Sir: Could you find an inconspicuous job around the Academy for a
bashful man like Mr. Jess Mee, whom we had the pleasure of encountering
in Toulon, Ill.?
* * *
We welcome Mr. Mark Sullivan, who fights the high cost of existence by
turning his clothes inside out, to our recently established league, The
Order of the Turning Worm. Mr. Sullivan, meet Mr. Facing-Both-Ways.
* * *
Mr. Mark Sullivan may be interested in this case: "My husband," relates
a reader, "did a job of turning for a man reputed to be wealthy. He
removed the shingles from a roof, and turned all except those which were
impossible: these few were replaced by new ones. The last I heard about
this man he was said to have refused Liberty loan salesmen to solicit in
his factory."
* * *
Five years ago a neighbor told us that he had his clothes turned after a
season or two of wear, but we neglected to ask him how he shifted the
buttonholes to the proper side. Left-handed buttoning would be rather
awkward, especially if one were in a hurry.
* * *
Miss Forsythe of the Trades Union league explains that young women in
domestic service feel there is a social stigma attached to the work. It
is this stigmatism, no doubt, that causes them to break so many dishes.
Anyway, Stigma is a lovely name for a maid, just as pretty as Hilda.
* * *
"Why care for grammar as long as we are good?" inquired Artemus Ward. A
question to be matched by that of the superintendent of Cook county's
schools, "Why shouldn't a man say 'It's me' and 'It don't'?" Why not,
indeed! How absurd was Prof. McCoosh of Princeton, who, having answered
"It's me" to a student inquiry, "Who's there?" retreated because of his
mortification for not having said "It's I." Silly old duffer! He would
not have enjoyed Joseph Conrad, who uses unblushingly the locution,
"except you and I."
No, let the school children, like them (or like they) of Rheims, cry
out, "That's him!" _Usus loquendi_ has made that as mellifluous as
"that's me." It don't make you writhe, do it? Besides, we are all
sinners, like McCoosh. And as a gentleman writes to the Scott County,
Ind., Journal, "Let he that is without fault cast the first stone."
* * *
"I want to use the 'lightning-bug' verse," writes Ursus. "Please reprint
it and say to whom credit should be given."
It is easier to reprint the lines than to locate the credit, but we have
always associated them with Eugene Ware. They go--
"The lightning-bug is brilliant, but he hasn't any mind;
He stumbles through existence with his headlight on behind."
* * *
The Harmony Cafeteria advertises, "Eat the Harmony Way." A gentleman who
lunched there yesterday counted eighteen sword-swallowers.
* * *
Remindful of the bow-legged floorwalker who said, "Walk this way,
madam."
* * *
Watching the play, "At the Villa Rose," our thoughts wandered back to
"Prince Otto," in which piece we first saw Otis Skinner. And we wondered
precisely what George Moore means when he says that Stevenson is all
right except when he tries to tell a story. According to Moore, a story
is not a story if it keeps you up half the night; "it is only the
insignificant book that cannot be laid down," he once maintained.
* * *
What is a story? To us it is drama first, operating on character. To
Conrad it is character first, being operated on by drama. That may be
why we prefer "The Wrecker" to "The Rescue."
* * *
Writes M. G. M. from Denver: "Madame Pompadour, late of Chicago, opened
a beauty shop here, and one of our up-to-date young ladies asked her if
she was doing the hair in the crime wave so popular in Chicago."
* * *