Man is an animal, but you can easily detect him from the rest of them
when he has his hat on. He is of few days and full of things that the
doctors cut out if they get half a chance. My Uncle Bob is a bachelor. A
bachelor is a man who smokes in bed and burns himself up every once in
a while and goes to glory a-hollerin’, while everybody else says “Oh,
pshaw!” and “Did you ever?”
All bachelors are wise, but my Uncle Bob knows ’most everything; he
says he believes he’d be in Congress right now if it wasn’t for his
modesty—no, honesty. But, says he, there is one thing he never could
fully make up his mind about, and that is whether clam-digging is fishing
or agriculture. A hog is a quadruped; the love of money is the root of
all evil—thus we see why the motto of a rich man so often is “Root hog or
die!” A man is either a biped or a cripple, according to whether he has
messed around in a sawmill or not. The difference between a biped and a
quadruped is two legs. A three-legged stool is a tripod, and is mostly
used by country editors. A turtle is a quadruped, but he can’t climb a
tree and get off a good joke about making a noise like a nut. Neither can
some people.
On the only three occasions in a man’s history when he cuts any
particular mustard he is called “it”—when he is a baby, a bridegroom and
a corpse. And in all three instances he is said by his admiring friends
to look real natural. Man was made to mourn, but Uncle Bob says the
dad-dogged fool always thinks he can get out of it by marrying again. A
woman may be as handsome as a circus horse but she is never satisfied
to let another woman be handsome, too. It’s different altogether with a
hog—he is perfectly contented to let everybody else be hogs if they want
to. Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
_Assessment Insurance_