[p 309] A LINE-O’-TYPE OR TWO
Reading edition
[p 309] A LINE-O’-TYPE OR TWO
Hew to the Line, let the quips fall where they may.
An artist friend, back from the Land of Taos, brings word of another artist who is achieving influence by raising hogs—or “picture buyers,” as he sardonically calls them. This set us to wondering what had become of Arthur Dove, one of the first of the Einstein school to exhibit in this town. Despairing of the public intelligence, Mr. Dove took up the raising of chickens, and very old readers of this column may recall the verses in which we celebrated his withdrawal from art:
THE BROODING DOVE.
Arthur Dove is raising chickens, He has put his paints away: Tell me, Chronos, where the dickens Are the Cubes of yesterday! Dove was real, Dove was earnest, But his efforts came to nix. Bowing to decree the sternest, He has gone to raising chicks. [p 310] There’s a strong demand for broilers, There’s a call for chicken-pie; Dove declined to paint pot-boilers, So he put his brushes by. Luck attend his every setting! May his inspirations hatch! And, whatever price he’s getting, May he market every batch.
“Perpetual reduction of my audience is my hobby,” observes Mr. Yeats, who aspires to be the Einstein of song. When only twelve disciples are able to understand him, he will be content.
A scientific expedition will hunt for the missing link in Asia, and may find it. But it will never be known whether the m. l. was capable of the popular songs which one sees in the windows of music stores, or whether it could have done something better.
The gadder contrib who uses the Gideon Bible to hold the shaving mirror at the right angle is properly rebuked by sundry readers. As one of them, M. B. C., says, he may make the Line, but he’ll have a close shave if he makes heaven.
We imagine the Gideon Bible is read more than may be supposed. Evening in a small town [p 311] />must be desperately dull to many travelers. And there are better love stories in the Bible than can be bought on the trains. Some of our gadding contribs have so good a writing style that we feel sure it must have been influenced by the Great Book.
A STERN PEDAGOGUE. [From the Antelope, Montana, local.]
Miss Gladys Spank arrived here from Bozeman last Saturday and is again teaching in the school near Williams.
Our esteemed contemporaries, F. P. A., Don Marquis, and Chris Morley, have taken the pains to reply to Miss Amy Lowell’s recent remark that “colyums” are “ghastly and pitiful.” Dear! dear! What has happened to their sense of humor?
SHE NOT ONLY HAS A BOOK. SHE HAS TWO!
“I wish to buy a book for a young lady,” infoed the blond mustached one to a clerk at McClurg’s. “She has both the ‘Rubaiyat’ and ‘A Tale of Two Cities.’ What do you advise?” O. B. W.
“I never could get to Detour, either,” communicates Jezebel, “but recently, on a train, I passed through Derail, which seems to be a fairly [p 312] />thriving village, although some of the houses need paint.”
Old readers detour here—
YES, YES.
Sir: Herbert F. Antunes is a piano tuner in Evanston. L. L. B.
Resume main pike.
YE STUFF.
Sir: “Yee Laundry” reads the sign over Yee Hing’s washee at Deming, N. M. Wherein ye olde world is joined with ye olde English. C. P. A.
“Henry Ford is poverty stricken intellectually, morally, and spiritually.”—Comrade Spargo.
Hint for Briggs: “Wonder what Henry Ford thinks about?”
Powell’s taxicab service in Polo, Ill., offers “a rattle with every ride,” and for the life of us we can’t imagine the kind of car employed.
Speaking of Detour and Derail, “I wonder,” wonders A. T., “whether in your travels you ever got to Goslow.”
[p 313] DATED.
Sir: From the Blue Book: “Pleasant View. Saloon on left corner. Turn left. Then follow winding road.” A. C.
YOU KNOW THE TUNE.
“No girl,” say the rules of Northwestern University, “must walk the campus after dusk, unless to the library or to lectures, or for purposes of learning.”
I’m a merry little campus maid, The campus sward I rove, Picking Greek roots all the day And learning how to love.
Considering “A Treasury of English Prose,”—prose that rivals great poetry—Mr. J. C. Squire came to an interesting conclusion—that “there is an established, an inevitable, manner into which an Englishman will rise when his ideas and images lift into grandeur; the style of the Authorized Version.”
Auguste Comte listed five hundred and fifty-eight men and women who could be considered great in the history of the world. An English writer, striking from the list names that he had never heard of before, arrives at the “astounding [p 314] />fact” that since the dawn of history fewer than three hundred and fifty great men have lived. We too are astounded. We had no notion there were so many.
“Great Britain,” says Lloyd George, “must be freed of ignorance, insobriety, penury, and the tyranny of man over man.” That ought not to require more than three or four glacial periods.
The Woman’s Club asks for “jingles for the jaw.” Well, here are two from C. L. Edson. Try them on your jaw:
THE TREE TOADS.
