More Toasts Part 67

Education--the sum total of all the things we haven't been taught.

WILLIE (doing his homework)--"What is the distance to the nearest star, Auntie?"

"I'm sure I don't know, Willie."

"Well, I hope, then, you'll feel sorry tomorrow when I'm getting punished for your ignorance."

Henry was the neighborhood magistrate. He had been settling a dispute between two blockaders. The one in whose favor the verdict was cast was filled with admiration for the facility with which Henry made out the papers.

"You are one of those 'read' men, ain't you Henry?"

"Yes, I kin read right smart," modestly admitted Henry.

"You been to school, ain't you?" With just pride Henry nodded his head.

"I reckon you been through algebra!"

"Yes, I have," said Henry, "but it was night and I didn't see nothing."

EMPLOYER--"For this job you've got to know French and Spanish, and the pay is eighteen dollars a week."

"Lord, Mister! I ain't got no edication; I'm after a job in the yards."

"See the yard-boss. We'll start you in at forty."--_Life_.

When James A. Garfield was president of Oberlin College, a man brought for entrance as a student his son, for whom he wished a shorter course than the regular one.

"The boy can never take all that in," said the father. "He wants to get through quicker. Can you arrange it for him?"

"Oh, yes," said Mr. Garfield. "He can take a short course; it all depends on what you want to make of him. When G.o.d wants to make an oak he takes a hundred years, but he takes only two months to make a squash."

Doubtless the old woman in this story from the London Post will now be able to enlighten her husband on a troublesome subject.

"Doctor," she inquired of a country physician, "can you tell me how it is that some folks be born dumb?"

"Why--hem!--why, certainly, ma'am," replied the doctor. "It is because they come into the world without power of speech."

"Dear me," remarked the woman, "just see what it is to have a physical edication! I'm right glad I axed you. I've axed my old man a hundred times that there same question, and all he would ever say was, 'Cause they be.'"

PROFESSOR--"So, sir, you said that I was a learned jacka.s.s, did you?"

FREs.h.i.+E--"No, sir, I merely remarked that you were a burro of information."

EFFICIENCY

After many trials and tribulations Mrs. Timson had managed to get a "maid" of sorts.

"Now, Thurza," said she, "be careful about the water. We only use the well water for drinking, as we have to pay a man to pump it. The rain water is good enough for was.h.i.+ng up and so on."

After tea Mrs. Timson asked:

"Did you remember about the water, Thurza?"

"Oh, yes, mum!" said Thurza. "I filled the kettle half full of water from the b.u.t.t and the other half with water from the well. I thought the bottom half might as well be getting hot at the same time for was.h.i.+ng up after tea."

An elderly rancher took some fine Kentucky horses to the West in the early sixties. He was proud of them, and justly so. The old gentleman's son had once seen a teamster lock one of his wagon-wheels in going down a declivity. This precaution appealed to the young fellow's idea of "safety first." He duly reported the occurrence to his father, and begged him to get a, lock-chain.

"My son," said the old gentleman, "if I ever send you out with a team that can't outrun the wagon, let 'em go to h.e.l.l."

SOLICITOR (to business man absorbed in detail)--"I have here a most marvelous system of efficiency, condensed into one small volume. It will save you fully 50 per cent of your time, and so--"

BUSINESS MAN (interrupting irritably)--"I already have a system by which I can save 100 per cent of my time and yours. I'll demonstrate it now--Good-day!"

The hours I spend at work, dear heart Are as arithmetic to me; I count my motions every one apart-- Efficiency.

Each hour a task, each task a test, Until my heart with doubt is wrung; I conservate my darndest, but at best The boss is stung.

O theories that twist and turn!

O frantic gain and laggard loss!

I'll standardize and stint at last to learn

To please the boss By gum!

To please the boss.

"But," he adds, "as in everything else, there are exceptions. There was Boggins, for instance. Boggins was a great efficiency man in the office, but even more so at home. Why, every time Boggins Junior was naughty his father laid him on the floor and spread a rug over him, so that the beating would kill two birds with one stone, as you might say."

A worm won't turn if you step on it right.

Efficiency is an admirable quality, but it can be overdone, according to Representative M. Clyde Kelly, of Pennsylvania.

"Last election day," Mr. Kelly explains, "the city editor of my newspaper in Braddock sent his best reporter out to learn if the saloons were open in defiance of the law. Four days later he returned and reported, 'They were.'"