The American Credo Part 5

--57

That surgeons often kill patients for the sheer pleasure of it.

--58

That ten drops of camphor in half a gla.s.s of water will prevent a cold.

--59

That the first thing a country jake does when he comes to New York is to make a bee line for Grant's Tomb and the Aquarium.

--60

That if one's nose tickles it is a sign that one is going to meet a stranger or kiss a fool.

--61

That if one's right ear burns, it is a sign that some one is saying nice things about one.

--62

That if one's left ear burns, it is a sign that some one is saying mean things about one.

--63

That French women use great quant.i.ties of perfume in lieu of taking a bath.

--64

That a six-footer is invariably a virtuoso of amour superior to a man of, say, five feet seven.

--65

That a soubrette is always fifteen or twenty years older than she looks.

--66

That what impels most men to have their finger-nails manicured is a vanity for having manicured finger-nails.

--67

That water rots the hair and thus causes baldness.

--68

That when one twin dies, the other twin becomes exceedingly melancholy and soon also dies.

--69

That one may always successfully get a cinder out of the eye by not touching the eye, but by rolling it in an outward direction and simultaneously blowing the nose.

--70

That if one wears light weight underwear winter and summer the year 'round, one will never catch a cold.

--71

That a drunken man is invariably more bellicose than a sober man.

--72

That all prize-fighters and baseball players have their hair cut round in the back.

--73

That the work of a detective calls for exceptionally high sagacity and cunning.

--74

That on the first day of the season in the pleasure parks many persons, owing to insufficiently tested apparatus, are regularly killed on the roller-coasters.

--75

That a play, a novel, or a short story with a happy ending is necessarily a commercialized and inartistic piece of work.

--76

That a person who follows up a cuc.u.mber salad with a dish of ice-cream will inevitably be the victim of cholera morbus.