Kitabı oku: «The So-called Human Race», sayfa 2
Gilded Fairy Tales
(Revised and regilded for comprehension by the children of the very rich.)
THE BABES IN THE WOOD
I
Once upon a time there dwelt in a small but very expensive cottage on the outskirts of a pine forest a gentleman with his wife and two children. It was a beautiful estate and the neighborhood was the very best. Nobody for miles around was worth less than five million dollars.
One night the gentleman tapped at his wife’s boudoir, and receiving permission to enter, he said: “Pauline, I have been thinking about our children. I overheard the governess say to-day that they are really bright and interesting, and as yet unspoiled. Perhaps if they had a fair chance they might amount to something.”
“Reginald,” replied his wife, “you are growing morbid about those children. You will be asking to see them next.” She shrugged her gleaming shoulders, and rang for the maid to let down her hair.
“Remember our own youth and shudder, Pauline,” said the gentleman. “It’s a shame to allow Percival and Melisande to grow up in this atmosphere.”
“Well,” said the lady petulantly, “what do you suggest?”
“I think it would be wise and humane to abandon them. The butler or the chauffeur can take them into the wood and lose them and some peasant may find and adopt them, and they may grow up to be worthy citizens. At least it is worth trying.”
“Do as you please,” said the lady. “The children are a collaboration; they are as much yours as mine.”
This conversation was overheard by little Melisande, who had stolen down from her little boudoir in her gold-flowered nightdress for a peep at her mamma, whom she had not seen for a long, long time. The poor child was dreadfully frightened, and crept upstairs weeping to her brother.
“Pooh!” said Percival, who was a brave little chap. “We shall find our way out of the wood, never fear. Give me your pearl necklace, Melisande.”
The wondering child dried her eyes and fetched the necklace, and Percival stripped off the pearls and put them in the pocket of his velvet jacket. “They can’t lose us, sis,” said he.
II
In the morning the butler took the children a long, long way into the woods, pretending that he had discovered a diamond mine; and, bidding them stand in a certain place till he called, he went away and did not return. Melisande began to weep, as usual, but Percival only laughed, for he had dropped a pearl every little way as they entered the wood, and the children found their way home without the least difficulty. Their father was vexed by their cleverness, but their mamma smiled.
“It’s fate, Reginald,” she remarked. “They were born for the smart set, and they may as well fulfill their destinies.”
“Let us try once more,” said the gentleman. “Give them another chance.”
When the servant called the children the next morning Percival ran to get another pearl necklace, but the jewel cellar was locked, and the best he could do was to conceal a four-pound bunch of hothouse grapes under his jacket. This time they were taken twice as far into the wood in search of the diamond mine; and alas! when the butler deserted them Percival found that the birds had eaten every grape he had dropped along the way. They were now really lost, and wandered all day without coming out anywhere, and at night they slept on a pile of leaves, which Percival said was much more like camping out than their summer in the Adirondacks. All next day they wandered, without seeing sign of a road or a château, and Melisande wept bitterly.
“I am so hungry,” exclaimed the poor child. “If we only could get a few marrons glacés for breakfast!”
“I could eat a few macaroons myself,” said Percival.
III
On the afternoon of the third day Percival and Melisande came to a strange little cottage fashioned of gingerbread, but as the children had never tasted anything so common as gingerbread they did not recognize it. However, the cottage felt soft and looked pretty enough to eat, so Percival bit off a piece of the roof and declared it was fine. Melisande helped herself to the doorknob, and the children might have eaten half the cottage had not a witch who lived in it come out and frightened them away. The children ran as fast as their legs could work, for the witch looked exactly like their governess, who tried to make them learn to spell and do other disagreeable tasks.