A tree toad loved a she toad That lived up in a tree; She was a three-toed tree toad, But a two-toed toad was he. The two-toed tree toad tried to win The she toad’s friendly nod; For the two-toed tree toad loved the ground That the three-toed tree toad trod. But vainly the two-toed tree toad tried— He couldn’t please her whim; In her tree toad bower With her V-toe power, The she toad vetoed him.
[p 315] THE RIDER AND THE ADDER.
Miss Tudor was a rider in a famous circus show; For a pet she had an adder—and the adder loved her so! She fed the adder dodder. It’s a plant that live on air, Could you find an odder fodder if you hunted everywhere? Miss Tudor bought some madder. It’s a color rather rare, And it made the adder shudder when Miss Tudor dyed her hair. Her hair was soft as eider when she tried her madder dye; Then, it had an odder odor—and was redder than the sky. The adder couldn’t chide ’er. It could only idle stare, But a sadder adder eyed ’er when the rider dyed ’er hair.
One of our readers was dozing in the lobby of a Boston hotel when he was aroused by an altercation near the cigar stand. A was wagering B that the name of the heroine of “The Scarlet Letter” was Hester Thorne, B maintaining that it was Hester Prim. The manager of the hotel was about to call the police, forgetting that there were none, when the gum-chewing divinity behind the case awarded the decision to B, and the crowd reluctantly dispersed.
[p 316] We have on hand a column of favorite wheezes sent in response to our invitation, and the only reason we have not printed them is the preponderance of our own stuff. Naturally, or not, we are better amused by the wheezes of contributors. Frexample the following evoked a smile:
“On the train running into Tulsa,” wrote a gadder, “a native was fooling with the roller curtain, when suddenly it flew up with a snap. He looked bewildered, stuck his head out of the window, and finally said to himself, ‘Well, I reckon that’s the last they’ll see of that derned thing!’”
As we have been informed, and as we repeat for the benefit of the School of Journalism, there is nothing to running a column except the knack of writing more or less apt headlines. And so for the instruction of students whose ambition may be vaulting in that direction we will reopen a short court in head-writing. See what you can do with the divorce suit of Hazel Nutt against John P. Nutt, filed in a Florida court.
As to the divorce suit of Hazel Nutt vs. John P. Nutt, M. M. C. offers, “Shucks!”
Another happy headline for the Nutt vs. Nutt divorce suit, suggested by Battle Creek: “Two Nutts Will Soon Be Loose.”
[p 317] The hand-painted baby-blue pencil for the best headline last week goes to the artist on the San Francisco Chronicle for the following:
“Prehistoric Skulls Found Digging Wells.”
We see by the paper—our favorite medium of information—that Duluth is to have an evening of “wrestling and dance.” A keen eye can probably tell the difference.
The drawn-work decanter, prize for the best headline for the Nutt vs. Nutt divorce case, is awarded to G. C. H. for his inspiration, “Nutts for the Lawyers.”
LIMERIK.
There was a young man from Art Creek Who went around dressed in Batik. When they asked, “Are you well?” He replied, “Ain’t it hell? But in Art it’s the very last shriek.”
Received by a Missouri teacher: “Please excuse Frank for being absent. I kneaded him at home.” In the woodshed? Ouch, Maw!
How could the teacher rebuke Emil when she read this excuse from his father? “The only excuse I have for Emil being late was nine o’clock came sooner than we expected.”
[p 318] For our part, we are moved to protest against the growing practice among parents of rebuking their children for playing with the children of prohibitionists. We should not visit upon the little ones the sins of their intemperate progenitors.
“Attention, Members!” postcards the house committee of the Chicago Real Estate Board. “Get your feet under the table and you are putting your shoulder behind your board.” This is another good reducing exercise.
With the return of the railroads to private control, we look for an immediate improvement in the service. For, as the dining-car waiter said, when requested to brush the crumbs from a table: “We’s workin’ for the government now. We don’t have to brush no crumbs off no more.” Well, he’ll brush some crumbs off some more now, or he’ll be fired.
One may send “harmless live animals” by parcel post, with the chances eight to five that the animal will be reduced to pulp or die of old age.
THE CHIGGER.
When the enterprising chigger is a-chigging And maturing his felonious little plan, He loves to climb the lingerie and rigging And tunnel into Annabel and Ann. [p 319] The chigger then with chloroform they smother, His little hour of pleasure then is o’er, So take this consideration with the other, A chigger’s life is pretty much a bore.
A VERSATILE CHAP. [From the Turton, S. D., Trumpet.]
Victor LaBrie gave several fine selections on the piano. Victor is a splendid musician. When he plays he has full control of the piano, and has splendid harmony to his selections.
Victor LaBrie started dragging Monday afternoon. He used the tractor and stated that it worked up fine.
“Seeing is believing,” says the vender of a piano player. But perhaps you would prefer auricular evidence.
“The only fad I have had for the last twenty-six years is my husband.”—Mrs. Harding.
This is one of the very few really worthy fads that women have ever taken up.