1
_Aspiration_
Police sergeants praying humbly to God that Jews will start poker-rooms
on their posts, and so enable them to educate their eldest sons for
holy orders.... Newspaper reporters resolving firmly to work hard, keep
sober and be polite to the city editor, and so be rewarded with jobs
as copy-readers.... College professors in one-building universities
on the prairie, still hoping, at the age of sixty, to get their
whimsical essays into the _Atlantic Monthly._ ... Car conductors on
lonely suburban lines, trying desperately to save up $500 and start
a Ford garage.... Pastors of one-horse little churches in decadent
villages, who, whenever they drink two cups of coffee at supper, dream
all night that they have been elected bishops.... Movie actors who
hope against hope that the next fan letter will be from Bar Harbor....
Delicatessen dealers who spend their whole lives searching for a cheap
substitute for the embalmed veal used in chicken-salad.... Italians
who wish that they were Irish.... Mulatto girls in Georgia and Alabama
who send away greasy dollar bills for bottles of Mme. Celestine’s
Infallible Hair-Straightener.... Ash-men who pull wires to be appointed
superintendents of city dumps. Mothers who dream that the babies
in their cradles will reach, in the mysterious after years, the
highest chairs in the Red Men and the Maccabees.... Farmers who figure
that, with good luck, they will be able to pay off their mortgages
by 1943.... Contestants for the standing broad-jump championship of
the Altoona, Pa., Y. M. C. A.... Editorial writers who essay to prove
mathematically that a war between England and the United States is
unthinkable....
2
_Virtue_
Pale druggists in remote towns of the Epworth League and flannel
nightgown belts, endlessly wrapping up bottles of Peruna.... Women
hidden away in the damp kitchens of unpainted houses along the railroad
tracks, frying tough beefsteaks.... Lime and cement dealers being
initiated into the Knights of Pythias, the Red Men or the Woodmen
of the World.... Watchmen at lonely railroad crossings in Iowa,
hoping that they’ll be able to get off to hear the United Brethren
evangelist preach.... Ticket-choppers in the subway, breathing
sweat in its gaseous form.... Family doctors in poor neighborhoods,
faithfully relying upon the therapeutics taught in their Eclectic
Medical College in 1884.... Farmers plowing sterile fields behind sad
meditative horses, both suffering from the bites of insects.... Greeks
tending all-night coffee-joints in the suburban wildernesses where the
trolley-cars stop.... Grocery-clerks stealing prunes and ginger-snaps,
and trying to make assignations with soapy servant-girls.... Women
confined for the ninth or tenth time, wondering helplessly what it is
all about.... Methodist preachers retired after forty years of service
in the trenches of God, upon pensions of $600 a year.... Wives and
daughters of Middle Western country bankers, marooned in Los Angeles,
going tremblingly to swami séances in dark, smelly rooms.... Chauffeurs
in huge fur coats waiting outside theaters filled with folks applauding
Robert Edeson and Jane Cowl.... Decayed and hopeless men writing
editorials at midnight for leading papers in Mississippi, Arkansas and
Alabama.... Owners of the principal candy-stores in Green River, Neb.,
and Tyrone, Pa.... Presidents of one-building universities in the rural
fastnesses of Kentucky and Tennessee.... Women with babies in their
arms weeping over moving-pictures in the Elks’ Hall at Schmidtsville,
Mo.... Babies just born to the wives of milk-wagon drivers....
Judges on the benches of petty county courts in Virginia, Vermont and
Idaho.... Conductors of accommodation trains running between Kokomo,
Ind., and Logansport....
3
_Eminence_
The leading Methodist layman of Pottawattamie county, Iowa.... The
man who won the limerick contest conducted by the Toomsboro, Ga.,
_Banner._ ... The secretary of the Little Rock, Ark., Kiwanis Club....
The president of the Johann Sebastian Bach _Bauverein_ of Highlandtown,
Md.... The girl who sold the most Liberty Bonds in Duquesne, Pa....
The captain of the champion basket-ball team at the Gary, Ind., Y.
M. C. A.... The man who owns the best bull in Coosa county, Ala....
The tallest man in Covington, Ky.... The oldest subscriber to the
Raleigh, N. C, _News and Observer._ ... The most fashionable milliner
in Bucyrus, O.... The business agent of the Plasterers’ Union of
Somerville, Mass.... The author of the ode read at the unveiling
of the monument to General Robert E. Lee at Valdosta, Ga.... The
original Henry Cabot Lodge man.... The owner of the champion Airedale
of Buffalo, N. Y.... The first child named after the Hon. Warren
Gamaliel Harding.... The old lady in Wahoo, Neb., who has read the
Bible 38 times.... The boss who controls the Italian, Czecho-Slovak and
Polish votes in Youngstown, O.... The professor of chemistry, Greek,
rhetoric and piano at the Texas Christian University, Fort Worth,
Tex.... The boy who sells 225 copies of the _Saturday Evening Post_
every week in Cheyenne, Wyo.... The youngest murderer awaiting hanging
in Chicago.... The leading dramatic critic of Pittsburgh.... The
night watchman in Penn Yan, N. Y., who once shook hands with Chester
A. Arthur.... The Lithuanian woman in Bluefield, W. Va., who has had
five sets of triplets.... The actor who has played in “Lightning”
1,600 times.... The best horse doctor in Oklahoma.... The highest-paid
church-choir soprano in Knoxville, Tenn.... The most eligible bachelor
in Cheyenne, Wyo.... The engineer of the locomotive which pulled the
train which carried the Hon. A. Mitchell Palmer to the San Francisco
Convention.... The girl who got the most votes in the popularity
contest at Egg Harbor, N. J....