Presently they came out on a road and saw a big red automobile belonging to nobody in particular. It was the most beautiful car imaginable. The hubs were set with pigeon blood rubies and the spokes with brilliants; the tires were set with garnets to prevent skidding, and the hood was inlaid with diamonds and emeralds. Even Percival and Melisande were impressed. One door stood invitingly open and the children sprang into the machine. They were accustomed to helping themselves to everything that took their fancy; they had inherited the instinct.
Percival turned on the gas. “Hang on to your hair, sis!” he cried, and he burnt up the road all the way home, capsizing the outfit in front of the mansion and wrecking the automobile.
Their mamma came slowly down the veranda steps with a strange gentleman by her side. “These are the children, Edward,” she said, picking them up, uninjured by the spill. “Children, this is your new papa.”
The gentleman shook hands with them very pleasantly and said he hoped that he should be their papa long enough to get really acquainted with them. At which remark the lady smiled and tapped him with her fan.
And they lived happily, after their fashion, ever afterward.
LITTLE RED RIDING-HOOD
I
Once upon a time there was a little girl who was the prettiest creature imaginable. Her mother was excessively fond of her, and saw her as frequently as possible, sometimes as often as once a month. Her grandmother, who doted on her even more, had made for her in Paris a little red riding hood of velvet embroidered with pearl passementerie, which became the child so well that everybody in her set called her Little Red Riding-Hood.
One day her mother said to her: “Go, my dear, and see how your grandmother does, for I hear she has been ill with indigestion. Carry her this filet and this little pot of foie gras.”
The grandmother lived in a secluded and exclusive part of the village, in a marble cottage situated in the midst of a wooded park. Little Red Riding-Hood got out of the motor when she came to the park, telling the chauffeur she would walk the rest of the way. She hardly passed the hedge when she met a Wolf.
“Whither are you going?” he asked, looking wistfully at her.
“I am going to see my grandmother, and carry her a filet and a little pot of foie gras from my mamma.”
“Well,” said the Wolf, “I’ll go see her, too. I’ll go this way and you go that, and we shall see who will be there first.”
The Wolf ran off as fast as he could, and was first at the door of the marble cottage. The butler informed him that Madame was not at home, but he sprang through the door, knocking the servant over, and ran upstairs to Madame’s boudoir.
“Who’s there?” asked the grandmother, when the Wolf tapped at the door.
“Your grandchild, Little Red Riding-Hood,” replied the Wolf, counterfeiting the child’s voice, “who has brought you a filet and a little pot of foie gras.”
II
The good grandmother, who had eaten nothing for two days except a mallard, with a pint of champagne, cried out hungrily, “Come in, my dear.”
The Wolf ran in, and, falling upon the old lady, ate her up in a hurry, for he had not tasted food for a whole week. He then got into the bed, and presently Little Red Riding-Hood tapped at the door.
The Wolf pitched his voice as high and unpleasant as he could, and called out, “What is it, Hawkins?”
“It isn’t Hawkins,” replied Little Red Riding-Hood. “It is your grandchild, who has brought you a filet and a little pot of foie gras.”
“Come in, my dear,” responded the Wolf. And when the child entered he said: “Put the filet and the little pot of foie gras on the gold tabouret, and come and lie down with me.”
Little Red Riding-Hood did not think it good form to go to bed so very, very late in the morning, but as she expected to inherit her grandmother’s millions she obediently took off her gold-flowered frock, and her pretty silk petticoat, and her dear little diamond stomacher, and got into bed, where, amazed at the change for the better in her grandmother’s appearance, she said to her:
“Grandmother, how thin your arms have got!”
“I have been dieting, my dear.”
“Grandmother, how thin your legs have got!”
“The doctor makes me walk every day.”
“Grandmother, how quiet you are!”
“This isn’t a symphony concert hall, my dear.”
“Grandmother, what has become of your diamond-filled teeth?”
“These will do, my dear.”
And saying these words the wicked Wolf fell upon Little Red Riding-Hood and ate her all up.
