The So-called Human Race Part 51

Prop.: "Take the elevator down."

Voice: "Is the elevator ready?"

[Proprietor sends bellboy to Room 30 to escort newly-wedded couple to terra firma.]

"Weds 104th Veteran."--Springfield Republican.

The first hundred veterans are the hardest.

For official announcer in the Academy, E. K. proposes James Hollerup of Endeavor, Wis.

SHE PREFERRED HER PSYCHOPATHY STRAIGHT.

Sir: At a party last night one of my s.e.x read the recent buffoonery, "Heliogabalus," by the Smart Set editors. When the reader reached the choice second act one of the women (the bobbed hair type) refused to listen to any more of the "salacious rot," and walked over to the bookcase, from which, after careful study, she picked out Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia s.e.xualis. I ask you, ain't women funny?

Philardee.

No, not in this instance. We quite sympathize with the lady. We much prefer Havelock Ellis to "Jurgen," for example. Chacun a son gout.

This peculiar and unliterary preference of ours may be due to the fact that once upon a time, in a country job-print, we were obliged to read the proofs of a great many medical works, made up largely of "Case 1, a young man of 28," "Case 2, a woman of thirty," etc. These things were instructive, and sometimes interesting. But when "Case 1" is expanded to a novel of three or four hundred pages, or "Case 2" expressed in the form of hectic vers libre, a feeling of la.s.situde comes o'er us which is more or less akin to pain.

THE COME-BACK.

Click! Click!

Goes my typewriter, Transcribing letters That the Boss dictates around His chew After he has discussed the weather, And the squeak in his car, And his young hopeful's latest, And the L. of N.

Click! Click!

While he writes impudent Things For the Line About the Stenos, And asks me how to spell The words.

Hark!

To the death rattle of The cuspidor Upset, As he departs at two o'clock To golf, While I type on Till five.

Agnes.

Mr. Gompers advises labor to accomplish its desires at the polls, instead of chasing after the red G.o.ds of political theory. This is excellently gomped, and will make as deep an impression as an autumn leaf falling on a rock.

Since the so-called working cla.s.ses are unable or unwilling to do so simple a sum as dividing the total wealth of a nation by the number of its inhabitants; since they cannot or will not understand that if the profits of an industry are exceeded by the wages paid, the industry must stop; since they only reason _a posteriori_ when that is well kicked, and by themselves--it is fortunate that the United States has the opportunity to watch the progress of the experiment now making in England.

Nowadays the buying and dispatching of Christmas gifts is scientifically made. One merely selects this or that and orders it sent to So-and So.

One turns in to a book store a list of t.i.tles and a list of names and addresses, and the book store does the rest.

Consequently one misses the pleasant labor of tying up the gift, of journeying to the post-office, to have it weighed and stamped, and of dropping it through the slot and wondering whether the string will break, or whether the package will go astray.

We were engaged in dropping newly-minted double-eagles into the Christmas stockings of our contributors when an auto truck got mired near our chamber window, and the roar of it woke us up.

j.a.panese, Chinese, Hindus, and other Orientals are disliked, not because of race or color, but because they are willing to work. Anyone who is willing to work in these times is, like the needy knife-grinder, a wretch whom no sense of wrongs can rouse to vengeance.

Washladies get more money for less work than any other members of the leisure cla.s.s, with the exception of the persons who work on putting greens. In addition to their wage, they get car-fare and two or three meals. Why? Because it is not generally known that a mere man, with a was.h.i.+ng machine and a bucket of solution, can do more was.h.i.+ng in three hours than a washlady does in three days.

What do they mean "industrial unrest"? Industry never rested so frequently or for such protracted periods.

The natives of Salvador can neither read nor write, but their happy days are numbered. The Baptist church is going to spend three millions on their conversion. Their capacity for resistance is not so great as that of the Chinese. Do you remember what Henry Ward Beecher said of the Chinese? "We have clubbed them, stoned them, burned their houses, and murdered some of them, yet they refuse to be converted. I do not know any way except to blow them up with nitroglycerine, if we are ever to get them to heaven."

"Do you not know," writes Persephone, "that with the coming of all this water, all imagination and adventure have fled the world?" Just what we were thinking t'other evening, when we dissipated a few hours with our good gossip the Doctor. "I am," said he, pouring out a meditative three-fingers, "in favor of prohibition; and I believe that some subst.i.tute for this stuff will be found."

We pursued that lane of thought a while, until it debouched into a desert. The Doctor then took down the works of Byron, and read aloud--touching the high spots in "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,"

"Don Juan," "Childe Harold," "The Prisoner of Chillon"--pausing ever and anon to replenish the gla.s.ses. It was midnight ere the book was returned to its shelf.

It was a delightful evening. And we wondered whether, without the excellent bourbon and the cigars, we should not have had enough of Byron by 10:30.

An English publisher binds all his books in red because, having watched women choosing books in the libraries, he found that they looked first at the red-bound ones. Does that coincide with your experience, my dear?

Our interest in Mr. Wells' "Outline of History" has been practically ruined by learning from a geologist that Mr. Wells' story of creation is frightfully out of date. Should he not have given another twenty-four hours to so large an opus?

Visiting English authors have a delightful trick of diagramming their literary allusions. Only the few are irritated by it.