OCR Text |
Show v .ba,rk!" j With the advent of: the prognosti-cator prognosti-cator who desmes I an early spring coming ' up the road to meet us our thoughts turn, not to love, but to the prudent of- the village strategy board who, throughout a long and tedious winter, has guided the des- . tinies of the town village J0 " soap box throne back of .the., stove in the local grocery store. Night after night has he held a continuous engagement en-gagement within the radiating com-.- ( -fort of the chunk heater. His reign ; , . has bee'n supreme and his doctrines . . ; uninterrupted save when the grocer drew a jug of sorghum hard by the stove, or a voluable : drummer locked horns with his argument . All this with the coming of The good old summer time," will be changed. The artisans who all winter win-ter long have been waiting for spring work to begin, will return to their j labors, the buds will burst into bloom, the spring raking will be done and the audience of the town oracle destroyed ; until the sultry days of August when he-will' onq3. again hold . . forth, this time in the borough park, where the old inhabitants will listen with quasi-indulgence to his oracular wisdom." . . ' Often the president of the strategy v board is a character, a being worthy of study. Every village possesses one of, his kind, yet each is different from the other. Long live the president! presi-dent! Without him who would save the country? Without him who would settle the momentous ques- tions that every day arise for solution solu-tion in the country town? Without him who would run this government and keep us in the unswerving, path of progress? He is no ignoramus, this local advisor. He is a man who reads and argues, talks and counter talks. Without him life in the vil- ' lage would be one long uninterrupted ' .( siege of ennui. Hail to the president of the local strategy board! He is a man of whom Emerson says: "There is no true orator who Is not a . hero!" s- a necessary adjunct to the pastoral life of this great abstract commonwealth! common-wealth! 3 S 3 Woman, lovely woman! has once more demonstrated her inseparable and immeasurable utility to man!, "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale The funny "fellers" have formed a jokesmiths' 'union. We refer to the titillators of the public risibles whq write for the press! They have not only amalgamated, adopted a constitution constitu-tion and by-laws, but have had their pictures in the papers. There is a voluminous boquet of them beginning with joky "Al" Bixby. of the Nebraska State Journal, and ending with James Barton Adams, of the Denver Post. Unlike Oliver Wendell Holmes, the members of the jokesmiths' union, "dare to write as. funny as they can," and they not only do it on every provd- cation, but frequently without artistic incentive, irritation or inspiration. This is because most of them' have space to fill in the daily papers and believe in drawing full pay. This part of the funny business is no joke, as newspaper, humorists have large and cadaverous appetites which must be upholstered three or four times a day. They believe that: "A little nonsense now and then Is relished by the best of men!" But while the, cream of society Is engaged in relishing, it is a part of the wits' sacred compact to try a little relishing of a less evanescent nature say, sauer kraut and weinerwurst, for instance! It was Aristotle who said melancholy melan-choly men of all others are most witty. Gazing into the open work face of Roy L. McCardell, of the New York World, one is not inspired to contradict the ancient wise guy, and S. E. Kiser, of the Chicago Record-Herald, has a handsome but pious caste of countenance counte-nance that prognosticates rain, followed fol-lowed by a long, dry spell. A few of the younger members of the union have ill-fittiner erimaces tagged to ' their profiles that show a supercilious consciousness of the photographers'' presence and the cause in which they labor. In other words, they smile to seem appropriate to their calling, and' their smile is the sunshine of deceit It is a well-known fact that humorists are a dyspeptic and grouchy lot. Even "iistory .s satisfK.. on this point. Ther go down town' and are as funny as a stub-tailed monkey on a trapese all day long, to come home at night with the humor all squeezed out of them and possessed only of a mad desire to beat their wives! To beat one's wife is not particularly a characteristic that cites one as a humorist, but to be a humorist and not have melancholy and pugilistic tendencies is productive of distrust in the