JACK AND THE BEANSTALK
I
Once upon a time there was a very wealthy widow who lived in a marble cottage approached by a driveway of the same stone, bordered with rhododendrons. She had an only son, Jack – a giddy, thoughtless boy, but very kindhearted, as many a hard-working chorus girl had reason to remember. Jack was an idle fellow, whose single accomplishment was driving an automobile, in which he displayed remarkable skill and recklessness; there was hardly a day he did not run over something or somebody. One day he bumped a very heavy workingman, whose remains messed up the car so badly that Jack’s mother lost patience with him. “My dear,” she said, “why don’t you put your skill and energy to some use? If only you would slay the giant Ennui, who ravages our country, you would be as great a hero in our set as St. George of England was in his.”
Jack laughed. “Let him but get in the way of my car,” said he, “and I’ll knock him into the middle of next month.”
The boy set out gaily for the garage, to have the motor repaired, and on the way he met a green-goods grocer who displayed a handful of beautiful red, white, and blue beans. Jack stopped to look at what he supposed was a new kind of poker chip, and the man persuaded the silly youth to exchange the automobile for the beans.
When he brought home the “chips” his mother laughed loudly. “You are just like your father; he didn’t know beans, either,” she said. “Dig a hole in the tennis court, Jack, and plant your poker chips, and see what will happen.”
Jack did as he was told to do, and the next morning he went out to see whether anything had happened. What was his amazement to find that a mass of twisted stalks had grown out of his jackpot and climbed till they covered the high cliff back of the tennis court, disappearing above it.
II
Jack came of a family of climbers. His mother had climbed into society and was still climbing. The funny thing about climbers is that they never deceive anybody; every one knows just what they are up to. As Jack had inherited the climbing passion he began without hesitation to ascend the beanstalk, and when he reached the top he was as tired as if he had spent the day laying bricks or selling goods behind a counter; but he perked up when he beheld a fairy in pink tights who looked very much like a coryphée in the first row of “The Girly Girl.”
“Is this a roof garden?” asked Jack, looking about him curiously.
“No, kid,” replied the Fairy, tapping him playfully with her spear. “You are in the Land of Pleasure, and in yonder castle lives a horrid Giant called Ennui, who bores everybody he catches to death.”
Jack put on a brave face and lighted a cigarette. “Has he ever caught you, little one?” he asked.
“No,” she laughed, “but I’m knocking wood. Fairies don’t get bored until they grow old, or at least middle-aged.”
“It’s a wonder,” said Jack, “that the Giant doesn’t bore himself to death some day.”
“He might,” said the Fairy, “if it were not for his wonderful talking harp, which keeps harping upon Socialism, and the single tax, and the rights of labor, and a lot of other mush; but you see it keeps Ennui stirred up, so that he is never bored entirely stiff.”
“Well,” said Jack, “me for that harp, if I die for it!” And thanking Polly Twinkletoes for her information, and promising to buy her a supper when he got his next allowance, he sauntered toward the castle. As he paused before the great gate it was opened suddenly by a most unpleasant looking giantess.
“Ho! ho!” she cried, seizing Jack by the arm, “you’re the young scamp who sold me that lightning cleaner last week. I’ll just keep you till you take the spots out of my husband’s Sunday pants. If you don’t, he’ll knock the spots out of you!”
III
While the Giantess spoke she dragged Jack into the castle. “Into this wardrobe,” said she; “and mind you don’t make the smallest noise, or my man will wring your neck. He takes a nap after dinner, and then you’ll have a chance to demonstrate that grease-eradicator you sold me last week.”
The wardrobe was as big as Jack’s yacht, and the key-hole as big as a barrel, so the boy could see everything that took place without. Presently the castle was shaken as if by an earthquake, and a great voice roared: “Wife! wife! I smell gasoline!”
Jack trembled, remembering that in tinkering around his car that morning he had spilled gas on his clothes.
“Be quiet!” replied the Giantess. “It’s only the lightning-cleaner which that scamp of a peddler sold me the other day.”
