Jocosities, February 1910

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

At the Play

THE DANCING GIRL

Here’s to the dancer

     Who spins on her toes;

Who crowds each performance

     With shiny-head rows.

To her efforts alone

     We owe it, I swear,

Such bright, shining rows

     Of wisdom laid bare!

THE MUSICAL ONE

Here’s to the girl who can sing and play,

And help to drive dull care away;

But shades on the maiden who’s right on the “spot,”

Who thinks she is musical when she is not.

______

Uncle Ezra Says:

“Lots o’ folks git all worked up, but not over their jobs.”

______

Cheerful Comment

Your ‘and, Evenng ‘Erald, your ‘and!

Mr. Tibbetts, the Revere aviator, will ask Mr. Tillinghast to produce his records.

Why are so many plays tried out in New Haven, Ct.? It is not a city noted specially for its canines.

Habitual jailbirds will now attempt to give Bangor the fly-by, inasmuch as cigarettes and games are to be tabooed at the coolers.

______

The Confessions of a Humorist

(A Near-Autobiography.)

II.

There are many things raised on farms besides the usual crops of corn, beans and mortgages. Occasionally a farm departs from its usual routine and raises statesmen, ministers, lawyers, doctors, humorists and even widely-known criminals. On such a farm was this autobiographer, this near-humorist, of, to put it more after the soul of wit, this joke raiser. He grew rapidly, went barefooted, attended school, went in swimming in the old mill-pond, dressed in a coat of tan and did other things after the manner of the usual boy of the village. There was nothing remarkable about him, either in or out of school, except that he was ordinary.

In defence of the average boy who insists on going in swimming 10 or 12 times a day, I would like to say to the anxious parent, “Let him do it!” It is very probable that the average, active boy at that particular season of the year needs all the swimming he can get. There is no danger of his becoming waterlogged, and it is a first-rate idea for him to get the water habit. The greatest fear is that he’ll drop the water habit altogether. You have nothing to fear from a water-soak.

A great humorist once said to me: “My boy, I think it is a very lucky thing for a man to be born on a farm.” He didn’t say whether it were lucky for the man or lucky for the farm. A great humorist never commits himself. That is his first indication of greatness. I know plenty of common humorists who are committing themselves all the time, and that is why they are not great. The truly great humorist commits others, but himself? Never!

“I was born on a farm,” continued the great humorist, “and I consider it the luckiest event of my life.”

Happening to know the man’s past and present, I said in a somewhat puzzled tone, “That is rather queer, because I happen to know you shook the dust of the farm from your feet about as soon as you could pull your boots off alone, so how is it, then, that you consider it so lucky to have been born on a farm?”

“My boy,” said he, pityingly, “because it helps one so much to appreciate the rest of the world!”

Getting up at 4 o’clock in the morning and trudging with a lantern off to the barn and playing a tattoo on the bottom of a 14-quart pail with two whirring streams of milk, pitching down a dozen forkfuls of hay, cleaning out the animals’ boudoirs, hitching up double-horse teams, swallowing a breakfast of “There’s a reason” coffee and fried mush, or griddlecakes, and then off to the woods for a day’s chopping and hauling. If a boy can’t see any fun in such an existence, then he has no bump of humor.

It is pathetically true, however, that the average boy’s bump of humor, like that of the great humorist mentioned, doesn’t develop till after he has gone out into the world, and, looking back across country from a city flat, he sees the other fellow doing the things he talks about!

______

The New Pegasus

At an open window sat he,

     With his brain and hair a muss;

For a favor he’d been asking –

     Just the loan of Pegasus.

Soon he caught this wireless message:

     “Peggy’s now a sad ‘has-been’;

But the fountain still is flowing –

     The immortal Hippocrene.

“Jove has said it: ‘No more horses.’

     Girls, you’ll send an aeroplane

When you next aid winded rhymesters

     The poetic flight to gain.”

Melrose.                               T. F.

______

Striking Oil

Mrs. Josie Pettis, of Dalhart, Texas, has struck oil. She has been a farmer for many years, raising the usual crops best suited to that section of the country, with only a small degree of success. During a recent storm a bolt of lightning struck a remote spot on her premises and forthwith a stream of oil burst forth and ran riot all over the place, faster than her hired man could bale it into buckets and barrels. Many think that a piece of Halley’s comet fell on the farm and opened up the well, but Mrs. Pettis, says she doesn’t care what it was that fell in, it is what is coming out that interests her. The wheels of success on the Pettis farm, so long rusty and slow moving, are now well oiled and running smoothly. Mrs. Pettis says no more blue grass and yellow corn for her; raising oil beats any crop she ever tried her hand at.

____________

Jan. Feb. 1, 1910

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

He’s a Good Fellow

He is a good fellow,

     For all he gets jagged;

You know what his wife is,

     He says he is nagged.

He is a good fellow,

     For all he will steal;

You know he has never

     Had quite a square deal.

He is a good fellow

     For all he will swear;

You know in his boyhood

     He never had care.

He is a good fellow

     For all he won’t work;

His granddad before him

     Just hankered to shirk.

He is a good fellow,

     Just let him go ‘long

And drink all the liquor,

     And steal from the throng.

Just let him loaf easy,

     And live on his bluff;

He is a good fellow,

     And that is enough!

______

Uncle Ezra Says:

“People who never look fur anything worth while are, ez a rule, mighty good at findin’ fault.”

______

The Confessions of a Humorist

A Near-Autobiography

III.

The days of hoeing corn, weeding onions, picking up stones and repairing fences, days which seem to the average country boy to drag on endlessly, in reality pass very quickly. The hard spots which he encountered frequently are offset by a day’s fishing on the old creek, or a day’s hunt through the little patch of woods near by, his forest primeval, with his small, single-barrelled shotgun over his shoulder.

This particular farm humorist had his whack at fishing, hunting, camping, boating, trapping animals, horseback riding, in fact, all the joys and privileges that come to a boy in the open. He had a taste, or rather an appetite for music, and at the advanced age of 15 was elected to the leadership of the village cornet band!

One would think so great a distinction sufficient for the lifetime of the ordinary individual. Aha! But this particular individual was beginning to develop a sense of humor, and so, of course, was not ordinary. He was extraordinary, as you will soon see. Standing in the circle of a gilt-braided circle, clad in still more gilt braid, was well enough for a starter (this has nothing to do with the street car service), but he had higher and more golden ambitions than the gilt braid on a band suit afforded. Indeed, we may say that he aimed for the highest and noblest that life could offer, and at the age of 16 applied for a job in a country printing office!

That he would become a great success as a printer there was no doubt, since his father had frequently remarked that he had the devil in him. Right here is may be said truthfully that if one is afflicted with that particular brand of complaint, a country printing office is a fine place to get separated from it.

“Those were happy days!” Roustabouting in the press room and round the type cases, often being mistaken for the office towel, and not infrequently turning a big crank when the aged and infirm engine broke down! Hungry? Often, but what a cinch, sneaking up to the galley and lifting a piece of pi! A fine place to study human nature – so many types! First impressions made in a printing office are not always lasting, however; frequently they are kicked behind the door, but the rules one has to abide by stick forever.

But we must hurry on our way. It is a long step from the tiny country printing plant to the mammoth city tree in full bloom. But who shall say that the little plant has not made the big tree possible, and that the mammoth shade, with its spreading branches, should not look with affection and reverence upon the little root that gave it life, even as a well-behaved child should look upon its mother!

(To be continued.)

______

Musings of the Office Boy

Talk ain’t cheap when it queers your job.

Them as don’t have get too, only it’s in the neck.

Ev’ry dog has his day if he’s bigger than all the other dogs.

The reason the boss doesn’t keep good-lookin’ stenog’s any longer is because they won’t stay

______

The Penalty

There was an old farmer named Wash.,

Who thought this high living all bash;

       He boycotted meat

       And vegetables eat,

And finally turned into a squash.

____________

Feb. 2, ‘10

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

Poets Made in Missouri

(A course in writing poetry is to be established at the University of Missouri. – News)

O, the golden chance awaiting

     Poets born this latter day!

Or, the generations wanting

     To be poets, I should say.

O, the greatness of Missouri,

     Where there soon will be a school

That will make a first-class poet

     Of a scholar or a fool!

How the poets used to struggle,

     Writing verses at the plow!

How they wrought, the odds against ‘em,

     But it will be easy now.

College doc’s? Then why not poets?

     Greatest scheme I ever heard;

Poets simply built to order –

     O, Missouri, you’re a bird!

______

Uncle Ezra Says:

“A great many times it is the advice that you don’t git that does you the most good.”

______

Cheerful Comment

And the groundhog went back!

Fashion item says: “Gaudy stockings are being flaunted again.” Where?

Will it be “23” for Reading? Smallpox case No. 22 already reported.

Hope the Chauffeur’s Union, in its meetings, won’t run the rest of us down.

Clothes don’t make the man, according to the near-Greek Duncans.

We have refrained from joking on the Paris catastrophe; there’s too much of the graveyard about it.

It would take something more effective than the coming waroplane to put a quietus on the naval scrap that’s under way.

______

The Confessions of a Humorist

A Near-Autobiography

IV.

An enthusiastic young journalist was once heard to say: “Ah! Printer’s ink? I love it. I could eat it!” But he had never been a printer’s devil. If he had he would have had enough of the shiny substance from the never-failing fount of wisdom in three years of apprenticeship to have lasted him the remainder of his natural life. Printer’s ink as a diet is much more beneficial when taken externally. It is said one can tell a printer as far as one can see him. It is, of course, because of the partial eclipse trade mark which the nonabsorbent office towel invariably leaves. But printers are good fellows, and do more than any one else toward helping the world at large keep tabs upon itself. (The foregoing is inserted for the purpose of squaring myself with the ink prestidigitators.)

It has also been said the that printing office is the greatest school in the world. It must be admitted that there are many things taught in a printing office not to be found plentifully elsewhere. For instance: One may learn to stick type much more rapidly and correctly in a printing office than in a sawmill. Then, too, one is privileged to hear more nonrepeatable stories in a printing office than most anywhere else, not excepting the grocery store or country hotel. Story-tellers in printing offices are always in good form, although the stories themselves may not always be chased.