jokesmith's ability on the part of the amused populace. This is but natural. The sense of humor hu-mor and dignity is quite equally balanced bal-anced in most people; hence it stands to reason that a man who has worked out all his humor for the daily papers has Jeft naught but dignity to practice prac-tice upon his '- unprotected family at eventide! The average man arrives at home, sits down to dinner with a twinkle in his eye and blurts out to the admiring, bosom of his family, "When is a door not a door?" The humorist reaches his abode as sad as & new wife's first apple dumplings, and seating-himself at the domicile board, croaks gruffly, "This is a h 1 of a layout for a laboring man!" When his wife begins to. weep, he grabs a Her mnnite variety: In one of our American cities a party of commuters were being hurried hur-ried homeward over the electric rail. It was late, dark and in the suburbs where the wind moans like a boy full, of green apples, and where there is naught to warm or cheer a ' man along the way. The commuters ' were hungry r.nd ugly, anr'ous to get , r. to their own firesides to listen to the ''. family troubles of the day! In the tenseness of hurry, the no, the cable didn't break the fuse burned out! The passengers muttered mut-tered and the motorman swore softly according to the rules of the company. com-pany. A moment later, when he discovered dis-covered he was out of fuses, out on , the prairie and out of temper, he threw the restrictions of the pious . general manager to the suburban Boreas and 'was blasphemous. The ' passengers were not horrified at the '."''. man they were, thinking of a long and chilling walk in a blizzardy' night! At this juncture the motorman asked ask-ed the women for hairpins. They were given gladly and while their golden hair hung down their backs, i the street car men made fuses of the metal pins. And all rode gaily home in safety! ' Thus again is proven the old, old ' ' story, that it is not good for man to ' - be , alone! Bachelor -club papers, please copy. t chair and, asserting his dignity, beats her into submission and diligence! For the life of us, we can't see why. the funny 'fellers" have formed an amalgamation. amal-gamation. If the wives had sought union of strength to combat dyspeptic tendencies in their witty husbands, one might understand, but except on the grounds that "misery loves company," com-pany," we cannot understand the object ob-ject of the organization. We pause for a reply. 3 s i There has been a lot of nonsense about the pie that' mother made, v.nile the hair-cuts father used to give have been almost forgotten! It is not well that these hirsute designs should go down to oblivion unsung. Many a time has papa caught us when a lad, clapped a sugar bowl over our head and cut away the salvage. sal-vage. The corner's were then rounded round-ed with a file, and we were admonished admon-ished to duck our head in the water trough to keep from catching cold There were other hair-cutting systems sys-tems in vogue when we were a boy but the sugar bowl hair-cut was looked upon as au fait in our neighborhood. neigh-borhood. Once in a wnile some fond paternal ancestor would try a butter but-ter crock, or soup tureen as a' diagram for an integument, but somehow some-how the finished product lacked that fin de siecle chicness that alwavs marked the sugar bowl cut. A Missouri man who has been wont to gaze upon a trusty fowling piece suspended as an ornament in his sitting sit-ting room has sold the gun and vows henceforth to have little to do with firearms. When a boy the Missourian was a somnambulist, but grown to manhood, he considered himself cured. Not long since a crow made itself obnoxibus about the farm, and the ' -man from the state where the inhab-itants inhab-itants have to be shown" loaded his gun to the muzzle and laid in wait for the crow, said crow not appearing to be shotj tte gun wag aga.n ts accustomed place. The next night " the Missourian dreamed of crow, and arising in. hls r0De.de.nuit anQ yet fast asleep, took down the trusty "S" and hied hlmse" ay with blood in his eye. dlnf ke aWke U was ta mid-ale mid-ale of the night. "Far from tha maddening crowd's ignoble strife" he was perched on a rail fence in the far recesses of the wood. The wind wal beDg U? Wlth the tails of his slum" bering robe and there were gooTe mmples on his legs as big as Job's comforters. Strangest of a!, he had of hl fl,H8Un Thlle yet conscious Sat he DS- He sumes, however, that he got no game.1 The experience Missir it ne 1633 Missouri. It does beat all what n "" wlUdowhenheiBaBlMp. a |