Sir: Levi Frost, the leading druggist of Milton Falls, Vt., set a big
bottle of medicine in his show window with a sign sayin' he'd give a
phonograph to anybody who could tell how many spoonfuls there was in the
bottle. Jed Ballard was comin' downstreet, and when he seen the sign he
went and he sez, sezzee, "Levi," sezzee, "if you had a spoon big enough
to hold it all, you'd have just one spoonful in that bottle." And, by
Judas Priest, Levi give him the phonograph right off.
Hiram.
* * *
"Basing his sermon on the words of Gesta Romanorum, who in 1473 said,
'What I spent I had, what I kept I lost, what I gave I have,' the Rev.
Albert H. Zimmerman," etc.--Washington Post.
As students of the School of Journalism ought to know, the philosopher
Gesta Romanorum was born in Sunny, Italy, although some historians claim
Merry, England, and took his doctor's degree at the University of
Vivela, in Labelle, France. His Latin scholarship was nothing to brag
of, but he was an ingenious writer. He is best known, perhaps, as the
author of the saying, "Rome was not built in a day," and the line which
graced the flyleaf of his first edition, "Viae omniae in Romam
adducunt."
* * *
"It is a great misfortune," says Lloyd George, "that the Irish and the
English are never in the same temper at the same time." Nor is that
conjuncture encouragingly probable. But there is hope. Energy is
required for strenuous rebellion, and energy is converted into heat and
dissipated. If, or as, the solar system is running down, its stock of
energy is constantly diminishing; and so the Irish Question will
eventually settle itself, as will every other mess on this slightly
flattened sphere.
* * *
Whenever you read about England crumbling, turn to its automobile Blue
Book and observe this: "It must be remembered that in all countries
except England and New Zealand automobiles travel on the wrong side of
the road."
* * *
The first sign of "crumbling" on the part of the British empire that we
have observed is the welcome extended to the "quick lunch." That may get
'em.
* * *
_LOST AND FOUND._
[Song in the manner of Laura Blackburn.]
_Whilst I mused in vacant mood
By a wild-thyme banklet,
Love passed glimmering thro' the wood,
Lost her golden anklet._
_Followed I as fleet as dart
With the golden token;
But she vanished--and my heart,
Like the clasp, is broken._
_Such a little hoop of gold!
She ... but how compare her?
Till Orion's belt grow cold
I shall quest the wearer._
_Next my heart I've worn it since,
More than life I prize it,
And, like Cinderella's prince,
I must advertise it._
* * *
Would you mind contributing a small sum, say a dollar or two, to the
Keats Memorial Fund. We thought not. It is a privilege and a pleasure.
The object is to save the house in which the poet lived during his last
years, and in which he did some of his best work. The names of all
contributors will be preserved in the memorial house, so it would be a
nice idea to send your dollar or two in the name of your small child or
grandchild, who may visit Hampstead when he grows up. Still standing
in the garden at Hampstead is the plum tree under which Keats wrote,
"Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down."
* * *
Americans who speak at French should confine their conversation to other
Americans similarly talented. They should not practise on French people,
whose delicate ear is no more proof against impure accent than a stone
is proof against dripping water. The mistake which English speaking
people make is assuming that French is merely a language, whereas, even
in Paris, the speaking of it as much as accomplishment as singing, or
painting on china. Many gifted Frenchmen, like M. Viviani, Anatole
France, and some other Academicians, speak French extremely well, but
even these live in hope of improvement, of some day mastering the
finest shades of nasality and cadence, the violet rays of rhythm.
* * *
Mr. Masefield, the poet, does not believe that war times nourish the
arts. The human brain does its best work, he says, when men are happy.
How perfectly true! Look at ancient Greece. She was continually at war,
and what did the Grecians do for art? A few poets, a few philosophers
and statesmen, a few sculptors, and the story is told. On the other
hand, look at England in Shakespeare's time. The English people were
inordinately happy, for there were no wars to depress them, barring a
few little tiffs with the French and the Spanish, and one or two
domestic brawls. The human brain does its best work when men are happy,
indeed. There was Dante, a cheery old party. But why multiply instances?
* * *
Having read a third of H. M. Tomlinson's "The Sea and the Jungle," we
pause to offer the uncritical opinion that this chap gets as good
seawater into his copy as Conrad, and that, in the item of English, he
can write rings around Joseph.
* * *
Like others who have traversed delectable landscapes and recorded their
impressions, in memory or in notebooks, we have tried to communicate to
other minds the "incommunicable thrill of things": a pleasant if
unsuccessful endeavor. When you are new at it, you ascribe your failure
to want of skill, but you come to realize that skill will not help you
very much. You will do well if you hold the reader's interest in your
narrative: you will not, except by accident, make him see the thing you
have seen, or experience the emotion you experienced.
* * *
So vivid a word painter as Tomlinson acknowledges that the chance
rewards which make travel worth while are seldom matters that a reader
would care to hear about, for they have no substance. "They are no
matter. They are untranslatable from the time and place. Such fair
things cannot be taken from the magic moment. They are not provender for
notebooks."
* * *
He quotes what the Indian said to the missionary who had been talking to
him of heaven. "Is it like the land of the musk-ox in summer, when the
mist is on the lakes, and the loon cries very often?" These lakes are
not charted, and the Indian heard the loon's call in his memory; but we
could not better describe the delectable lands through which we have
roamed. "When the mist is on the lakes and the loon cries very often."
What traveler can better that?
* * *
Old Bill Taft pulled a good definition of a gentleman t'other day. A
gentleman, said he, is a man who never hurts anyone's feelings
unintentionally.
* * *
Mr. Generous is the claim agent for the New Haven railroad at New
Britain, Conn., but a farmer whose cow wandered upon the rails tells us
that he lost money by the settlement.
* * *
William Benzine, who lives near Rio, Wis., was filling his flivver tank
by the light of a lantern when-- But need we continue?
* * *
Our notion of a person of wide tastes is one who likes almost everything
that isn't popular.
* * *
Speaking of the Naval Station, you may have forgotten the stirring
ballad which we wrote about it during the war. If so--