The Giant ate a couple of sheep; then, pushing his plate away, he called for his talking harp. And while he smoked, the harp rattled off a long string of stuff about the equal liability of all men to labor, the abolition of the right of inheritance, and kindred things. Jack resolved that when he got hold of the harp he would serve it at a formal dinner, under a great silver cover. What a sensation it would cause among his guests when it began to sing its little song about the abolition of the right of inheritance!
In a short time the Giant fell asleep, for the harp, like many reformers, became wearisome through exaggeration of statement. Jack slipped from the wardrobe, seized the harp, and ran out of the castle.
“Master! Master!” cried the music-maker. “Wake up! We are betrayed!”
Glancing back, Jack saw the Giant striding after him, and gave himself up for lost; but at that moment he heard his name called, and he saw the Fairy, Polly Twinkletoes, beckoning to him from a taxicab. Jack sprang into the machine and they reached the beanstalk a hundred yards ahead of the giant. Down the stalk they slipped and dropped, the Giant lumbering after. Once at the bottom, Jack ran to the garage and got out his man-killer, and when the Giant reached ground he was knocked, as Jack had promised, into the middle of the proximate month.
Our hero married the Fairy, much against his mother’s wishes; she knew her son all too well, and she felt certain that she should soon come to know Polly as well, and as unfavorably. Things turned out no better than she had expected. After a month of incompatibility, and worse, Polly consented to a divorce in consideration of one hundred thousand dollars, and they all lived happily ever afterward.
A LINE-O’-TYPE OR TWO
“Fay ce que vouldras.”
“FAY CE QUE VOULDRAS.”
Do what thou wilt. Long known to fame
That ancient motto of Thélème.
To this our abbey hither bring,
Wisdom or wit, thine offering,
Or low or lofty be thine aim.
Here is no virtue in a name,
But all are free to play the game.
Here, welcome as the flow’rs of Spring,
Do what thou wilt.
Each in these halls a place may claim,
And is, if sad, alone to blame.
Kick up thy heels and dance and sing —
To any wild conceit give wing —
Be fool or sage, ’tis all the same —
Do what thou wilt.
That was an amusing tale of the man who complained of injuries resulting from a loaded seegar. He knew when he smoked it that it was a trick weed, and knew that it would explode, but he “didn’t know when.” He reminds us very strongly of a parlor bolshevist.
“Man,” as they sing in “Princess Ida,” “is nature’s sole mistake.” And he never appears more of a rummy than when some woman kills herself for him, in his embarrassed presence. His first thought is always of himself.
A history exam in a public school contains this delightful information: “Patrick Henry said, ‘I rejoice that I have but one country to live for.’”
Time travels in divers paces with divers persons. There are some who, like a certain capable rounder, lately departed, have time to manage a large business, maintain two or more domestic establishments, razz, jazz, get drunk, and fight; while others of us cannot find time in the four and twenty hours to do half the things we wish to achieve. Although your orator has nothing to do but “write a few headlines and go home,” as Old Bill Byrne says, night overtakes him with half his chores undone. Time gallops withal.
“They know what they like.”
There are exceptions. The author of “Set Down in Malice” mentions a number, the most conspicuous being Ernest Newman. And we recall an exception, Mr. Jimmie Whittaker, merriest of critics, who was so far from knowing what he liked that he adopted the plan, in considering the Symphony concerts, of praising the even numbers one week and damning the even numbers the following week.
Like Ernest Newman, we shall never again hear the Chopin Funeral March without being reminded of Mr. Sidgwick’s summary: “Most funeral marches seem to cheer up in the middle and become gloomy again. I suppose the idea is, (1) the poor old boy’s dead; (2) well, after all, he’s probably gone to heaven; (3) still, anyhow, the poor old boy’s dead.”
