The So-called Human Race Part 24

Fish talk to each other, Dr. Bell tells the Geographic society; a statement which no one will doubt who has ever seen a pair of goldfish in earnest conversation.

According to Dr. Eliot, Americans are more and more becoming subject to herd impulses, gregarious impulses, common emotions, and he is considerably annoyed. Heaven be praised if what he says be true! He would have individuality released; which is precisely what we do not want. Americans are not individuals, and they are not free; but they think they are. Therefore is America, in these troublous times, an island in chaos, where civilization, like Custer, will make its last stand.

Doctors disagree as to whether 70 degrees is the proper temperature for an apartment. This will intrigue a friend of ours who, preferring 60 degrees himself, is obliged to maintain a temperature of almost 80 because of his mother-in-law.

"Women," says Dr. Ethel Smyth, of London (perhaps you know Ethel), "women have undoubtedly invaluable work to do as composers." Quite so.

And any time they are ready to begin we'll sit up and take notice.

Sh-h-h! On Main street in Buffalo, near the Hotel Iroquois, you can have "Tattooing Done Privately Inside."

Shall we not revise Shakespeare:

The chariest maid is prodigal enough If she unmask her beauty on the Boul.

A NEW FIRM IN FISH.

[From the Kearney Neb., Democrat.]

Fresh Smoked Finn & Haddies at Keller's Market.

Our interest in baseball has waned, but we still can watch workmen on a skysc.r.a.per throwing and catching red-hot rivets.

The dinosaur, having two sets of brains (as we once pointed out in imperishable verse), was able to reason _a priori_ and _a posteriori_ with equal facility. But what we started to mention was an ad in the American Lumberman calling for "a good all around yellow pine office man of broad wholesale experience, well posted on both ends."

Among the new publications of Richard G. Badger we lamp, "Nervous Children: Their Prevention and Management."

Unrelieved pessimism rather shocks us. In spite of everything we are willing to look on the bright side. We are willing to agree that, in some previous incarnation, we may have inhabited a crookeder world than this.

The valued News, of New York, dismisses lightly the fear that the Puritan Sabbath will be restored. Ten or twenty years ago people dismissed as lightly the fear that Prohibition would be saddled on the country. On his way to the compulsory Wednesday-evening prayer meeting, a few years hence, the editor of the News will recall his cheerful and baseless prediction in 1920.

Fired by liquor, men maltreat their wives. These wretches deserve public flogging; hanging were a compliment to some of them. On the other hand, men made emotional by liquor have conceived an extravagant fondness for their wives. We have not read about liquor floating the matrimonial bark over the shallows of domestic discord; yet men who have fared homeward with unsteady footsteps under the blinking stars, know that in such moments they are much more humane than in sober daylight; they are appalled by their own unworthiness, and thinking of their wives moves them almost to tears--quite, not infrequently. They resolve to become better husbands and fathers. The spirit of the wine in them captains "an army of s.h.i.+ning and generous dreams," an army that is easily routed, an army that the wife too often puts to flight with an injudicious criticism. It is said that since Prohibition came in the cases of cruelty to wives have increased greatly in number. We do not disbelieve this. Bluebeard was a dry.

WHAT DO YOU SUPPOSE HE WANTS?

[Received by Farm Mechanics.]

Gentlemen: Will you please send me a specimen copy of the Farm Mechanics. I would like a sample of the Farm Mechanics very much. I sincerely trust that you will mail me a sample copy of Farm Mechanics as I want to see a specimen of your Farm Mechanics very much. Yours very truly, etc.

Although Mrs. Elizabeth Hash has retired from the hotel business, Mrs.

Peter Lunch has undertaken to manage the Metropole cafeteria in Fargo, N. D.

POEMS OF SENTIMENT AND REFLECTION.

Sioux Falls

[From the Sioux Falls Press.]

What if we don't have palaces, With damp and musty walls?

We have the great Sioux River, And greater yet, Sioux Falls.

We don't have to go abroad, G.o.d's beauties just to see, But stay at home And take a trip Around Sioux Falls with me.

We confess a fondness for verse like the foregoing, and hope some day to find a poem as good as that masterpiece--

"I've traveled east, I've traveled west, I've been to the great Montana, But the finest place I've ever seen Is Attica, Indiana."

Another popular pome of sentiment and reflection, heard by L. M. G. in Wisconsin lumber camps, is--

"I've traveled east, I've traveled west, As far as the town of Fargo, But the darndest town I ever struck Is the town they call Chicargo."

"USELESS VERBIAGE."

[From an abstract of t.i.tle.]

"That said Mary Ann Wolcott died an infant, 2 or 3 years old, unmarried, intestate, and that she left no husband, child, or children."