It was in a printing office that I first remember of seeing my first printed joke. It was, of course, clipped from an exchange, but it was so good that it has always stuck in my mind. I do not know who wrote it, nor how old it is; it may be older than Ann, and was probably written before the hen crossed the street; nevertheless, it is as good and as fresh as most of the fresh-laid ones of today:

THE JOKE

He – Aren’t you interested in my welfare, Helen?

She – No, Henry, only in your farewell!

As I said before, the above is the first printed joke in my memory, and has stuck there fast all these years alongside of “The boy stood on the burning deck” and “Intry, mintry cut’ry corn.” There are some things one can never forget, and usually they are the things not worth remembering.

On another occasion, while pulling proof frm an old Franklin press, I sped the first newspaper paragraph that had ever attracted my attention. It was: “After man, what? Generally the sheriff or some woman!” I was carried to the back porch into the fresh air, where the editor and the entire staff worked over me for an hour before my hysteria was subdued. After digesting and treasuring the two foregoing bits of humor for a short period, is it any wonder that the smouldering fires of joviality which had lain dormant in my peat bog for 16 years should suddenly have been fanned into a scorching, unquenchable blaze?

There being no village fire department at the time, and I being removed from the cooling influences of my parents, the conflagration assumed serious proportions.

(To be continued.)

______

Looking for Airships

I never saw an airplane,

     Though people say they’ve been around;

But if one I should try to spy,

I wouldn’t turn my gaze on high,

     But rather I’d look on the ground.

______

He Knew

“What’s a pony ballet, pa?

“It’s a – er – lot of little horses they are training to pull the stage from the depot to the village.”

______

That Brain Diet

“It must be an international treat to go out to lunch with Pencillotte.”

“It is; if you leave the ordering to him it invariably is fish.”

____________

Feb. 3, ‘10

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

On the Way!

What’s the matter? Feelin’ blue?

Calculations knocked askew?

If that’s what is ailin’ you

     Cheer up I say;

Take an optimistic view,

Gray skies always turn to blue,

Devil always gits his due;

Let me whisper this to you:

     “Spring is on the way!”

Woodchuck seen his shadder? Cert!

Hiked again into the dirt;

Left you feelin’ glum an’ hurt?

     The deuce, you say!

Winter’s only six weeks more;

Fishin’s better’n e’er before,

Kick ol’ trouble through the door,

No occasion to feel sore,

     Spring is on the way!

______

Uncle Ezra Says:

“People count their chickens afore they are hatched becuz they like to enjoy what they think they’re goin’ to hev.”

______

The Confessions of a Humorist

A Near Autobiography

V.

Naturally one does not write “confessions” he has something to confess. And when he has something to confess, ought he to do it? They say the truth should be spoken at all times. If it were, would there be enough people out of jail to take care of those who would naturally be inside? You see, it would be a serious business, this telling the truth. Then, if one makes confessions, and still withholds the truth, what do we have then? Well, if can do that he is wholly competent to head a beef trust during a probing epidemic.

It is not an uncommon thing for a humorist to be asked, “What is the funniest thing you ever saw?” If 50 humorists were asked the same question, each answer would be different. No two humorists are alike, and no two see humor in quite the same way. One would say that the funniest thing he ever saw was a wholly disinterested person laughing over one of his jokes. Another would say that the funniest thing he ever saw was when his father got stung by a swarm of bees that he himself had made angry by poking at them with a long fish pole.

Another might say that the funniest thing he ever saw was a stern-faced editor looking for humor in one of his jokes with the aid of a magnifying glass! The latter is a picture common to all well-regulated newspaper offices.

So you see, humorists differ even as humor itself differs. There is just as much difference in humor as there is in diseases in general. There is humor, near-humor and not-anywhere-near-humor. Then there is the would-be-humor as well as the never-can-be-humor. Then, too, is the kind of humor that is pronounced “yumor.” That is in a class by itself, and can be told from the other kind on account of its “catching” possibilities. The common, ordinary, every day humor is not catching. In other words, it is not taken seriously. And, though the “yumor” humor is catching, all must admit that there are times when it is preferable to the ordinary variety,

Humorists differ, too; land, yes! They beat the pickle variety, and a bunch of them together would remind you of the much advertised “57.” In height they measure anywhere from 4 ft. 11 to 6 ft. 4, and in weight from 90 pounds to 300 – after dinner. In looks their differences are even greater. If I were to name the prettiest humorist in the country today I should say, in the words of Mulvaney: “But that’s another story!”

(To be continued.)

______

A Horse-Play

Scene I

He’s on the water wagon,

     Because he’s wholly broke;

But when he gets his stipend

     He’ll likewise get a soak.

Scene II

And still is he out driving,

     Behind a pair of bays;

He’s in the “hurry wagon,”

     Headed for “30 days.”

______

Cheerful Comment

Are you chewing meat or eschewing.

Bet Doc. Cook won’t try to beat Perry to the South Pole.

And now the toothpick makers are grumbling over the meat boycott!

Brokaw may not know what he’s worth, but he knows what he’s got to pay.

“Cook rumors are false.” Is there anything about the whole blooming business that isn’t?

The high price of meat will drive an unusual number of men off trouting as soon as the law is off.

The old elm is to go on trial again. Hope the poor old thing won’t have any trouble about getting its bail affixed.

______

Musings of the Office Boy

The foot of the ladder is always in reach.

The boss says the best way to make a long story short is to cut it.

The ones who come in to tell you how to run your bus’ness generally ain’t got any.

Washin’ton couldn’t tell a lie, they say, and just think of the guys claimin’ relationship!

______

Gungawamp Precaution

Hank Stubbs – They say the Paris flood was due to cuttin’ down all the trees way up above the city.

Bige Miller – I’ve changed my mind about cuttin’ down that big willer tree near the waterin’ trough.

____________

Feb. 4, ‘10

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

Rocks is Rocks

(Three meteor relics, of polar exploration, were sold by Mrs. Perry to Mrs. Jessup, for the American Museum, for $50,000 – News)

“It do beat all,” said Hiram Hicks,

     “How foolish people be;

How they will pay so much for things,

     Is more than I can see.

Fifty thousand dollars for rocks

     Picked up by Perry, sho!

What is this world a-comin’ to,

     I’d really like to know?”

“Now rocks is rocks, an’ I hev got

     Rocks on my farm, I say,

That look as good, an’ jest as big

     As Peary’s any day.

Yit no one wants ‘em; wouldn’t take

     A cartload, handed free;

While Perry gits a barrelful

     Of cash for only three!”

______

Uncle Ezra Says:

“Some folks’ idee uv standin’ up for their rights is by settin’ on other people.”

______

Elbert in Variety

So, at last, is the great Elbert Hubbard, Sage of East Aurora, Fra Elbertus, editor of the Philistine, Dean of the Roycrofters and “Pastor of the Flock,” going into vaudeville. “The Fra” will appear twice daily at the Majestic Theatre, Chicago, beginning Monday, March 14. We are not so much interested as to what sort of a “turn” Elbert is going to do, but we would like to know how he pronounces it, “Videveel,” or “Vaudvill.”

______

Confessions of a Humorist

A Near-Autobiography.

VI.

Probably no class of people in the world are so prone to gloom as are professional humorists. And all because they take things so seriously. As an every-day example we might recite the recent international complication between those two well known humorists, the author of “The Woman with the Serpent’s Tongue” and the writer who answered it. It is, indeed, a serious world that the every-day humorist looks out upon, and to try to explain rollicking humor from such a source the effect often becomes pathetic.

Imagine a humorist trying to hand-tool a piece of humor for “Life’s Best Joke Competition,” with his wife continually poking her head in the door of his foundry with: “Henry, there isn’t a stick of wood cut to fry the morning eggs with!” Imagine a funny man just starting on his column of humor for the next day’s paper when his better half bursts in, wild-eyed and sobbing: “John. John, the baby has swallowed the glass stopper to the camphor bottle!”

Yet these petty annoyances are just as apt to happen in the household of the humorist as elsewhere, and when the column of humor must be produced ere the baby can be attended to, you can easily see the state of mind in which the humorist daily lives.

It has been said the humorist sees a joke in everything his eye lights on. Don’t you believe it. That statement, whether printed or verbal, is either an untruth or a joke. A very good friend of mine, a well known humorist, once opened an envelope and took out a sheet of official looking paper on which was scrawled: “Your services are no longer required on this paper.” Did the humorist see any part of a joke in that? A thousand times “no!” And yet those words were the first thing his eyes “lit on” when he opened the envelope. So you see you can’t always believe what the world says – about humorists.

To return to the printing office – and it is a good place to return to (nearly all do who leave it for one reason or another) – it was there that my first joke was born. Having watched the jokes from the exchanges appearing in our columns from time to time, I believed, with proper food and training, I could go and do likewise. One bright day I approached the hallowed sanctum, hat in hand, trembling visibly. Probably there is no place in the world so dreaded, so fraught with uncertainty and misgiving, as the editorial sanctum, unless it is the tax collector’s office or the morgue.

“What now? queried a stentorian voice.

“Sir,” said I, bowing very low, “I believe I can write jokes for the paper just as good as them you print every week.”

“Huh!” said the editor, looking over his specs; “what makes you think so?”

“Well, sir,” said I, “I can read a dozen or more of them and never smile, but at some of my own I laugh right out.”

He whirled round in his chair. “Look here, my boy,” said he, “if you can write me a whole column of good jokes, in addition to your other work, I will raise your pay from $3 a week to $3.25.”

(To be continued.)

______

Be an Early Bird

Early to bed,

     And early to rise,

Oft saves the need

     Of telling lies.

______

A Skinny Joke

“Why not say the sausage came out and saw its shadow?”

“I don’t follow.”

“Groundhog!”

______

Both Ends Dangerous

Hank Stubbs – Ambition ain’t hardly wuth while.

Bige Miller – Why not?

Hank stubbs – Waal, ef you are behind the procession you hafter keep bumpin’ into somebuddy, an’ ef you git ahead you’re liable to git tellerscoped.

____________

Feb. 5, ‘10

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

A Pin Point on the Map

You think you’re big as all out doors,

     You pompous, self-appointed chap;

But after all is said and done,

     You’re but a pin point on the map.

You may swell up like you would burst,

     Until your clothes or buttons snap,

But when you’ve done your very worst,

     You’re but a pin point on the map.

This world it is so very big,

     And all its children are so small,

If is a wonder God can see

     That it has any souls at all.

