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Show SATIRE CONTAINS A MORAL One's Real Qualities May Be More in Demand Than Those One Makes Pretense Of. Among the clever satires in Barry Pain's new book, ".Stories Without Tears," is one which relates how a publisher went to an employment agency to secure a clever writer. The agency man told him it would be easy to fill the order. " 'We've got 480 clever writers on our books,' he said. 'I'll send a few dozen of the best around to your office this afternoon and you can pick one. That do?' " 'Nicely,' said the customer, and rose to go, when he remembered something. some-thing. 'By the way,' he said, 'I also want a boy who can be trusted to take charge of the stamps and petty cash.' "Then Mr. Agency threw down his pen. He did not book that order. He gave a sigh like a high-power suction pump. 'Do you?' he said in a melancholy melan-choly voice. 'Well, if you find two save one for me. I want one myself.' "Oh, my poor friends who are trying to be cleverer than you are, remember that the world also wants honest men. "And, as things stand at present, Patent Tills with the Unmonkeyable Lock are a better market than Brain Fertilizers containing Free Phosphorus." Phos-phorus." Reducing Illiteracy. Only fifteen out of every one thousand thou-sand children from ten to fourteen years of age in the United States are unable to read and write. These figures just announced by the federal bureau of education show a striking decrease in child illiteracy during the last fourteen years. In 1900 the number of illiterate children between be-tween the ages of ten and fourteen was forty-two in every thousand. In 1910 this number was reduced to twenty-two. Four years have further lowered low-ered it to more than 33 1-3 per cent. Assuming only the latter rate of decrease, de-crease, twenty years more may see youthful illiteracy in this country almost al-most cease to exist save among newly arrived immigrant families. Nor can the present rate of improvement fail to produce in the same period a marked change in the percentage of illiteracy in the entire population of ten years and over which in 1910 was 7.7, or seventy-five illiterates for every thousand. |