charity.
"We can't make it pay," said Jennie. "Why, I heard mamma say these
singers get five hundred dollars for an afternoon!"
"Bosh! Nonsense!" said Polly. "I know a hand-organ man that'll play for
an hour for twenty-five cents, and _throw in a monkey_!"
* * * * *
"Bah!" sneered Willie. "You'll never amount to a hill of beans as a
man."
"I know I won't," said Bobbie, meekly. "I ain't even a bean now; but
I'll tell you what I _am_ going to be."
"What's that?"
"A man," said Bobbie.
* * * * *
There are many geniuses and inventors hard at work to-day on devices for
saving time and money, and one might say that daily the product of their
thought is placed before the world in machines that seem almost human in
their workings. The chief essential in saving time is to acquire a
system, and operators placed before a new mechanical invention quickly
establish a systematic method of working it, and eventually find a way
of improving on it. These men seldom profit by such little improvements,
but their adopted systems suggest valuable ideas to the outsider, upon
which he realizes. This is evidenced by the following:
Years ago, in the cotton-mills, the bobbins of the looms used to catch
the filaments of cotton and clog the machinery, necessitating a stoppage
of the works to clean up. This was a loss of both time and money. One
man, however, a seemingly dull fellow, found a way to keep his bobbin
free, and his loom never had to shut down. The owner of the mills, one
Mr. Peel, father of Sir Robert Peel, noticed this, and obtained from the
man his secret for an agreement which financially, amounted to next to
nothing. He simply chalked the bobbin, thus preventing the threads from
sticking. Peel adopted the idea, and invented machinery for the sole
purpose of chalking the bobbins, and patented it. He realized a fortune
from it, and gave the original inventor a handsome pension.
* * * * *
A HICKORY CLUB--POSSIBLY.
"We're getting up a club at our school."
"What for?"
"To hit the janitor with!"
* * * * *
DONALD'S DRUM.
The reason I like my small red drum
In snowy winter and rosy June,
Is because, no matter how I pound,
I never can hammer it out of tune.
* * * * *
POLLY GETS MAD.
"Your pa don't make any money," said Wilbur, scornfully, to Polly.
"No, he don't; but I tell you one thing, Wilbur Jones, he earns a lot!"
* * * * *
WHAT HE GOT.
"What did your papa get on Christmas, Billy?"
"Mad!" said Billy.
* * * * *
THE STRANGER'S MISTAKE.
"Well, little chap," said the stranger in the family, picking up one of
the children, "what are you going to be when you're a man?"
"Nuffin'," said the child.
"Nothing? Why so?" asked the stranger.
"Because," said the child, "I'm only a little girl."
* * * * *
HOW SHE KNEW.
"Do you think your mamma loves you, Polly?" asked Polly's mother,
hugging the little girl up tight.
"Yeth I do," said Polly. "I knows it."
"I am so glad. And how do you know it, Polly?"
"'Cause I'm your doll," said Polly.
* * * * *
HIS EXPLANATION.
"Why do you behave so, Jimmie?"
"It's all pa's fault," said Jimmie. "When I grow up I want to be able to
tell my boys what I did when I was little--the way papa does."
End of Project Gutenberg's Harper's Round Table, January 26, 1897, by Various