tree whose fibre and whose pith

      Will soon be Gumps by Sidney Smith,

      And make to smile and eke ha ha! go

      The genial people of Chicago.

      A tree whose grace, toward heaven rising,

      Men macerate for advertising —

      A tree that lifts her arms and laughs

      To be made into paragraphs …

      How enviable is that tree

      That’s growing pulp for B. L. T.

      “Remake the World” is a large order – too large for statesmen. Two lovers underneath the Bough may remake the world, remold it nearer to the heart’s desire – or come as near to it as possible; but not a gathering of political graybeards. For better or worse the world is made; all we can do is modify it here and there.

THE SECOND POST[A Swedish lady seeks congenial employment.]

      Madam: A few days ago I were happy enough to meet Mrs. J. Hansley and she told me that you migh possible want to engauge a lady to work for you. I am swede, in prime of like, in superb health, queite of habits, and can handle a ordinary house. I can give references as to characktar. If you want me would you kindly write and state wadges. Or if you don’t, would you do a stranger a favour and put me in thuch wit any friend that want help. I hold a very good situation in a way, but I am made to eat in the kitchen and made to feel in every way that I am a inferior. I dont like that. I dont want a situation of that kind. They are kind to me most sertainly in a way, but as I jused to be kind to my favorite saddle horse. I dont want that kind of soft soap. Yours very respecktfully, etc.

A WISCONSIN PARABLE[From the Fort Atkinson Union.]

      A friend asks us why we keep on pounding La Follette. He says there is no use pounding away at a man after he’s dead. Maybe we are like the man who was whaling a dead dog that had killed his sheep. “What are you whaling that cur for?” said a neighbor. “There is no use in that; he’s dead.” “Well,” said the man, “I’ll learn him, damn him, that there is punishment after death.”

      Another way to impress upon the world the fact that you have lived in it is to scratch matches on walls and woodwork. A banged door leaves no record except in the ear processes of the persons sitting near the door, whereas match scratches are creative work.

      Lives of such men all remind us

      We can make our lives sublime,

      And, departing, leave behind us

      Match-marks on the walls of time.

HE SHOULD

      Sir: Mr. Treetop, 6 feet 2 inches, is a porter at the St. Nicholas Hotel, Decatur. Would he add anything to the landscape gardening surrounding the Academy of Immortals? W. N. C.

WHY THE EDITOR BEAT IT[From the Marengo Republican-News.]

      Baptist Church, 7:30 p.m. – Popular evening service. Subject, “Fools and Idiots.” A large number are expected.

      Speaking again of “experience essential but not necessary,” it was a gadder who observed to a fellow traveler in the smoker: “It is not only customary, but we have been doing it right along.”

      “Even now,” remarks an editorial colleague, “the person who says ‘It is I’ is conscious of a precise effort which exaggerates the ego.” No such effort is made by one of our copyreaders, who never changes ‘who’ or ‘whom’ in a piece of telegraph copy; because, says he, “I never know which is right.”

HERE IT IS AGAIN[From the classified ads.]

      Saleslady, attractive, energetic, ambitious hustler. Selling experience essential but not necessary. Fred’k H. Bartlett & Co.

      Her attractiveness, perchance, is also essential but not necessary.

      We see by the lith’ry notes that Vance Thompson has published another book. Probably we told you about the farmer in Queechee at whose house Vance boarded one summer. “He told me he was going to do a lot of writing,” said the h. h. s. of t. to us, “and got me to hitch up and drive over to Pittsfield and buy him a quart bottle of ink. And dinged if he didn’t give me the bottle, unopened, when he went back to town in the fall.”

AFTER READING HARVEY’S WEEKLY

      I СКАЧАТЬ