And yet, He noteth every one,

     The millionaire and hobo chap;

He knows, compared with time and space,

     Man is a pin point on the map.

So if you’re feeling all swelled up,

     Too big for those you love perhap,

Just bear in mind that after all,

     You’re but a pin point on the map.

The pin point’s not to be despised,

     ‘Tis sharp. and closes many a gap;

And you can be of noble use,

     Though you’re but a pin point on the map.

______

Uncle Ezra Says:

“In tryin’ to git the best end of the rope some folks hev been known to git it in the neck.”

______

Pavement Philosophy

A rolling stone gathers much dross.

Onions are more healthful than popular.

Love isn’t so blind as it is headstrong.

A kicker raises the monotony if he does nothing else.

Count your chickens before you buy any cold storage eggs.

Bread, cheese and kisses are all right till indigestion sets in.

It’s an ill fog horn that doesn’t blow somebody good.

The longest way round is the surest and best for the taxicab.

It’s tough to meet the icy stair outside, then to have to meet it again on the inside.

In choosing between two evils, most people choose the one they think will do them the most good.

When the wolves bark at their doors some men are so generous they let their wives go out and shoo them off.

The man who is always looking for something for nothing usually gets something about equal to that which he is willing to exchange for it.

______

Some Cakes All Dough

You can’t have cakes,

     And eat them too,

Unless they lodge,

     As some cakes do.

______

Food for the Imagination

“Ah! Thompson, going out to dinner?”

“No; I’m going to the moving picture show. They tell me they’ve got a film there showing a man cutting up a Quarter of beef.”

______

Cows and Hens

Gov. Hadley of Missouri believes that the cost of the living problem can only be solved by every family keeping cows and hens. Here is food for thought, if not for the table. The governor says that he himself keeps three cows and has so many chickens that he can’t count them. Gov. Hadley is a wise as well as a brave man. Doubtless, others have thought of this scheme before, but hadn’t the courage to send it broadcast. It will make a little bother at first to put it into operation, but the nice pure milk and the fresh eggs will more than compensate. We shall set out at once to write a book on “Every Man His Own Farmer.”

In the congested districts, where one lives in the air, where there is scarcely room for a cat to walk between and around buildings, you will see that a hen run or a cow stable will be impossible, but thanks to that mysterious and all-abounding “space,” which is as free as the air we breathe, we still have room for hen coups and cow stables. Where ground regulations do not prohibit, bay windows can be run out to accommodate the bossies and the biddies, and then there are always the roofs which could be partitioned off and made into ideal cow stables. The cows could be taken down in the morning after milking, by the janitors in the elevators, and driven off to pasture by boys hired for the purpose, or by daughters of the house, thus reviving the old milkmaid days.

The henneries are an easier proposition yet. Nearly every family has a back veranda, or a room they could spare. Cosy nests could be prepared close beside the kitchen stove, and biddy could lay her offering within arm’s reach of the cook. What egg could be fresher? We could shed more light upon this interesting phase of farming, but prefer to reserve it for our book above mentioned. Gov. Hadley is a wonder. There is no reason why every family shouldn’t keep a cow, hens, sheep, and even grow their own vegetables if they want to.

______

Opposition and Onset

(Contributed.)

Not to love good, but to wage onward war

     With wrong, is man’s supremest right,

     Fortune, and honor, and most proud delight;

Eternal combat with disordered law

     Is what eternity equipped man for:

To shin this battle’s easy, but to fight

Displays life’s hero in his native might,

Sifts out soul’s wheat and burns its useless straw.

When I consider all life’s base and bad,

It’s ugly, false, contemptible and low,

That on uprightness puts its active ban,

     I am opposed, and to oppose am glad,

Ashamed to rest at ease while time is so.

Dreamer no longer, but enlisted man.

     Somerville.                         H. A. KENDALL.

____________

Feb. 6, 1910

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

A Low-Down Trick

“Won’t you step into my airship,”

     Said the ‘ator to the girl;

“It is the prettiest airship

     That ever went awhirl.”

“I’m afraid to try your airship,”

     Said the maiden to the chauff’;

“I’m afraid that, while we’re flying,

     Possibly I might fall off.”

“There’s no danger I assure you,”

     Said the flyer to the maid;

“I will hold you quite securely,

     If you really are afraid.”

So they sat them in the airship,

     But it simply wouldn’t rise;

While the maiden’s disappointment

     Went a-soaring to the skies.

______

Uncle Ezra Says:

“To know too little is unfortunit, but to know too much is dangerous.”

______

Note on the Boycott

One of the unfortunate features about the present high prices is the fact that, while it costs so heavily to wholly live, it costs a great deal more to only half live.

______

What’ll You Have, Frank?

Bouquets at this season of the year are scarce, and come high, consequently all the more appreciated. Inasmuch as we print the many hundreds of knocks we get, we don’t see why we shouldn’t print the pat on the shoulder that comes only now and then. In the words of the primer: “We like Jack; Jack is a good dog.” Then Jack licks your hand and rolls over, because Jack likes to hear that he is a good dog.

“Dear Jocosity: One can always depend on one bright spot in each day – your column in the Herald. You certainly scatter sunshine, and a mighty good scatterer you are. Very truly yours,                     W. F. S.

Auburndale.

Thanks, old boy. When you come down this way, drop up. Anything in this office is yours, excepting the typewriter. She – we mean “it” – belongs to the company, and they have a “firm” hold on it. Besides, it is nailed down; that is the only way you can keep tabs on a typewriter.

______

Confessions of a Humorist

A Near-Autobiography.

VII.

Twenty-five cents a week for a column of jokes, without having to slight my regular work! Was there ever a more propitious leap into journalism? Surely the launching of the career of a Greeley or a Dana had nothing on mine.

This was on a Saturday, a poor day to begin writing a joke column. The paper was printed on Fridays, and Saturday was cleaning-up day. The press had to be thoroughly bathed and massaged, then covered up with a big cloth that was white at the start. Everything had to be put in order, and if there was any time left over there was always plenty of “pi” left for distribution. Printing house “pi,” little children, is not the kind of pie you swipe from the pantry shelf when your mother’s back is turned, but is a beautiful collection of type misplaced, looking much like a piece of real pie, custard or squash, which in your hurry you may have dropped butter-side down on the kitchen floor. In brief, a piece of printer’s “pi” is one that has had its face pushed.

For the first time since the organization of the village band, I was absent on the Saturday evening’s meet. What was tooting “Marching Through Georgia” and “Rally Round the Flag” through a brass cornet as compared with writing a column of jokes for the weekly paper? Nothing; simply nothing!

Late in the evening did I sweat over my task. It took me four hours to decide on a catchy title – which was never used. Sunday morning found me wrought to a very high pitch. It looked like a serious business at the start, that joke -producing departure. It was, and is. I felt that I must go to church, on account of somebody whom I knew would be seated a few pews distant, someone with a fresh, young face, over which an untamed lock of dark hair would fall in a saucy curl, but all through the sermon, much to my shame, I was trying to fit jokes to the parson or to the long-faced deacons who, with eagle eyes, were passing the contribution boxes.

By Monday morning I had hammered into shape a half column of what seemed to me to be passable dialog jokes. But it is one thing to think a joke and another to put it onto cold paper. Somehow the flow of ink seems to drown some of the spontaneity. The thin paper appears to reflect the narrowness of the joke’s belt measure. However, by the middle of the week, when it was time for all copy to be turned in, I submitted my first rib-tickling contribution to a sad-eyed populace.

The story of the explosion that followed, and the consternation that filled the sacred atmosphere of the printing office front, must be reserved for a later season; a future moment when the anticipating, high-strung nerves of the reader have recovered their normal placidity.

(To be continued.)

______

Cheerful Comment

Max is to be chief Fiedler another year.

Anyway, the steamer Kentucky isn’t in a dry state.

If there is anything in a name, Hall must have made a good one.

Roosevelt got 8000 trophies in Africa, but there’s still another one awaiting him here in 1912.

If New Yorkers can stop autos from smoking, doubtless they will also try to stop them from chooing.

You don’t say? That Nicaraguan war still doing business? Thought it had forgotten itself. Perhaps, though, this is a new one!

______

Dear Little Lamb!

(Contributed.)

Mary sold her little lamb;

     They put it in cold storage,

Now the people haw and hamb,

     And simply eat cold porridge.

                                   JAY BEE

____________

Feb. 7, ‘10

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

Uncle Ezra Says:

“If ev’rybuddy wuz fat the automatic weighin’ machines would hev to go out uv bizniz.”

______

Cheerful Comment

Memorial Hall room boys want to smoke up.

Airship exhibits here next week, without.

And this weather’s all owing to that blankety blank groundhog!

The efforts of that Gloucester skipper, Capt. Sylva, brought him gold.

There is not much bank robbing done nowadays in the old way; it’s done now mostly by insiders.

Dispatched say that the Paris flood has delayed styles. How sad! It was a mean flood, anyway.

______

The Confessions of a Humorist

A Near-Autobiography

VIII.

If the gentle reader supposes for a minute that the editor collapsed from heart failure, upset the office stool and frightened the cat through the plate glass window, then the gentle reader is mistaken. If he supposes the editor arose in his wrath and threw the paste pot at me, said paste pot missing me and striking the glass-covered portrait of the departed founder of the paper, then the gentle reader has made mistake number two.

Indeed, there was commotion in the sanctum, but here is a curtailed account of what happened: The editor took the column of jokes from my hand and said: “Wait a moment.” He read the title, then swatted it with his big knock-out pencil. Here a cold chill began at the top of my ladder and ran down. Then he read joke number one, finishing with an uncertain smile. Joke number two brought out an unmistakable smile. Number three produced a grin. At the conclusion of the fourth one I detected a snicker, and my hopes went up again. When he had finished number five he gave a most pleasing “haw-haw.” When he had reached the bottom he was roaring like a fat man at an Artemus Ward lecture. As he weighed 230 pounds, his voice, when used to its full capacity, had great carrying powers.

The office help, which consisted pf another man and a compositor, came rushing in, expecting the editor was either in a fit or that several readers had handed in their subscriptions. Nothing so hilarious and undignified had happened since a rival editor had died many years ago. He slapped his hand on his knee, while his bay window went up and down like a blacksmith’s bellows under the forced draught. When he had subsided sufficiently, I found the courage to speak.

