More Toasts Part 88

"Tomorrow" I say, "I'll call on Jim Just to show him that I think of him,"

But tomorrow comes, and tomorrow goes, And the distance between us grows and grows.

Around the corner--yet miles away "Here's a telegram, sir" Jim died today.

And that's what we get and deserve in the end, Around the corner, a vanished friend.

--_C. Hanson Towne_.

_See also_ Borrowers.

FRIENDs.h.i.+P

"Friends.h.i.+p," said Uncle Eben, "don't mean no mo' to some folk dan a license to borrow money."

Friends.h.i.+p is a disinterested commerce between equals.--_Goldsmith_.

So long as we love we serve; So long as we are loved by others I would almost say that we are indispensable; And no man is useless while he has a friend.

He removes the greatest ornament of friends.h.i.+p who takes away from it respect.--_Cicero_.

Rejoice, and men will seek you; Grieve, and they turn and go, They want full measure of all your pleasure, But they do not need your woe.

Be glad, and your friends are many; Be sad, and you lose them all,-- There are none to decline your nectar'd wine, But alone you must drink life's gall.

--_Ella Wheeler Wilc.o.x_.

FUTURE

Youth measures the future with the straight, new ruler of the present; Old Age, by the frayed and patched plumb-line of the past.

I announce myself unblus.h.i.+ngly and with perfect confidence. n.o.body has anything on me.

n.o.body can ever supplant me in the affections and desires of men. I am supreme mogul of the universe.

Everybody is working for me. Asking nothing for myself, all men expect everything of me. I withhold nothing and grant as little as I like.

Men may doubt fire and the stars, but not me.

n.o.body ever saw me, yet I am the one reality. n.o.body knows anything about me. So long as time shall last my secret is safe. Yet I am ever on the lips of men. My name is lisped by the toddling infant and chortled by h.o.a.ry-headed sages.

I am the one that you will eventually disown.

I am _tomorrow_.

_Tomorrow Never Arrives_

Always lookin' forward to an easy-goin' time, When the world seems movin' careless like a bit of idle rime; A day when there is nothin' that kin make you sigh or fret; Always lookin' forward--but I haven't seen it yet.

FUTURE LIFE

Mr. Tarzon Jones was sitting down to breakfast one morning when he was astounded to see in the paper an announcement of his own death.

He rang up his friend Howard Smith at once. "Halloa, Smith!" he said.

"Have you seen the announcement of my death in the paper?"

"Yes," replied Smith. "Where are you speaking from?"

TEACHER--"And what was Nelson's farewell address?"

BRIGHT BOY--"Heaven, ma'am."

At the grave of the departed the old darky pastor stood, hat in hand.

Looking into the abyss he delivered himself of the funeral oration.

"Samuel Johnson," he said sorrowfully, "you is gone. An' we hopes you is gone where we 'specks you ain't."

POST--"A man can die but once."

PARKER--"Once used to be enough, until these psychic experts got busy."

A French biologist declares that by a freezing process, somewhat similar to that used in preserving fish, the span of human life can be indefinitely extended. By going into cold storage here, we can postpone a hot time hereafter.

"Well, Bill," asked a neighbor. "Hear the boss has had a fever? How's his temperature today?"

The hired man scratched his head and decided not to commit himself.

"'Tain't fer me to say," he replied. "He died last night."