The Wit and Humor of America Volume IX Part 26

"Good!" said Hasbrouck, when the "Jimaboy Column" in the Sunday paper began to be commented on and quoted; and he made Jimaboy an offer that seemed like sudden affluence.

But the crowning triumph came still later, in a letter from the editor of one of the great magazines. Jimaboy got it at the _Times_ office, and some premonition of its contents made him keep it until Isobel could share it.

"We have been watching your career with interest," wrote the great man, "and we are now casting about for some one to take charge of a humorous department to be called 'Bathos and Pathos,' which we shall, in the near future, add to the magazine. May we see more of your work, as well as some of Mrs. Jimaboy's sketches?

"O Jimmy, dear, you found yourself at last!"

But his smile was a grin. "No," said he; "we've just got our diplomas from the Post-Graduate School of W. B.--that's all."

A RULE OF THREE

BY WALLACE RICE

There is a rule to drink, I think, A rule of three That you'll agree With me Can not be beat And tends our lives to sweeten: _Drink ere you eat_, _And while you eat_, _And after you have eaten_!

HOW THE MONEY GOES

BY JOHN G. SAXE

How goes the Money?--Well, I'm sure it isn't hard to tell; It goes for rent, and water-rates, For bread and b.u.t.ter, coal and grates, Hats, caps, and carpets, hoops and hose,-- And that's the way the Money goes!

How goes the Money?--Nay, Don't everybody know the way?

It goes for bonnets, coats and capes, Silks, satins, muslins, velvets, c.r.a.pes, Shawls, ribbons, furs, and furbelows,-- And that's the way the Money goes!

How goes the Money?--Sure, I wish the ways were something fewer; It goes for wages, taxes, debts; It goes for presents, goes for bets, For paint, _pommade_, and _eau de rose_,-- And that's the way the Money goes!

How goes the Money?--Now, I've scarce begun to mention how; It goes for laces, feathers, rings, Toys, dolls--and other baby-things, Whips, whistles, candies, bells and bows,-- And that's the way the Money goes!

How goes the Money?--Come, I know it doesn't go for rum; It goes for schools and sabbath chimes, It goes for charity--sometimes; For missions, and such things as those,-- And that's the way the Money goes!

How goes the Money?--There!

I'm out of patience, I declare; It goes for plays, and diamond pins, For public alms, and private sins, For hollow shams, and silly shows,-- And that's the way the Money goes!

A CAVALIER'S VALENTINE

(1644)

BY CLINTON SCOLLARD

The sky was like a mountain mere, The lilac buds were brown, What time a war-worn cavalier Rode into Taunton-town.

He sighed and shook his head forlorn; "A sorry lot is mine,"

He said, "who have this merry morn Pale Want for Valentine."

His eyes, like heather-bells at dawn, Were blue and brave and bold; Against his cheeks, now wan and drawn, His love-locks tossed their gold.

And as he rode, beyond a wall With ivy overrun, His glance upon a maid did fall, A-sewing in the sun.

As sweet was she as wilding thyme, A boon, a bliss, a grace: It made the heart blood beat in rhyme To look upon her face.

He bowed him low in courtesy, To her deep marvelling; "Fair Mistress Puritan," said he, "It is forward spring."

As when the sea-sh.e.l.l flush of morn Throws night in rose eclipse, So suns.h.i.+ne smiles, that instant born, Brought brightness to her lips; Her voice was modest, yet, forsooth, It had a roguish ring; "_You_, sir, of all should know that truth-- It _is_ a forward spring!"

A GREAT CELEBRATOR

BY BILL NYE

Being at large in Virginia, along in the latter part of last season, I visited Monticello, the former home of Thomas Jefferson, also his grave.

Monticello is about an hour's ride from Charlottesville, by diligence.

One rides over a road constructed of rip-raps and broken stone. It is called a macadamized road, and twenty miles of it will make the pelvis of a long-waisted man chafe against his ears. I have decided that the site for my grave shall be at the end of a trunk line somewhere, and I will endow a droska to carry pa.s.sengers to and from said grave.

Whatever my life may have been, and however short I may have fallen in my great struggle for a generous recognition by the American people, I propose to place my grave within reach of all.

Monticello is reached by a circuitous route to the top of a beautiful hill, on the crest of which rests the brick house where Mr. Jefferson lived. You enter a lodge gate in charge of a venerable negro, to whom you pay two bits apiece for admission. This sum goes toward repairing the roads, according to the ticket which you get. It just goes toward it, however; it don't quite get there, I judge, for the roads are still appealing for aid. Perhaps the negro can tell how far it gets. Up through a neglected thicket of Virginia shrubs and ill-kempt trees you drive to the house. It is a house that would readily command $750, with queer porches to it, and large, airy windows. The top of the whole hill was graded level, or terraced, and an enormous quant.i.ty of work must have been required to do it, but Jefferson did not care. He did not care for fatigue. With two hundred slaves of his own, and a dowry of three hundred more which was poured into his coffers by his marriage, Jeff did not care how much toil it took to polish off the top of a bluff or how much the sweat stood out on the brow of a hill.

Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. He sent it to one of the magazines, but it was returned as not available, so he used it in Congress and afterward got it printed in the _Record_.

I saw the chair he wrote it in. It is a plain, old-fas.h.i.+oned wooden chair, with a kind of bosom-board on the right arm, upon which Jefferson used to rest his Declaration of Independence whenever he wanted to write it.

There is also an old gig stored in the house. In this gig Jefferson used to ride from Monticello to Was.h.i.+ngton in a day. This is untrue, but it goes with the place. It takes from 8:30 A. M. until noon to ride this distance on a fast train, and in a much more direct line than the old wagon road ran.

Mr. Jefferson was the father of the University of Virginia, one of the most historic piles I have ever clapped eyes on. It is now under the management of a cla.s.sical janitor, who has a tinge of negro blood in his veins, mixed with the rich Castilian blood of somebody else.

He has been at the head of the University of Virginia for over forty years, bringing in the coals and exercising a general oversight over the curriculum and other furniture. He is a modest man, with a tendency toward the cla.s.sical in his researches. He took us up on the roof, showed us the outlying country, and jarred our ear-drums with the big bell. Mr. Estes, who has general charge of Monticello--called Montech.e.l.lo--said that Mr. Jefferson used to sit on his front porch with a powerful gla.s.s, and watch the progress of the work on the University, and if the workmen undertook to smuggle in a soft brick, Mr.

Jefferson, five or six miles away, detected it, and bounding lightly into his saddle, he rode down there to Charlottesville, and clubbed the bricklayers until they were glad to pull down the wall to that brick and take it out again.

This story is what made me speak of that section a few minutes ago as an outlying country.

The other day Charles L. Seigel told us the Confederate version of an attack on Fort Moultrie during the early days of the war, which has never been printed. Mr. Seigel was a German Confederate, and early in the fight was quartered, in company with others, at the Moultrie House, a seaside hotel, the guests having deserted the building.

Although large soft beds with curled hair mattresses were in each room, the department issued ticks or sacks to be filled with straw for the use of the soldiers, so that they would not forget that war was a serious matter. n.o.body used them, but they were there all the same.

Attached to the Moultrie House, and wandering about the back-yard, there was a small orphan jacka.s.s, a sorrowful little light-blue mammal, with a tinge of bitter melancholy in his voice. He used to dwell on the past a good deal, and at night he would refer to it in tones that were choked with emotion.

The boys caught him one evening as the gloaming began to arrange itself, and threw him down on the green gra.s.s. They next pulled a straw bed over his head, and inserted him in it completely, cutting holes for his legs.