“I hope that you are pleased, sir,” I ventured meekly.

“Pleased?” he echoed, taking another spurt, “I am more than pleased. Say, boy, this stuff of yours is so d      d bad it’s absolutely funny!” and while I was debating whether that boded good or ill, he indulged in another outbreak of coarse laughter.

I had retreated several paces, but the editor beckoned me closer. Looking in every direction to see there were no listeners to our business deal, he unfolded a great plan!

“Most of this rot of yours can be used,” he confided, in a low tone, “but, to tell you the truth, the exchequer of this institution is wanting in fullness. An ‘old subscriber’ has sent me three bushels of turnips, just one more bushel than we can use. Now if you will accept that extra bushel of turnips as your additional salary, which was to be increased from $3 to $3.25 per week, as you will remember, I guess we can go ahead and have this set up.”

Feeling less set up than I had expected to do, I thanked him and broke for the press room to think over my novel entrance into journalism. We had several bushels of turnips in our cellar at home, and yet, should I throw away this paltry 25 cents worth and thereby lose an opportunity to leap into an existence I had already learned to love? I wot not.

(To be continued.)

______

Ever Thus

“Just my luck,” said the man with the grapefruit countenance.

“What is it?” queried the tired listener.

“Well, at one time I thought of studying for the ministry, but I didn’t.”

“What has that got to do with the present high price of meat?”

“Well, I didn’t study for the ministry, and now I’ll be hanged if there hasn’t been a big fund left for poor preachers.”

____________

Feb. 8, 1910

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

Via Wireless

O, wireless is a wondrous thing,      

     Its saving powers are prime;

How oft it saves a human life,

     How much it saves of time!

O, would that it could be applied

     To other things, alack!

Would it could save us from the tongues

     That rip us up the back.

Would it could save us from the men

     Who chase us with their bills;

Would it could save us from the trusts

     That daily give us chills.

And when we need a bit of help,

     On matters left unpaid,

Would we could send an “S O S”

     And get some wireless aid.

______

Uncle Ezra Says:

“Gum chewin’ may not be a pretty okerpation, but ef it works off any narvousness it’s a much better way than throwin’ dishes at somebuddy else’s head.”

______

Cheerful Comment

A real “naval engagement,” you see!

All the world loves a lover, and John L.

And once we thought China eggs too hard to use.

“Cock-a-doodle-doo!” That’s the cry of Rostand these days.

Is it because T. R. had bad beef at home that he went forth to kill his own?

It is said Miss Drexel will wed a title. Really, isn’t there something goes with it?

If “Chanteeler” comes to Boston it ought to be so timed that it will connect with the regular poultry show.

But those elephants in Africa are mere groundmoles compared with the big one here waiting to be captured in 1912.

______

The Confessions of a Humorist

A Near-Autobiography.

IX.

Thus was a column of original jokes hurled into the midst of an unsuspecting public. From the fact that the column was unsigned, I still continued to live and thrive in the village of my birth. Not many knew who was responsible for the new rainbow that had appeared upon the humorous horizon. That was a secret between the great editor and myself. To be sure, I had told nearly, if not all, my friends, but had also told them not to tell. AS everybody knows, when a secret is passed round a country town it is as good as buried.

Experience has taught me not to reprint any of those early jokes. Many if the good people who inspired them are dead. I always fondly hoped that the jokes had nothing to do with their passing. Besides, things that happened in youth do not seem quite the same years and years afterward. Of course, I confided my secret to the one who sat only a few pews distant every Sabbath. She thought it a burning shame that the editor didn’t publish my full name every week, with her beloved’s portrait at the top of the column! Alas! She knew not his danger. She had not yet learned the dangers attending a humorist!

Being now a professional fun-provider, I began to look up my contemporaries, and to view their work with more or less of a critical eye. Mark Twain had just brought out “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” and I became the victim of a travelling agent by subscribing for a $2.75 copy. With my raise of 23 cents per week, it would take me eleven weeks to pay for “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” But I figured that the book was worth twenty-two columns of humor, if necessary. Thus did I pay a neat compliment to the master humorist.

While I enjoyed the book thoroughly, I couldn’t help feeling what a step it was from Mark Twain down to me! But Mark had begun life on a newspaper, and so I took hope. Of course, I saw many ways where his book could be improved, but I didn’t desire to create any discord between him and his publishers, so I generously remained quiet.

About this time Bill Nye was causing people to sit up and take notice. Also laugh. I realized that in Bill I had a formidable rival. Mark had passed the newspaper stage; Bill was just bouncing along toward the grand stand. I felt that Mark was beyond my influence, but what should I do with Bill? I thought about it many days, finally deciding to write him. I knew that sooner or later our work must conflict, and I wanted to give him a fair show. I felt that I owed it to him to let him know I was coming. So one bright and fair day on spring, when the hillsides were sending up their green shoots and the air was all a-tremble with waking inspirations, I sent Bill the following letter:

(To Be Continued.)

______

Taken Off

(Contributed.)

By her pleasing form and face

He was taken off his base.

By a treach’rous icy street

She was taken off her feet.

By the way she blushed reward

He was taken off his guard.

By the way she took him pat,

He was taken off his bat.

By the throw of fortune’s dice

She was taken off the ice.

Melrose.                                 T. F.

______

“The Weather”

The weather’s awful freaky,

     Jest makes a feller blue;

Eyeballs are cold an’ leaky,

     An’ fingers frosted, too.

Yisterday was so meller,

     Bluebirds was near, I know;

Today’s so cold a feller

     Feels like a Eskimo.

______

The Reformer Speaks

Hank Stubbs – I never could see any sense in that expression, Six of one and half a dozen of the other.”

Bige Miller – How wold you have it?

Hank Stubbs – Why, “Six of each,” of course.

____________

Feb. 9, ‘10

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

Rhyme of the Swearing Man

He is a man in our town,

     He is full prone to swear;

‘Tis seldom he will say a word,

     But when he does it’s awful.

You say to him: “Good morning, sir,

     I hope you’re feeling well;”

Just like as not he’ll answer thus:

“You, sir, can go to thunder!”

You mention neighbor Brown with praise,

     He’ll raise an awful fuss;

“That saphead Brown?” He’ll thunder out,

     “Why, he’s a mean old skinflint!”

No matter how you speak to him,

     As gentle as a lamb,

Or in a most commanding tone,

     He’ll simply curse and sputter.

O, shame that such a man as he

     Should be allowed to dwell,

And tell his neighbors, good and kind,

     That they can go to blazes.

I hope when he anears his end,

     Where dwells no sin or sham,

And he is face to face with death,

     He will forget to swear so.

______

Uncle Ezra Says:

“It ain’t the tremenjus amount uv money in a bank that busts it, it’s the money that ain’t there.”

______

The Confessions of a Humorist

A Near-Autobiography.

X.

The letter to Bill Nye:

Mr. William Nye,

     New York City.

Dear Sir:    Please excuse me for addressing you as William, providing you would prefer to have me call you “Bill,” or vice versa. As this is the first correspondence we have had, it is very natural we shouldn’t know just how to address each other. As we get better acquainted, of course, some of the sharp edges of social incumbrance will be wore off.

Doubtless you wonder why I am taking the liberty of writing you. One reason is because you haven’t written me. Sometimes I think I ought to stay my impulsive hand, then something within me says: “Go ahead; Mr. Nye is a humorist, and probably looks at things different from dignified and educated people,” so I venture. I know you must be a very busy man to write a column of funny experiences every week for so many different papers, so I won’t take any more of your valuable time than I can help.

Doubtless you know that I am a humorist, also, though sometimes it is hard for me to realize it myself, it came on so sudden. I haven’t printed of any cards yet to that effect, or I would send you one. I am waiting to see whether my humor is going to take or not before I announce it public. If it doesn’t take I may have to be revaccinated. I have read your things in the papers, and have seen your pictures. Your stuff makes me laugh, but your pictures make me feel sorry. Do you look like your pictures, or has the artist exaggerated your prominent portions? If I thought I was going to look like that when I got to be famous I think I would change my work. Perhaps it is the fault of the artist. If I was you I’d try a new artist, or else I would ask the editors to cut the pictures.

Would you have suspected me of being a humorist, too, if I had not told you? Perhaps you would have discovered it reading between the lines. Our editor once told me that there was more between my lines than anywhere else, but that was one morning after losing at poker the night before. But I digress, William. My purpose in writing to you is to get better acquainted, and to see what we can do to further our interests. Is there any way we can corner humor, thereby reaping greater profits? Mine isn’t paying me very heavily at present. I inclose my column from this week’s Advocate, asking you if you will kindly write me what you think of it.

It may interest you to know that I have written a sonnet which is dedicated to you, and which please accept with my compliments. I tried to get it printed in the Advocate, but couldn’t. The editor looked at it and said: “A sonnet to Bill Nye, eh? The sonnet’s all right, but it’s the subject I object to. What’s posterity – I mean what’s Bill Nye ever done for the Advocate?” I inclose the sonnet in my own handwriting, inasmuch as I can’t get it printed:

SONNET TO BILL NYE.

O, marvellous physician to a weary mind!

     Out of they ceaseless flow of hunor terse

     Art thou feeding all the universe

Upon a meal of scholastic wit, refined?

A new and timely school hast thou designed,

Though doubt I if it was designed by thee,

     It came as do the gentle buds in spring,

     Ending in a glorious opening.

And quite as needful to all the world and me!

Aye, master of thy art! Accept this weak

Tribute from one who hast yet to learn to speak.

     May thy rich faculty be ever to lift

     Dark shadows which o’er human faces drift,

Thy nimble steps towards fame’s golden streak!

     P. S. – “Streak” means money.

In about two weeks – two weeks of weary waiting – I was surprised and honored to receive the following reply:

(To be continued.)

______

All Her Own Way

Naggs – I wouldn’t live with a wife who weighed more than 200 pounds.

Mrs. Naggs – A wife who weighed 200 pounds could compel you to live with anything.

______

The Only One

I guess that Adam, lucky wight,

     Was never harried

About the better men Eve might

     Have married.

                    – Kansas City Journal

Nor was Eve harried, I should say

     With Ad’s tirade

About the biscuits, day by day,

     His mother made.

____________

Feb. 10, ‘10

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

The After-Dinner Speaker

He wrote an after-dinner speech,

     His pulses were aglow;

He carried it all safe and sound,

Until his chance should come around,

     But that was years ago.

