More Toasts Part 189

The little fellow listened intently, and as his mother finished he looked up at her gravely and said: "No, no, mother; you talk exactly the way you did last week when you took me to the dentist to have the tooth pulled."

This a sacred rule we find Among the nicest of mankind,-- To doubt of facts, however true, Unless they know the causes too.

--_Churchill_.

SLANG

A Franklin professor says slang has its place, and he might have added that the place seems to be everywhere.

"Do Englishmen understand American slang?"

"Some of them do. Why?"

"My daughter is to be married in London, and the earl has cabled me to come across."

SMILES

Smile! Never let your face look like a funeral; look like a search warrant. The bud that cannot blossom dries up in the stock. Smile, if you have to force it.

When your voice sounds like a benediction, when your face looks like an old lemon, folks are sure to sidestep you.

What you give out you are reasonably sure to take in.

Look for a fight and someone will put a black circle round your left eye.

Remember this: The face is more legible than an open book. You can read the face at a distance and get it all at a glance. The book compels you to thumb the leaves.

Smile, you son-of-a-gun, smile!

_If I Knew_

If I knew the box where the smiles are kept, No matter how large the key, Or strong the bolt, I would try so hard 'Twould open, I know, for me.

Then over the land and sea, broadcast, I'd scatter the smiles to play, That the children's faces might hold them fast For many and many a day.

If I knew a box that was large enough To hold all the frowns I meet, I would like to gather them, every one, From nursery, school and street.

Then, folding and holding, I'd pack them in, And, turning the monster key, I'd hire a giant to drop the box To the depths of the deep, deep sea.

"Can you tell me what a smile is?" asked a gentleman of a little girl.

"Yes, sir; it's the whisper of a laugh."

SMOKING

"Have a cigar?"

"No--don't smoke now."

"Sworn off?"

"Nope; stopped entirely."

"Your wife doesn't kick about your smoking up the curtains."

"Nope, she can't have both curtains and coupons."

It was on a pa.s.senger train. The conductor in pa.s.sing through observed a man with a cigar in his mouth. "Hey, you can't smoke in here," he bawled out.

"I'm not smoking," quietly replied the pa.s.senger.

"Well, you've got a cigar in your face," shot back the conductor.

"Suppose I have," continued the other good naturedly. "I've got feet in my shoes and I'm not walking."

_Mark Twain: A Pipe Dream_

Well I recall how first I met Mark Twain--an infant barely three Rolling a tiny cigarette While cooing on his nurse's knee.

Since then in every sort of place I've met with Mark and heard him joke, Yet how can I describe his face?

I never saw it for the smoke.

At school he won a smokers.h.i.+p, At Harvard College (Cambridge, Ma.s.s.) His name was soon on every lip, They made him "smoker" of his cla.s.s.

Who will forget his smoking bout With Mount Vesuvius--our cheers-- When Mount Vesuvius went out And didn't smoke again for years?

The news was flashed to England's King, Who begged Mark Twain to come and stay, Offered his dukedoms--anything To smoke the London fog away.

But Mark was firm. "I bow," said he, "To no imperial command, No ducal coronet for me, My smoke is for my native land!"

For Mark there waits a brighter crown!