Get Next! Part 8

you will find in the morning paper a column interview, in which you have decided to run for Mikado on the Democratic ticket.

Good Togie:--When you arrive at the depot in your home town you will find lined up in front of the baggage-room about sixty-seven young ladies, all with their lips puckered up in the most kissifactory manner--but don't do it, Togie.

Friend Togie:---Resist the awful temptation to go down the line and plant burning kisses on the front teeth of these beautiful maidens, because after planting these kisses the harvest will be the long gra.s.s of oblivion, and you will find yourself rus.h.i.+ng madly through the comic papers trying to bite all the fair ladies therein.

Fine Togie:--When you meet this awful situation, as meet it you will, sneer gently at the puckered lips and repeat over and over that old proverb, _Osculation is the thief of reputation_.

Then with a haughty glance at the lady kissing bugs jump quickly into your ginrickeyshaw and gallop swiftly home to the loving arms of your wife.

If the kissing buggettas should follow you to the sacred precincts of the home circle send your mother-in-law out with the broomstick, and may a kind Heaven help those who cannot run fast enough.

Beloved Togie:--Now listen with all your ears. This advise I give you from the heart. _Don't let any committee present you with a house_.

Handsome Togie:--Avoid this house proposition as you would a creditor.

Remember, Togie, that the public likes to honor a hero by giving him something expensive, and then dishonor him afterwards by watching what he does with it.

n.o.ble Togie:--There are only two ways a hero can remain a hero in this strange world of ours. One way is to die just after he has heroed, and the other way is to get in a gla.s.s case and stay there--but he must buy the gla.s.s case himself.

Unbeatable Togie:--When the public gets a jag of joy from the intoxication of your success they will surely rush up to you with the plans and specifications of a fine bungalow with hot and cold gas and running servants, but when they do so just place the left hand in the apex of the waistcoat and say to them with a cold glitter in the lamps, "I thank you, public, for this display of generosity, but I would prefer that you keep the bungalow and I will keep my own little flat on 109th Street, because I know the janitor there and he never steals the milk."

Nice Togie:--Republics and any old kind of publics are always grateful while the jag of joy lasts. They are dead anxious to give a hero more than is coming to him, but after the jag of joy wears off then comes the bitter morning after, when they wake up with the head full of third-rail microbes and the tongue like a bridge with the draw open, and they keep saying to themselves, "Why did I give that hero such a nice house, because, to save my soul, I can't remember just what kind of heroing he did to deserve it."

My dear Togie:--Avoid the kissing buggettas and don't pay any attention to the house committee and possibly you will be able to keep on your heroesque way to the bitter end.

I have never been a hero myself, Togie, with the exception of one afternoon when I sunk an armored cruiser cook in our kitchen after she had swallowed a bottle of vodka and was bombarding the gas stove with our best set of china dishes, but I love all the heroes, and if any little advise of mine could help a hero to keep busy at the job of heroing I would be pleased and tickled internally.

Yours with love, UNCLE PETER.

Togo hasn't replied as yet, but Uncle Peter expects a postal card or a hand-painted fan in every mail.