Each time he was invited out

     His speech it went also;

His hand was on his broad expanse,

Just waiting, hoping for a chance,

     But that was years ago.

His dinners out came thick and fast,

     He should have had a show;

But still that after-dinner speech

Lay dormant, just within his reach,

     And that was years ago.

The speech grew stale; and so he wrote

     A fresh one, don’t you know;

He placed it where the other lay,

But it remained the same old way,

     And that was years ago.

He knew his speech would make a hit

     If he could have a show;

Alas! Toastmasters dull and blind

Were ever and anon unkind,

     So many years ago.

                   *  *  *  *  *

And so the years have come and gone,

     His steps are weak and slow;

But still he has within his reach

That aged, after-dinner speech,

     Just waiting for a show.

______

Uncle Ezra Says:

“The easy man is the hardest to do anything with.”

______

Cheerful Comment

Seems to be hard work to keep the Seine down.

New York Sun heading: “Big Roosevelt Homecoming!” Now that isn’t nice.

It pays to be a towboat if you can get the right kind of a tow.

Now it’s up to Cook to come forward with $20,000 towards the conquest of the south pole.

Before we will allow Halley’s comet to interfere with any of our earthly doings we’ll put a twist in its tail.

If Hammerstein should sue Constantino for $25.000 and get it, and Constantino should sure Oscar for a like amount and get it, wouldn’t it be funny?

______

The Confessions of a Humorist

A Near-Autobiography.

XI.

The letter from Bill Nye:

              “Hotel De      , New York city.

“Humorist, Gungawamp Advocate:

“My dear Hum’ – As I was en tower the past two weeks, your letter chased me pretty much over New England and a part of Connecticut, finally rounding me up at the above address. It is indeed all right for you to call me ‘Bill.’ Your letter reached me the first of the month, the word ‘Bill’ having a most familiar sound. I get a good many about that time.

“Ah! yes, my son, I knew you were a humorist even before I opened your letter. You forgot to put on a stamp, consequently there was 2 cts due. You will make a great humorist someday. Yes, your jokes are good. I wouldn’t make them so good; you won’t hold out. I read 3 or 4 of them, and on the strength of it went to a dentist’s and had 4 teeth extracted. Four of your jokes are equal to 40 feet of laughing gas. Some day I’m going to have out my whole upper set, and just before I start I shall read the remainder of your column.

You ask me if I look like my pictures? I say “No, heving forbid!” It is bad enough to have my pictures look like me. The only safe way for a humorist to have a picture taken is to disguise himself before going to the photographer. In truth, son, the pictures you see in the papers are Bill Nye in disguise. I have a very nice crop of hair under the bare, half-moon line the artist bestows upon me, but it hasn’t cropped out as yet.

“You ask me also if there is any way we can corner humor. Didst ever try to corner a skunk? If you did, you know what you got – the worst of it. Truly, I think we’d better let the corner business alone, and fight it out in the open. It would be all right for us to form a humorist club, I think, and try to knock the stuffing out of some of the naughty editors with it, but personally I wouldn’t care to carry the joke any further.

“I thank you for your sonnet dedicated to me. It seems to me like a real sonnet, with its 14 lines and ten bumps to a line. Indeed, the “P. S.” you have so generously added makes it more than a sonnet, which but adds to its value. I don’t see why your editor should refuse to print it. Neither can I see what he has against me, unless he is the man I refused a half-dollar near the Battery one day last month. Hoping you will continue making the world laugh, thus forcing a closer relationship between dentists and patients, I am, your obedient servant,                BILL NYE

It was several days before I recovered from the effects of this letter. In fact, I may say that I never fully recovered. It is a well known fact that a humorist invariably takes himself seriously, but he never knows how to take the other fellow.

(To be continued.)

______

Fixed for Keeps

“I hear Tom and Helen have fixed the wedding day.”

“They have; they’ve broken their engagement.”

______

One on the Wheats!”

“He’s a gridiron star, isn’t he?”

“Yes; but when it comes to feeding the family buckwheats his mother can give him cards and spades.”

____________

Feb. 11, ‘10

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

Her Generosity

“I’ll be a sister to you, dear,”

     She said in tones of joy;

“I’ll be a truly sister, now,

     Don’t be a silly boy.”

“Will you?” I asked, crushed to the core,

     “Some comfort that will be,

Because my sister’s married now,

     And I’m alone, you see.”

She paused; “I’ll be a sister true,

     And lonely you’ll be not;

But don’t forget, you used to take

     You’re sister out a lot.”

______

Uncle Ezra Says:

“Some me listen so intent to hear oppertunerty knock at their doors thet they don’t hear their wives luggin’ in the wood.”

______

Confessions of a Humorist

A Near-Autobiography

XII.

Receiving a letter from the great Bill Nye, of course, gave me more or less local fame. I tried to keep it quiet, but after telling a dozen or more, confidentially, it got around. Everybody wanted to see the letter, and finally it was put on exhibition at the village postoffice. I seemed to be raised a little in all my connections with the Advocate, except in the matter of salary. The yeast which had worked for my betterment in other directions failed to raise anything noticeable in the big room, first floor front.

The editor continually tried to impress me with the fact that I was growing famous under his thoughtful direction, and that I ought to feel thankful he didn’t charge me something for it. And this, notwithstanding the fact that a half-dozen or more of my relatives, who lived in neighboring towns, had subscribed for the paper, “just because,” as they said, “you write for it.” A few months later I sent Bill another letter, inviting him to come up and stay with father through to two weeks’ haying, but as I never got any reply I concluded his work kept him so busy he couldn’t very well ask off.

About this time one of the unpleasant things that come into the lives of most humorists took place. It was on a Saturday morning, bright and early, the day following the issue of the paper. A tall, lanky man, whom I knew to be a farmer living well on the outskirts of the village, drove up and hitched in front of the office. He was accompanied by the sheriff. The latter, I well knew, had a grudge against the editor because the Advocate had supported a rival candidate during the previous fall campaign.

That there was trouble brewing I had no doubt, but I didn’t dream I was to be brought into it. The first thing I heard was the thunderous tones of our editor saying: “Mr. Bumpus, the management of this paper is not responsible for the views of its writers. You would know that if you read your weekly editorial to that effect which appears every week in the year!”

“Then show me the writer!” commanded Mr. Bumpus, and forthwith I was called from behind the type cases.

“Young man!” shouted he, holding a tiny clipping before my eyes, “did you write this?” I took the clipping with trembling hands, and read the following: “It isn’t anyways likely that a man would be any less fussy or excitable than a setting hen on eggs if he was placed in the same position.”

“Yes, sir, I wrote it,” I replied. “W-why, w-what is the matter with it?”

“‘Matter?’ What is the matter with it? Say, sheriff, I want this young freshie arrested for liable! I won’t have him nor this bloomin’ paper makin’ fun uv me in any sech way!”

“I-I don’t see what that paragraph has got to do with you,” I replied, backing a few steps away from the sheriff.

“What its got to do with me?” he echoed; “why you young simpleton, it’s got ev’rything to do with me. Ev’ryone uv my neighbors are guyin’ me about it. It’s a plain case uv liable, an’ I’m goin’ to arrest you an’ sue the paper!”

Then our editor spunked up, “You’ll have to show probable cause, Mr. Bumpus,” he said.

“Probable cause? Waal, that’s easy enough. Didn’t this young scamp know that my wife Marindy fetched a hull sett’n’ uv aigs intot he house an’ put ‘em careless into my big armchair, an’ how I come in in the dark an’ set down into ‘em?” and the voice of Mr. Bumpus raised with every word.

“When did this happen, Mr. Bumpus?” inquired our editor.

“Day before yesterday, an’ ev’rybuddy out in our deestrict is a-pokin’ fun at me sence it got into the paper.”

“Well. Mr. Bumpus,” said our editor, “I can prove that that paragraph was written more than a week ago.”

“Waal, I’ll be gosh-swizzled!” exclaimed Mr. Bumpus.

(To be continued.)

______

A Fai Office Exchange

Stenog’ – O, Frank. will you please sharpen my pencil?

Clerk – Yes, if you’ll please sew on this button.

______

Cheerful Comment

But people who say they can live on 20 cents a day don’t.

My, but that Pittsburg is going some. Nothing of the “dark age” about Pittsburg.

Hope that $200,000 will tend to bring out a quicker and a more cheerful “Hello!” from the other end of the line.

Chief Wiley says to buy up the New England farms. Fine, but first you’ve got to have the price, and then you’ve got to find the farm.

____________

Feb. 12, 1910

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

The Skaters

(Contributed.)

Under a twinkling sky,

     Over a frosty stream,

The rollicking skaters go

     Stealthy and swift as a dream.

Here with a dashing curve,

     There with a silvery glide;

Anon with a sweep to the fore

     As the wild sea-horses ride.

Ho! Pulses leap with delight,

     As forests and hills spin by;

No bound is to distant set,

     The horizon itself is too nigh.

No figure too intricate is,

     No pace too reckless to dare;

So birds, with pinions storm-braced,

     Bridge limitless regions of air.

And as those athletes aloft

     Exult in each magical stroke,

So these trim lassies and lads

     Are to mirth and pleasure bespoke.

O, the exquisite thrill

     AS the crystal chips fly past,

Like the streaming sparks of a flint,

     Or leaves from a whirlwind blast.

Then lean, recover and swing,

     And frolic to music and rhyme;

There was never a moment so gay,

     There was never so joly a time.

Shout, gambol, carol and cheer,

     And make the tame river ring;

Though you live to a thousand years

     You’ll taste no spicier thing.

The hurrah for the rigor of sport!

     And the gale of innocent fun;

Lubber! Clap wings to your feet

     To learn how heaven is won.

Then circle and curvet and veer,

     Double and counter and roll;

If ever a game was divine,

     ‘Tis skating entrances the soul!

     Somerville.       H. A. KENDALL.

______

Uncle Ezra Says:

“Here is somethin’ you will notice in human natur: Thet the longest-faced man gen’ly hez the shortest pocketbook.”

______

Pavement Philosophy

Marry in haste and repent in Reno.

The wait of the transgressor is not long.

A warm smile is often a good remedy for cold feet.

The steak one can’t chew is perhaps the unkindest cut of all.”

To make a little go a long way it must have a good deal behind it.