Our readers, we swear, know everything. One of them writes from La Crosse that Debussy’s “Canope” has nothing to do with the planet Canopus, but refers to the ancient Egyptian city of that name. Mebbe so (we should like proof of it), but what of it? – as Nero remarked when they told him Rome was afire. The Debussy music does as well for the star as for the city. It is ethereal, far away, and it leaves off in mid-air. There is a passage in “Orpheus and Eurydice” which is wedded to words expressing sorrow; but, as has been pointed out, the music would go as well or better with words expressing joy.
“Lincoln,” observed Old Bill Byrne, inserting a meditative pencil in the grinder, “said you can fool all the people some of the time. But that was in the sixties, before the Colyum had developed a bunch of lynx-eyed, trigger-brained, hawk-swooping, owl-pouncing fans that nobody can fool for a holy minute.”
Fishing for errors in a proof-room is like fishing for trout: the big ones always get away. Or, as Old Bill Byrne puts it, while you’re fishing for a minnow a whale comes up and bites you in the leg.
Whene’er we take our walks abroad we meet acquaintances who view with alarm the immediate future of the self-styled human race; but we find ourself unable to share their apprehension. We do not worry about lead, or iron, or any other element. And human nature is elemental. You can flatten it, as in Russia; you can bend, and twist, and pound it into various forms, but you cannot decompose it. And so the “new order,” while perhaps an improvement on the old, will not be so very different. Britannia will go on ruling the waves, and Columbia, not Utopia, will be the gem of the ocean.
“Woman’s Club Will Hear Dr. Ng Poon Chew.” – Minneapolis News.
We believe this is a libel on Dr. Poon.
The Greek drachma is reported to be in a bad way. Perhaps a Drachma League could uplift it and tide it over the crisis.
THE DELIRIOUS CRITIC
[From the Sheridan, Wyo., Enterprise.]
Replete with fine etherially beautiful melody and graceful embellishments, it represents Mozart at his best, expressing in a form as clear and finely finished as a delicate ivory carving that mood of restful, sunny, impersonal optimism which is the essence of most of his musical creations. It is like some finely wrought Greek idyl, the apotheosis of the pastoral, perfect in detail, without apparent effort, gently, tenderly emotional, without a trace of passionate intensity or restless agitation, innocent and depending, as a mere babe. It is the mood of a bright, cloudless day on the upland pastures, where happy shepherds watch their peaceful flocks, untroubled by the storm and stress of our modern life, a mood so foreign to the hearts and environment of most present day human beings, that it is rarely understood by player or hearer, and still more rarely enjoyed. It seems flat and insipid as tepid water to the fevered lips of the young passion-driven, ambition-goaded soul in its first stormy period of struggle and achievement; but later, it is welcomed as the answer to that inarticulate, but ever increasingly frequent, sign for peace and tranquil beauty.
SOMEWHERE IN THE MICHIGAN WOODS
Sir: Last night I disturbed the family catawollapus – née Irish – with, “Are you asleep, Maggie?” “Yis, sor.” “Too bad, Maggie; the northern lights are out, and you ought to see them.” “I’m sorry, sor, but I’m sure I filled them all this morning.” What I intended to say was that I have taken the liberty of christening a perfectly good he-pointer pup Jet Wimp. Hope it is not lese majesté against the revered president of the Immortals. Salvilinus Fontanalis.
A Sheboygan merchant announces a display of “what Dame Nature has decreed women shall wear this fall and winter.”
In considering additions to the Academy of Immortals shall Anna Quaintance be forgot? She lives in Springfield.
A box-office man has won the politeness prize. Topsy-turvy world, did you say?
We lamp by the rural correspondence that Mrs. Alfred Snow of Chili, Wis., is on her way to Bismarck, N. D. It is suggested that she detour to Hot Springs and warm up a bit.
BLAKE COMES BACK
Little Ford, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee,
Gave thee gas and bade thee speed
By the stream and o’er the mead;
Gave thee cushions hard and tight,
Bumpy tires small and white;
Gave thee such a raucous voice,
Making all the deaf rejoice?
