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Show UNCLE JOE, 76, STILL YOUNG I "Uncle Joe" Cannon celebrated his seventy-sixth birthday at Washington the other day under a cloud of grief. The night before he exultantly announced an-nounced that he wan going to observe the day by dissipating wildly. A circus cir-cus was in town and he was going to take the afternoon and, If necessary, the evening off and go to see the lions and tigers and the hlppograffe and the beautiful lady acrobats and the hair-raising hair-raising trapezlsts. Instead of that he went meekly up to the home on Congressman Weeks, of Massachusetts, with his daughter and spent the evening decorously there. "Thought you were going to the circus," cir-cus," a reporter said to him. "I was," said Uncle Joe, "but It rained. And in the course of sevent-y-flve I mean seventy-six years of quiet and irreproachable life I have found that whenever It rains and I ko to a circus I always get wet. "The people around me seem to be dry and happy. I always get that wet spot and am miserable. If seventy-five years I should say seventy-six teach a man anything, it must be to profit by experience. "It has taken me seventy-five years to learn anything, but now that I'm seventy-six I have learned this lesson, if not any other, and I have just sense enough not to go. "So I'm up here at John Weeks', with Mrs. Week3 and my daughter, and I've missed the circus, but I'm happy and I'm not damp." "I suppose you got a lot of congratulations?" "Yes," said the ex-speaker, reflectively. "Quite a number of people came up to me and congratulated me on being a year nearer the grave. Funny thing to congratulate a man on. Don't you think so? But they meant it kindly." |