More people would put their shoulders to the wheel if there wasn’t any dirt on it.

Love laughs at locksmiths because Cupid almost always carries a skeleton key.

A great many ministers are good hypnotizers; they put their congregations to sleep.

It’s only when he’s grown up that the average bop appreciates the house slipper.

If the milk of human kindness weren’t quite so much like the milk the milkman leaves!

Some people never learn from experience because they don’t realize that they were experiencing.

Don’t kick if your wife asks if her hat is on straight. Rather feel proud that she has the graciousness to liken you to a plumb.

______

Beneath the Crown

(Contributed.)

The head that “swells” beneath the crown

Provokes but idle jest and frown;

The head that scarcely knows ‘tis there,

Save for a crowned one’s weight of care,

Arouses hope, and courage high,

And faith for which men dare to die.

Which think you’d be, the head you’d bear

If called upon a crown to wear?

That which the people run to see,

Or that to which men bend the knee?

     Auburndale.                  E. T. O.

______

In a Food Shop

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

I think that is the way the poet, or whoever wrote it, put it. Be that as it may. You are seated in a restaurant. You have just received your order. It looks good to you, and you are just about to make the attack. Soon a stranger to you wanders in and sits near you. He looks up and down the bill, then sighs, and says, “I don’t know.”

Just then he catches sight of your order. It steams, and looks awfully good under the spotlight. If it is ham and eggs, he says to the waiter, who has been standing first on one foot and then on the other: “Ham and eggs for mine.” If perchance it is beef stew he says, “Gimme a beef stew.” He has ordered, without fully realizing it, precisely what you ordered.

Then you swell up – inside, of course – and tell yourself that as a food orderer you are a perfect connoisseur. You feel like going over and slapping the fellow on his shoulder and saying: “You’re all right, old boy; you know good chuck when you see it. Come over to my table, and – and let me have your check.” But, of course, you don’t; society has taught you not to be rude or familiar, so you arise, try to catch the eye of the pretty waitress again, then pay your 20 cents and disappear into the ever-engulfing crowd.

______

My Valentine

(Then.)

Of course I love, without a taint,

The smallest and the greatest saint;

And yet I think I love ‘bove par.

Of all within the calendar,

Good old St. Valentine, for he,

I feel, has done the most for me.

‘Tis forty years ago, and more,

I stepped within the knickknack store,

And bought the paper heart I sent

To one who had my young hear rent.

(Now.)

That paper heart a frame doth fill;

That sweetheart is the sweetheart still!

     Melrose.                       T. F.

______

Playing the Game

Toucher – I suppose you give up a great deal during this season of self-denial, and as a result you have considerable change on hand?

Wysely – Yes, I give up about everything except money because, you see, it’s lent.

______

Out of the Frying Pan

Beacon – So Penn-Heck wants to go to Congress, does he?

Hill – Said he’d be willing to go most anywhere to get away from home for a while.

____________

Feb. 13, ‘10

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

Avenging the Beautiful

(The movement for discharging pretty waitresses from cafes because patrons hinder business through so much “jollying” seems to be growing, and may reach Boston.)

O, shall it ever come to pass,

     That where I go each day

To eat, they will discharge the lass,

     And in that dull café

No more I’ll see her form and face?

     But in her place will find

A maiden coarse, and lacking grace?

     O, fate be not unkind!

Ah, no! If Helen be not there

     Where I have dined each day,

I will not sink in my despair,

     But wend my weary way

To where fair Lillian throws the plates;

     And if she, too, be gone,

I will not long rail at the fates,

     But turn my steps forlorn

To where sweet Jessie trots the hash,

     And lingers with her smiles;

Where one can eat and slyly mash,

     A victim of her wiles.

But if she, too, be canned and in

     Her place a sorry fright,

I swear I’ll never eat again,

     But drown my appetite!

______

Uncle Ezra Says:

“Ez a rule the feller who says he’s got money to burn tries to warm himself in front uv somebuddy else’s fire.”

______

Financial Note

That Cambridge driver of an ice wagon who found a purse containing $1800 and returned it to its owner, and received a cigar therefor, ought not to kick. Probably he isn’t kicking; undoubtedly he is thankful he wasn’t offered a cigarette.

______

Confessions of a Humorist

A Near-Autobiography.

XIII.

It is inevitable that country youth, especially those professionally inclined, sooner or later become willing victims of the lure of the city. The call comes in various ways. The city papers which find their way to the wayback towns contain many accounts of business and professional successes. They also contain accounts of disasters of the same nature. The country boy forgets the disasters, as he forgets all unpleasant things, but he remembers the successes.

The travelling salesmen relate many interesting things in the country stores about their city life. They look prosperous and their fund of good stories and their quick wit is inexhaustible. The country boy is charmed and thinks the places they come from must be great indeed.

The strongest lure of all, however, are the ones who come back to the old town in summer with their fine clothes and their few dollars which they appear to spend recklessly. The air of success is stamped all over them, and the country boy decides that city life must be easy money. He never thinks that the clothes may have been secured by the “dollar down and a dollar a week” process, or that the wearer may have been saving up for a year for this annual out-door dress parade. He has heard the call of the city, and has harkened unto it.

Whether this leap from the little village to the great city is wise is a tremendous and unsettled question. It can only be answered in one way: “It all depends.” It is true that the city offers larger opportunity; it is also true that it offers larger opportunity for failure. However, the day arrives when the boy of large ambitions decides. The fond parent as a rule refrains from standing in the way of his boy’s career, and the little old telescope bag is packed, not without a few silent tears falling upon the well-beloved garment, and the dreaded good-byes are said. The valley reverberates with the screaming whistle of the locomotive, and another hopeful heart is whirled away to a new life, while a few saddened ones are left behind.

     *        *        *        *        *        *        *

When Mr. Bumpus had recovered from his surprise by the editorial announcement that the paragraph in question had been written a week previous to the time he had sat upon a setting of eggs, he was profuse in his apologies and, shaking hands all round, he departed, taking the disappointed sheriff with him. I was told that a few days later Mr. Bumpus had sent in a dozen bunches of his best asparagus to the entire office force as a peace offering, as well as a subscription to the Advocate two years in advance.

Thus ended a humorous chapter in my career as joke producer on the village paper, and thus ended my brief career as a member of its staff. The inevitable had claimed me, for better or for worse, and the following week I was to go out into the great unknown and untried, to serve in a like capacity on a well known suburban weekly.

(To be continued.)

______

Wise Precaution

“I haven’t let my furnace out this winter.”

“Neither have I; was afraid it might take cold.”

______

Minister, Then Judge

She (coyly) – It takes two to make a bargain, you know.

He – Yes; but it only takes one to break it all to smash again.

______

Hard Lines Ahead

Hank Stubbs – I see the gov’munt has stopped the R. F. D. carriers from gittin’ out an’ doin’ a little shutein’ ‘long the way.

Bige Miller – Waal, I s’pose next thing it won’t want ‘em to come in to git a a glass uv cider ev’ry other stop.

____________

Feb. 14, ‘10

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

Spring Knocked Out

O, we thought the spring was comin’,

     An’ we hollered loud an’ long,

Out our pulses started hummin’,

     An’ we snatched a little song.

O, the skies were lookin’ meller,

     An’ the sun was actin’ coy,

An’ it simply made a feller

     Feel like bustin’ out with joy.

Thought the groundhog was mistaken,

     When his shadder didn’t show;

An’ our faith in him was shaken,

     ‘Cuz we thought he didn’t know.

An’ we got the mutton taller

     For to grease our fishin’ gear;

Troubles ev’ry day grew shaller

     ‘Cuz the spring-time was so near.

Then the skies they got a shadder,

     An’ the winds began to blow;

An’ the cold bit like an adder,

     An’ there come a lot of snow.

Then the merc’ry dipped asunder,

     An’ we put the fishlines by;

An’ we’re feelin’ worse’n thunder

     ‘Cuz the spring is knocked sky-high!

______

Uncle Ezra Says:

“Ef we lived on cake an’ pie all the time how we would hanker fur a piece uv plain bread an’ butter.”

______

The “Jocosity” Business

Father Jocosity begs the indulgence of the readers of his “Confessions” for side-tracking them “for one day only,” in order that he may cook an accumulated batch of matter relative to the word “Jocosities,” its history, present use as applied to this column and its possibilities.

Many interested readers have written in from time to time, inquiring if the name of the perpetrator of this column was not taken from some such word as “jocosity,” “jocund” or “jocose.” The unusual similarity leads the to suspect that the writer has “built up” a nom de plume from these jocular words. Such is not the case. The name is a legitimate one, duly entered on the books of the town where he first saw the light of day (or kerosene lamp, he doesn’t know which), and on a page of the old family Bible.

The word “Jocosities,” as applied to this column, was selected by the proprietor of this paper, he receiving no compensation from the writer therefor on account of its patness.

The late George Russell Jackson, who was the pioneer of the funny column in Boston, then writing “Pencillings” for the Boston Courier, said to the writer one day: “Joe Cone, your name is almost a joke-on jocund!” That classic wasn’t the cause of Mr. Jackson’s passing away, although he died soon after.

A few years later the writer was editing and publishing a magazine in Cambridge called “The Little Joker.” Mr. Sam Walter Foss, the well-known poet-humorist, through his love and pity for infants, was an occasional contributor. One day he went Georg Russell Jackson several better by sending in the following play upon the name of the magazine and it’s editor:

“JOKE ON.

The Little Joker is jocose,

     As every one must own –

The jocose jocularity

     Of the jocose Joe Cone.

Joke on, Joe Cone, joke on,

     And who shall ever moan

At the jocose jocosity

     Of the jocose Joe Cone.

                – SAM WALTER FOSS.”

This literary curiosity was printed in the Little Joker for February, 1898, and Mr. Foss was properly thanked and immediately put on the free list.