Little Ford, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Little Ford, I’ll tell thee,
Little Ford, I’ll tell thee.
He is callèd by thy name,
Henry Ford, the very same.
He is meek and he is mild,
Is pacific as a child.
He a child and thou a Ford,
You are callèd the same word.
Little Ford, God bless thee!
Little Ford, God bless thee!
B. L.
EVERYBODY CAME IN A FORD
[From the Milwaukee Sentinel.]
Miss Evelyn Shallow, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Peter Shallow, and Raymond Bridger, both of Little River, were married recently at Oconto.
Considering the pictorial advertisements, A. B. Walkley finds that that triumphant figure of the active, bustling world, the business man, divides his day somewhat as follows: He begins with his toilet, which seems to center in or near his chin, which is prominent, square, firm, and smooth; even the rich, velvety lather cannot disguise it. The business man collects safety razors; he collects collars, too. He seems to be in the habit of calling in his friends to see how perfectly his shirt fits at the neck. Once dressed, he goes to his office and is to be found at an enormous desk bristling with patent devices, pleasantly gossiping with another business man. You next find him in evening dress at the dinner table, beaming at the waiter who has brought him his favorite sauce. Lastly you have a glimpse of him in pajamas, discoursing with several other business men in pajamas, all sitting cross-legged and smoking enormous cigars. This is the end of a perfect business day.
Mr. Kipling has obtained an injunction and damages because a medicine company used a stanza of his “If” to boost its pills. While we do not think much of the verses, we are glad the public is reminded that the little things which a poet dashes off are as much private property as a bottle of pills or a washing machine.
Animals in a new Noah’s Ark are made correctly to the scale designed by a London artist who studies the beasts in the Zoo. Would you buy such an ark for a child? Neither would we.
Social nuances are indicated by a farmer not far from Chicago in his use of table coverings, as follows: For the family, oil cloth; for the school teacher, turkey red; for the piano tuner, white damask.
SHE SAT APART
Sir: We were talking across the aisle. Presently the girl who sat alone leaned over and said: “You and the lady take this seat. I’m not together.” A. H. H. A.
THE G. P. P
Sir: What is the gadder’s pet peeve? Mine is to be aroused by the hotel maid who jiggles the doorknob at 8 a.m., when the little indicator shows the room is still locked from the inside. It happened to me to-day at the Blackhawk in Davenport. W. S.
BEG YOUR PARDON
W. S. writes, after a long session with his boss, that the recent announcement he was disturbed at 8 o’clock by the rattling of his hotel door was a typographical error committed in this office (sic), the hour as stated by him really having been 6.30 a.m.
The manager of the Hotel Pomeroy, Barbados, W. I., warns: “No cigarettes or cocktails served to married ladies without husband’s consent.”
It is years since we read “John Halifax, Gentleman,” but we must dust off the volume. The Japanese translation has a row of asterisks and the editor’s explanation: “At this point he asked her to marry him.”
Gadders have many grievances, and one of them is the small-town grapefruit. One traveler offers the stopper of a silver flask for an authentic instance of a grapefruit served without half of the tough interior thrown in for good measure.
If Jedge Landis has time to attend to another job, a great many people would like to see him take hold of the Senate and establish in it the confidence of the public. It would be a tougher job than baseball reorganization, but it is thought he could swing it.
YES?
You may fancy it is easy,
When the world is fighting drunk,
To compile a colyum wheezy
With a lot of airy junk —
To maintain a mental quiet
And a philosophic ca’m,
And to give, amid the riot,
Not a dam.
You may think it is no trick to
Can the topic militaire,
And determinedly stick to
Jape and jingle light as air —
To be pertly paragraphic
And to jollity inclined,
In an evenly seraphic
State of mind.
