The So-called Human Race Part 3

Here is a happy little suggestion for traveling men, offered by S. B. T.: "When entering the dining room of a hotel, why not look searchingly about and rub hands together briskly?"

What could be more frank than the framed motto in the Hotel Fortney, at Viroqua, Wis.--"There Is No Place Like Home."?

As to why hotelkeepers charge farmers less than they charge traveling men, one of our readers discovered the reason in 1899: The gadder takes a bunch of toothpicks after each meal and pouches them; the farmer takes only one, and when he is finished with it he puts it back.

If Plato were writing to-day he would have no occasion to revise his notion of democracy--"a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing equality to equals and unequals alike."

The older we grow the more impressed we are by the amount of bias in the world. Thank heaven, the only prejudices we have are religious, racial, and social prejudices. In other respects we are open to reason.

From the calendar of the Pike county court: "Shank vs. s.h.i.+nn."

Strange all this difference should have been 'Twixt Mr. Shank and Mr. s.h.i.+nn.

HOME TIES.

Sir: Discovered, in Minnesota, the country delegate who goes to bed wearing the tie his daughter tied on him before he left home, because he wouldn't know how to tie it in the morning if he took it off.

J. O. C.

THEY FOUND THEM IN THE ALLEY.

Sir: A young man promised a charming young woman, as a birthday remembrance, a rose for every year she was old. After he had given the order for two dozen Killarneys, the florist said to his boy: "He's a good customer. Just put in half a dozen extra."

M. C. G.

"When," inquires a fair reader, apropos of our remark that the only way to improve the so-called human race is to junk it and begin over again, "when does the junking begin? Because...." Cawn't say when the big explosion will occur. But look for us in a neighboring constellation.

When they junk the human species We will meet you, love, in Pisces.

THE TOONERVILLE TROLLEY.

Sir: Did you ever ride on a street car in one of those towns where no one has any place to go and all day to get there in? The conversation runs something like this between the motorman and conductor:

Conductor: "Ding ding!" (Meaning, "I'm ready whenever you are.")

Motorman: "Ding ding!" ("Well, I'm ready.")

Conductor: "Ding ding!" ("All right, you can go.")

Motorman: "Ding ding!" ("I gotcha, Steve.")

Then they go.

P. I. N.

O WILD! O STRANGE!

"That wild and strange thing, the press."--H. G. Wells.

It's now too late, I fear, to change, For ever since a child I've always been a little strange, And just a little wild.

I never knew the reason why, But now the cause I guess-- What Mr. Wells, the author, calls "That wild, strange thing, the press."

I've worked for every kind of pape In journalism's range, And some were tame and commonplace, But most were wild and strange.

I ran a country paper once-- Or, rather, it ran me; It was the strangest, wildest thing That ever you did see.

Some years ago I settled down And thought to find a cure By writing books and plays and sich, That cla.s.s as litrachoor.

And for a time I lived apart, In abject happiness; Yet all the while I hankered for That strange, wild thing, the press.

Its fatal fascination I Could not resist for long; I fled the path of litrachoor, And once again went wrong.

I resurrected this here Col, By which you are beguiled.

I fear you find it strange sometimes, And always rather wild.

A delegation of Socialists has returned from Russia with the news that Sovietude leaves everything to be desired, that "things are worse than in the Czarist days." Naturally. The trouble is, the ideal is more easily achieved than retained. The ideal existed for a few weeks in Russia. It was at the time of the canning of Kerensky. Everybody had authority and n.o.body had it. Lincoln Steffens, beating his luminous wings in the void, beamed with joy. The ideal had been achieved; all government had disappeared. But this happy state could not last. The people who think such a happy state can last are the most interesting minds outside of the high brick wall which surrounds the inst.i.tution.

When one consults what he is pleased to call his mind, this planet seems the saddest and maddest of possible worlds. And when one walks homeward under a waning moon, through Suburbia's deserted lanes, between hedges that exhale the breath of lilac and honeysuckle, the world seems a very satisfactory half-way house on the road to the Unknown. Shall we trust our intelligence or our senses? If we follow the latter it is because we wish to, not because they are a more trustworthy guide.

One must agree with Mr. Yeats, that the poetic drama is for a very small audience, but we should not like to see it so restricted. For a good share of the amus.e.m.e.nt which we get out of life comes from watching the attempts to feed caviar to the general.