Nearly every package of mail delivered at this desk contains one or more letters playing upon the jocose coincidence, if that it be, and, while we wish we might us them all,

The lack of space

Stares us in the face,

and we will close by quoting one from North Scituate as being a good sample of the many:

“Dear Jocosity: ‘What’s in a name?’ We have all, at times, probably experienced some subtle influence or suggestion induced by the mere designation by which some individual is distinguished, irrespective or in spite of personality. And many serious dissertations have been written concerning the effect of an appropriate name, not only upon others, but upon the bearer of the name himself. With such authority, and only kindly feeling, I am presuming to suggest that in your case there may be found a golden opportunity to test this fascinating theology with possible profit and delectation. For, starting with the combination of letters under which you publish the ‘Jocosities,’ you have simply to omit the ‘e’ and change the ’n’ to ‘s’ and there is produced ‘Jo Cose.’ Now I am sure that, in spite of the fact that you are a humorist by vocation, you will readily recognize the fitness and the charm of this arrangement of titular characters. It is, I believe, a simple matter, mainly of red tape, to procure such alteration with legal approbation; and the expense would be surely trifling when weighed against the inspirational stimulus which such felicity of name must surely have upon your genius, And consider, too, the charm and fascination which your work will have upon your readers when they discover that you are so enthusiastic and so gifted in the manufacture of ‘Jocosities,’ are so deeply enamored of them, that you are grown to be very like them in name.

“It would seem that to take this suggested step can result only to your gain. It is fraught with no danger of loss, nor, with proper precautions, should it in the least degree prejudice the right to still cling to your proper twig upon your family (pine, I suppose) tree. Yours trivially,                                                      JO KER.”

______

Musings of the Office Boy

If you don’t get in on time you may go out ahead of time.

Money wouldn’t talk so much if it didn’t have gold in its teeth.

The good doe young, and the near-good have a good many sick spells.

Most people have to take somebody else’s word about there bein’ plenty of room at de top.

____________

Feb. 15, ‘10

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

The Crowd

Whence comes the crowd, and where does it go?

Forward and backward, an endless flow;

Constantly moving, always the same,

Like silent figures in a mystical game.

Whose are the faces and what is the goal?

Who is straightforward, who playing a role?

What is it thinking, what will it do,

Has it a definite end in view?

Crowd of mystery, silent and long,

Hearts tipped with sorrow, lips tipped with song;

Endless procession of sunshine and woe –

Whence does it come, and where does it go?

______

Uncle Ezra Says:

“Money don’t allus talk; sometimes it is hushed up by more money.”

______

“Back from Elba!”

“If my husband,” snapped Mrs. Wurrie, “was half as interested in his work as he is in what they’re going to do with Roosevelt when he gets back from Africa, we could have a great many more things in the house.”

______

Growin’ All the Time

Some folks can’t wait for fishin’,

     They wanter go right now;

I’m glad I ain’t so restless,

     With wrinkles on my brow.

I jest set here a-smokin’,

     In atmosphere sublime;

I know the fish out yender

     Are growin’ all the time!

______

Confessions of a Humorist

A NEAR-AUTOBIGRAPHY.

XIV.

Some great writer, possibly John L. Sullivan or William Shakespeare, has said that it is better to be a big man in a small town than a small man in a big town. John or William, or whoever it was, didn’t say why it is better; he simply said that it is. And as no one takes exception to the classics, we have long accepted the saying as being a true one.

But that bit of philosophy, notwithstanding it comes from a deep and mighty source, is hard for the new arrival from the country town to believe. To the country youth the city looks like a great unconquered animal, sleek and powerful. That he will be able to cope with it, and at last stand with his foot on its neck, he hasn’t the shadow of a doubt, and it must be admitted that it is that simple confidence which oftentimes goes a long way towards its accomplishment.

It was with some such feeling that I made my first appearance in the editorial office of the Bilford Banner, a prominent weekly located not more than 100 miles from Boston’s then famous “Newspaper Row.”

“Good morning, sonny,” said I to a youth seated on a high stool in front of a desk that looked as though a hen had been scratching over it for worms, “is the boss in this morning?”

“He be,” replied the youth, bestowing upon me an inquiring look; “what can I do for you?”

“I would like to see him if he is seeable,” I replied, frigidly.

“What is your business?” he queried icily.

“None of yours,” I replied, gingerly. I was getting tired of his smart indifference, and felt that he knew I was from the country. If he was a good example of the pert city office boy I would show him that everybody couldn’t be browbeaten by his insolence, I decided.

“I came here to see the editor of this paper,” said I; “will you show me to him, or will I hunt him up myself?”

“Were he expecting you?” he drawled.

“He were,” I replied, imitatively.

“Have you a cawd?” he asked.

“I have a card,” I replied, with a hard “r.”

“I wouldst see it, please.”

At first I was tempted to refuse, but finally extended the bit of pasteboard, assuming a superior air. He read it, a peculiar smile breaking over his face.

“Glad to see you, Joe,” said he, shaking my hand, glad to see you. This will be your room, this little one here next to mine. Make yourself at home. Do you smoke? Here, light up. Guess you’ll like it round here after you get acquainted. Circulation’s good; advertising picking up all the time. Reckon that column of yours will brighten up the sheet a little. Are you a married man? No? Too bad; you ought to be. Greatest thing in the world for a newspaper man to be married. I’ve found it so. Have some one to read your stuff to, you know. No one like a wife for a critic. Where are you going to board? Got any friends around here? Fine old town; historic, healthy and something going on all the time. Good schools, good library and a fine police system. You can strike in any time you want to. Take a day or two off and look the old town over if you like. Want your stuff in by Thursday noon as we’ve announced it for this week. Take off your coat and I’ll show you over the plant.”

The more the fellow talked the larger he loomed up in front of me, and I felt myself shrinking. Somehow he didn’t look so boyish standing up.

“You – you ain’t the – the editor?” I gasped.

“I try to be,” he laughed; “why, you look surprised?”

And in the language of Mr. Bumpus I said, half to myself: “Well, I’ll be gosh-swizzled!”

(To Be Continued.)

______

A Fowl Proceeding

(Hens to lay calico eggs. Feeding fowls dyes gives any desired color. – Dispatch to The Herald.)

Of discovery and invention

     This, the latest, is the best;

Simply gove the hen attention,

     Feed her dyes, she’ll do the rest.

Colored eggs for each occasion,

     Easter eggs of every hue;

Mix the dyes in right equation,

     For the Fourth: Red. white and blue.

If they’re for the boys at college

     You may serve a little stale;

Satisfied are they with knowledge

     That the color’s Harvard-Yale.

Madam finds it gratifying

     When to breakfast she comes down,

For her thoughtful cook is frying

     Tinted eggs to match her gown.

     Dorchester.                 H. E. F.

____________

Feb. 16, ‘10

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

Tough Luck

(A near-rhyme by the Office Boy)

          Old Mother Hubbard,

          She went to the pantry

To get her poor dog some beef;

          But when she got there

          The cupboard was empty,

And so the poor dog had to eat pie!

______

Uncle Ezra Says:

“A drop in the bucket is wuth two in the bottle.”

______

Where Can We Go?

Thieves broke into the Hartford county jail a few nights since and stole $200. Why, it’s getting to be so in some states a fellow isn’t safe even in jail.

______

This is an Advertisement

TAKEN – From the writing room of the Hotel Iroquois one week ago last night, one gold-barreled fountain pen inscribed to the sponsor of this column and “Presented by The Buffalo Club Minstrels, 1909.” If being held by the finder, we hope he sees this and returns the pen, receiving suitable reward for same and no questions asked; if stolen, we hope the first time the thief signs a name with it he will be arrested for forgery and sentenced to 1000 years at hard labor. Not since we lost our hair have we lost anything that we disliked to lose as much as this. Please bring it back.

The above is taken from John D. Wells’ column, “From Grave to Gay,” in the Buffalo Evening News. We don’t want to say anything against John, but we can’t help wondering what business a married man with nine children has got round a hotel, anyway.

______

Confessions of a Humorist

A Near-Autobiography

XV.

There were many things I didn’t know when I entered the editorial office of the Bilford Banner. I didn’t know that men just out of college, mere boys in appearance, frequently step into positions of great influence and responsibility. I didn’t know that striplings, in appearance, were successfully directing the policies of great corporations and that men who had not reached their greatest and best were stepping down and out. I didn’t know that four years of education and experience were being crowded into one in the life of the averaged city-reared youth, and that, if he didn’t bust his brain traces during the process, he was considered a wonder by his admiring relatives. O, I had much to learn when I burst into the learned sanctum of the Bilford Banner on that merry May morning!

The youth of the high stool, whom I had taken to be the office boy, was a college graduate, a journalist of reputation, a young man of ideas and a veritable engine of energy. In the office he was a power in action and accomplishment, and a tireless worker, but “off the job” he was a boy again and a jolly companion. What a happy combination!

During our correspondence, before I had resigned from the Advocate, the editor of the Banner had suggested that I bring my latest photo along to run in with my first batch of humor. Consequently it was taken, the last one on the old family album – doesn’t that sound natural! – and packed very carefully in my grip and brought to the land of opportunity. After seeing me at close range, the editor must have forgotten about the photo feature, for he never mentioned it afterward. After being with him a few days, I remarked, casually, of course, “You don’t run many photographs in the Banner, do you?”

No,” he replied, quickly, “not men’s photographs; it doesn’t pay. There are two things that will kill a paper quicker than anything else – running photographs of unattractive men and criticizing amateur plays.”

I agreed with him perfectly on the latter, but included both subjects in my reply. As I grew older, however, I appreciated the omission’ the public is so easily disappointed! Wrap a little mystery around a public feature of any kind and it is more or less of a drawing card. Let the performer step down from the frame and mingle with the multitude, and it will invariably say, “Huh! Id this IT? Gee, I wish I had my money back!”

The step from the little four-page plate-bedecked Advocate to the 12-page, well printed Banner was a long one, journalistically, but not financially. Sometimes a man loses money by having his pay raised. The city journalist gets a few more dollars a week, but think of the prized vegetables for the country editor at the close of the Grange fairs! The rustic figures he can earn $3 more a week in the city doing the same kind of work. So he can; but then, he can turn around and pay $6 more for necessary expenses. Or, he can do it without turning around.

In due time the issue containing my first installment appeared under the title of “Bannerisms.” The office was not besieged by a mad populace crying for extra copies nor were the presses kept running night and day; but the fact that they didn’t break down while running off the normal edition was a source of great satisfaction to yours truly.*

*This is a joke, being first cousin to the one always fired at the photographer to the effect that the sitter hopes his face won’t break the machine.

(To be continued.)

______

How Does This Strike You?

“How time does fly!”

“I know it; we’ve only just about got settled, and here it’s almost time for spring cleaning again.”