When our anger justified is,
And the nation’s on the brink;
When Herr Dernburg – durn his hide! – is
To be chased across the drink;
When the cabinet is meeting,
And the ultimatums fly,
And the tom-toms are a-beating
A defy;
When it’s raining gall and bitters —
You may think it is a pipe
To erect a Tower of Titters
With a lot of lines o’ type,
To be whimsical and wheezy,
The dissolution of Farmer Pierson, of Princeton, Ill., from rough-on-rats administered, it is charged, by his wife and her gentleman friend, is a murder case that reminds us of New England, where that variety of triangle reaches stages of grewsomeness surpassed only by “The Love of Three Kings.” How often, in our delirious reporter days, did we journey to some remote village in Vermont or New Hampshire, to inquire into the passing of an honest agriculturist whose wife, assisted by the hired man, had spiced his biscuits with arsenic or strychnine.
On the menu of the Woman’s City Club: “Scrambled Brains.” Do you wonder, my dear?
We quite understand that if Mr. Moiseiwitsch is to establish himself with the public he must play old stuff, even such dreadful things as the Mozart-Liszt “Don Giovanni.” It is with Chopin valses and Liszt rhapsodies that a pianist plays an audience into a hall, but he should put on some stuff to play the audience out with. Under this arrangement those of us who have heard Chopin’s Fantasie as often as we can endure may come late, while those who do not “understand” Debussy, Albeniz, and other moderns may leave early. The old stuff is just as good to-day as it was twenty years ago, but some of us ancients have got past that stage of musical development.
THE MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENT
Sir: This story was related to me by Modeste Mignon, who hesitates to give it to the “Embarrassing Moments” editor:
“Going down Michigan avenue one windy day, I stopped to fix my stocking, which had come unfastened. Just as my hands were both engaged a gust of wind lifted one of my hair tabs and exposed almost the whole of my left ear. I was never so embarrassed in my life.” Ballymooney.
THE ENRAPTURED REPORTER
[From the White Salmon Enterprise.]
The bridal couple stood under festoons of Washington holly, and in front of a circling hedge of flowering plants, whose delicate pink blossoms gave out a faint echo of the keynote of the bride’s ensemble.
EVERYTHING CONSIDERED, THE COMMA IS THE MOST USEFUL MARK OF PUNCTUATION
[From the El Paso Journal.]
Prof. Bone, head of the rural school department of the Normal University, gave an address to the parents and teachers of Eureka, Saturday evening.
Galesburg’s Hotel Custer has sprung a new one on the gadders. Bub reports that, instead of the conventional “Clerk on Duty, Mr. Rae,” the card reads: “Greeter, Rudie Hawks.”
A communication to La Follette’s Magazine is signed by W.E.T.S. Nurse, N. Y. City. What is the “S” for?
BETTER LATE THAN NEVER
[From the Walsh County, N. D., Record.]
A quiet wedding occurred Friday, when Francis A. Tardy of Bemidji, Minn., was united in marriage to Miss Leeva Ness.
THE ENRAPTURED REPORTER; OR, IT INDEED WAS
[From the St. Andrew’s Bay, Fla., News.]
Mrs. Paddock, Mrs. Russell, Mrs. Templeton, and Mrs. Cottingham, all of whom are visiting Mrs. Turesdel, the hostess of Monday’s picnic, were keenly appreciative of such bits of beauty as the day revealed. Florida, herself a hostess of lavish hospitality, seemed to be more radiant, and when night came and the boat pulled her way out into the bay, still another surprise awaited the northerners. In the wake of the boat shimmered a thousand, yea, a million jewels. The little waves crested with opals and pearls. The weirdly beautiful phenomena filled the visitors with delighted wonder as they leaned over the water and watched the flashing colors born of the night. As the lights of our city hove into view, the voice of Mrs. Templeton, a voice marvelously sweet, sang “The End of a Perfect Day,” as indeed it was.
A “masquerade pie supper” was given in Paris, Ill., last week. The kind of pie used is not mentioned, but it must have been either cranberry or sweet potato.
