The So-called Human Race Part 58

HIGH, LOW, JACK, AND THE GAME.

Sir: While visiting in a New England family I accused them of being "highbrows," and they gave me these modern synonyms for highbrow and lowbrow, taken from a Boston paper:

Highbrow: Browning, anthropology, economics, Bacon, the string quartette, the uplift, inherent sin, Gibbon, fourth dimension, Euripides, "eyether," pate de fois gras, lemon phosphate, Henry Cabot Lodge, Woodrow Wilson.

Low-highbrow: Munic.i.p.al government, Kipling, socialism, Shakespeare, politics, Thackeray, taxation, golf, grand opera, bridge, chicken a la Maryland, "eether," stocks and bonds, gin rickey, Theodore Roosevelt, chewing gum in private.

High-lowbrow: Musical comedy, euchre, baseball, moving pictures, small steak medium, whisky, Robert W. Chambers, purple socks, chewing gum with friends.

Lowbrow: Laura Jean Libbey, ham sandwich, haven't came, pitch, I and her, melodrama, hair oil, the d.u.c.h.ess, beer, George M. Cohan, red flannels, toothpicks, Bathhouse John, chewing gum in public.

E. S.

A bachelor complains to us that prohibition has ruined his life. His companions have deserted their haunts--all, all are gone, the old familiar faces--and he can find no one to talk to; and he talks very well, too. Now, we have as much compa.s.sion for him as it is possible to have for any bachelor, and yet we do not esteem his case utterly hopeless. As Mr. Lardner has suggested, when he repairs to his hotel at night he can open the clothespress and talk to his other suit of clothes.

Tolstoi's "Power of Darkness" reminds P. G. Wodehouse of a definition of Greek tragedy--the sort of drama in which one character comes to another and says, "If _you_ don't kill mother, _I_ will!"

"The jehu of the rubber-neck wagon," reports a gadder from Loz Onglaze, "called out: 'We are now in the center of the old aristocratic center.

That palatial residence on our left is the home of Fatty Arbuckle.'"

_MORNING IN IOWA_.

_A cold, rough, gloomy morning!

'Gainst yellow dawn the smoke Of neighbors' chimneys stains the air, Reminding me that yon grim, white-capped cone, Which like a second Rainier stands in my backyard, Like him of ash and cinders built, now calls For more upbuilding. That white bloom Which last night's snow hath left upon His smooth and awful sides must now Be sicklied o'er with more and yet more Ashes._

_What's that I smell--buckwheats?

And What's-his-name's pig sausage?

It is? Aha!

Gee, what a peach of a morning!_

Abd-el-Kader.

AN EVENING WITH SHAKESPEARE.

Sir: Overheard at the Studebaker: "What's put him off his nut?" Lady, answering: "He ain't really bugs--it's a stall. The old guy [Polonius]

thinks he's got something on him."

P. S. D.

YOURS, ETC.

Sir: The height of efficiency is attained by Mervin L. Lane, Insurance Service, New York, who prints on his letterhead, "Unnecessary terms of politeness as well as a.s.surances of self-evident esteem are omitted from our letters."

E. A. D.

"It costs 30,000 Lenin rubles a day for food alone," says Prof. Zeidler of Viborg, referring to so-called life in Russia. Apparently, then, Lenin has not yet succeeded in making money utterly worthless.

HE OUGHT TO BE DEPORTED.

Sir: Gum Boot Charlie, an Alaska native, was discussing the present h.

c. l. with a group of citizens of Yakutat, and while condemning the present administration and conditions generally, he was interrupted by a Swede who said: "You dam native, if you don't like this country, why don't you go back where you came from?"

W. W. K.

A Carbondale youth was arrested for hunting out of season, and the possession of a gun and a dog is considered, by the Free Press, "facsimile evidence."

Then, as D. B. B. reminds, there are the writers of apostrophic verse who skip lightly from 'you' to 'thou' and 'thee,' and from 'thy' to 'your.' A language less rugged than the English would have been destroyed long ago.

We learn from the Monticello, Ind., Journal that a couple narrowly escaped being asphyxicated by gas from an anthricate coal stove. Young Grimes must be reporting for that gazette.

Overheard in an osteopath's office: "When does it hurt you most, when you set or when you lay?"

NOTES OF THE ACADEMY OF IMMORTALS.

The following nominations have been received:

For greenskeeper on the Academy links: Mr. Launmore of Pittsburgh. Nom.

by S. C. B.

For bugler: Mr. Mescall of Chicago. Nom. by Circle W.

For legal counsel: Atty. Frank Lawhead of Detroit. Nom. by H. D. T.