______

Pa’s Valentine

Beacon – Did you get a valentine?

Hill – Well, I got a reminder of the day – a bill for about two dozen expensive ones.

______

Cheerful Comment

But who wants to eat dyed eggs? As soon eat dead ones.

What is poorer than a cheap cigar, or cheaper than a poor cigar?

Wanted, by the poultry editor: A setting of tinted (not tainted) eggs for Easter.

Let’s see, how many jobs have they got laid out for poor old Bwana Tumbo to date?

If we could only get some of those active Martians down here to dig our big ditch!

Men may come and men may go, but the Russell case is still doing business at the old stand.

Surgeons claim the falsetto voice can be cured. Can’t anything be done for the shrill voice of the music hall singer?

____________

Feb. 17, ‘10

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

Lyres and Liars

“O, let me twang my lyre for you!”

     Said I to her in tones of passion;

I was a poet, poor but true,

     And she a child of wealth and fashion.

She paused, her ripe, red lips ajar,

     Then answered me: (O, may she rue it!)

“You poets all such liars are

     You twanging has a false note to it.”

______

Uncle Ezra Says:  

“A dollar borrud now an’ then makes trouble fur the best uv men.”

______

Confessions of a Humorist

A Near-Autobiography

XVI.

During the second week of my confinement on the Bilford Banner, a most interesting event occurred. One morning a young lady, bubbling and beautiful, was ushered into my cell. In my eagerness to offer her a chair that stood close to my desk, I very carelessly upset an ink bottle, some of the contents spattering the right leg of my new light spring trousers.

“O, I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed. “I      ”

“A mere nothing,” I interrupted. “I’ve got a dozen more pairs just like ‘em – I mean the price of another leg – beg pardon, I mean another pair. Won’t you please sit down?”

“O, thank you, but     but       ”

“But what?”

“Excuse me, but there’s some ink on the chair.”

Seizing my pocket handkerchief, I wiped the chair thoroughly, then, as she still hesitated, I very gallantly offered her my own chair and sat in the one that had received the ink bath.

“I am an interviewer,” she began. “May I interview you?”

“I’ve never had that happen to me,” I replied. “Is it painless?”

“I will try to make it so,” she replied, confusedly. “You see, I am working for a new magazine, and we are publishing interviews with all kinds of people, and our editor thought a humorist might make a good feature. A few months ago we had a bank president, and later we had a notorious criminal at Charlestown, which was most interesting, and now we should like a few facts concerning you, and – and your picture, if you would be so kind.”

“Excellent idea,” I replied; I should think it would be great fun to be associated in interviews with bankers and criminals. There are lots of other professions you can bring in too; the supply is inexhaustible. I’ve no objection to being interviewed, but I shouldn’t know how to go about it.”

“O, leave that to me,” she laughed, taking out a notebook and pencil.

“I’m sure it would be in good hands,” I replied, looking at her shapely fingers.

“You flatter me,” she responded, with a girlish giggle; “and you are so pleasant it makes my work easy. Most men whom I want to interview are so cross about it.”

“The brutes!” I exclaimed, “but of course, they don’t know their business; they’re not used to it. Now when interviewers come to see me I use them like gentlemen – I mean ladies – and it makes it much nicer for both, the interviewer and the interviewee.”

“But you said you’d never been interviewed?”

“Did I? Why how careless of me. I meant I’d never been interviewed by a regular, professional interviewer; I might say by so charming a interviewer – or is it ‘an’ interviewer? Thanks; I don’t see how anybody could be cross with you; I couldn’t. How long have you been in the interviewing business?”

“About two years.”

“Ever work on a newspaper?”

“Only on our high school and college papers.”

“Did you like the work?”

“O, very much, but I am in hopes it will lead to something higher. I have literary and journalistic aspirations, you know.”

“Don’t you think there are still higher ambitions for a woman?”

“Dear me, I don’t know; what, for instance?”

“Why – er – keeping house for some nice young man,” I replied.

“I – I suppose so, though I really don’t know; but, if you don’t mind, I – I came here to interview you, and you are interviewing me,” she replied, glancing nervously at her book.

“O, I beg your pardon, I had forgotten all about it; please proceed.”

(To be continued.)

______

Cheerful Comment

Keep the child actors; they beat some of the grown-ups.

Bet Caruso wouldn’t object if a pleasing summer drink were labeled “Casusoda.”

And now the poor Filipinos will have to endure the two-colored war epidemic.

No, you never can tell what a monkey is going to do next at a public function.

There are two things that won’t down: The Seine won’t stop rising, and Theodore won’t stop shooting.

Omaha authorities, who have allowed a convict freedom that he may perfect an airship of his invention, better look sharp that he don’t fly off in it.

______

Unkind Outsiders

“Did you ever try walking a tightrope?”

“No; but I’ve tried Boston’s sidewalks.”

______

Fit for an Opera

“Wouldn’t it be funny,” says the man who wants to be different, “if a south pole expedition should meet a north pole expedition and discover then and there that there is but one pole after all?”

____________

Feb. 18, ‘10

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

Uncle Ezra Says:

“It’s all right to be a self-made man, but don’t make your list’ners wish you weren’t.”

______

On Losing Necklaces

Every few days somebody loses a rare necklace. We didn’t suppose there were so many necklaces in the world. If necklaces are so plentiful how can they be rare? From all accounts it would seem that the neck is not a safe place to wear a necklace. If it were there wouldn’t be so many lost. If necklaces are to be worn a safer place should be found for wearing them than around the neck. Ladies who have rare necklaces should give this matter more than passing thought.

______

Confessions of a Humorist

A Near Auto-Biography.

XVII.

Once more the pretty interviewer adjusted her note book and pencil and gazed off into space. Just why a pretty girl invariably gazes into space I know not; she must have reasons. Then she licked the end of the pencil so frequently and with so much affection that for once I wished I were a mere pencil rather than a pencil pusher.

“Let me see,” she said, reflectively, “I have a line of questions I was to ask you; a sort of form, you know. We ask everybody the same questions, or nearly. They vary according to profession. I wouldn’t think of asking a bank president quite the same questions I would ask a convict, or a blacksmith the same I would ask a humorist. Perhaps you would prefer to take the blank and fill it out?

“O, no; I prefer to have you ask me the questions, and I will answer them to the best of my several ability. However, I don’t see wherein the above questions should vary much.”

She gave another comforting giggle, and began:

“What is your favorite breakfast food?”

“Hot mince pie for winter and frozen cucumbers for summer.”

She held up a warning finger.

“Don’t forget, now, that your answers will appear in the magazine just as you give them.”

“I realize, Miss, that I am under oath. If the magazine can stand it, I can.”

“When do you enjoy work most?”

“When I see someone else doing it.”

“Who is your favorite composer?”

“Tommy Flynn.”

“I – I don’t know him?”

“Why, he’s the fastest typesetter on the Advocate.”

“I said composer, not compositor.”

“I beg your pardon. I was thinking of something else. My favorite composer is the man who wrote ‘After the ball’ – I think his name was Shacker.”

“Who is your favorite author?”

“Sherlock Holmes, the man who wrote ‘Mr. Dooley,’ with Tom Lawson a close second.”

“Who is your favorite humorist?”

“Well – er – going outside of the family, I should say Edgar Allen Poe, in his short stories; with Bill Nye still to hear from.”

“When did you first discover you were a humorist?”

“I didn’t; some one discovered it for me, but alas! they forgot to bring along their proofs.”

“Whom do you think wrote Shakespeare’s works?”

“I know who would have had they been brought out later.”

“Do you drink tea or coffee?”

“When I am at home; I’m boarding now.”

“What is your favorite book?”

“Ordinarily I would name ‘Lucile,’ but on Saturdays my own.”

“I didn’t know you had brought out a book. How interesting! Its name, please?”

“Pocketbook.”

“Just one more question: What do you think of equal suffrage?”

“My dear young lady,” I replied, tremblingly, “I am an unexperienced young man, a long way from home, among strangers and unprotected, but I will answer your question truthfully, if it costs me my life, to say nothing of my position. I believe men and women ought to suffer alike. But since it is a well known fact that women’s make-up is more conducive to suffering than is man’s, and since she is suffering for suffrage, I believe she should be suffered not to have it, and thereby her suffering, by not having it, would be about equal to man’s, who has it. Do you follow? In short, I believe that woman is bound to suffer whether she has suffrage or not, but she will suffer vastly more if she has it, only at present she isn’t suffered to know it. Woman’s lot is to suffer because this is a suffer-age!”

It was evident from the woman’s change of front that she was a convert and didn’t agree with me. But I had said it, and wouldn’t take it back, for that would have been Injun giving.

“And now the photograph,” she said, rising.

(To be continued.)

______

The Way of It

Life is what we make it;

     Joy is how we take it;

Bluff is how we fake it;

     Dust is how we shake it.

______

Cheerful Comment

Safe to bet Senator J. D. hasn’t any S. O. stock.

Looks like Mayor Howard is working for a salary.

Hope our South-bound mayor will find Palm Beach a calm beach.

Five hundred thousand homeless cats in Chicago, and pony coats costing so much!

Is that another one of those sad jokes – The House asking for Peary’s proofs?

We are taught on youth that it doesn’t pay to scrap, but Jim Jeffries cleans up $62,000 in an 82 days’ tour.

____________

Feb. 19, ‘10

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

In Life’s Play

Can’t all be prima donnas

     Upon the great world’s stage;

Can’t all be star performers,

     And all be all the rage.

But each can do a little

     To please the weary ear;

Each one can hum or whistle

     A little word of cheer.

Can’t all stand in the spotlight

     With brilliant speech or song,

And win the noisy plaudits

     Of the excited throng.

But in the role of hero

     Each actor can appear,

And speak, if that is only,

     His little word of cheer.

______

Uncle Ezra Says:

“If you don’t know much about a subject, keep still, an’ if you do know a lot about it keep still also or people will think you don’t.”

______

Theatrical Note

Huh! Barefoot dancing has been in vogue with the male folks for a great many years. But they usually do their practicing on early winter mornings.

______

Pavement Philosophy

Sometimes the best sprinters don’t run.

Real optimism isn’t apt to be encased in a dress suit.

The best way to remedy the divorce evil is not to indulge.

Sometimes first aid to the injured should be a kind word.

You can lead an automobile to water, but you can’t make it swim.

Usually the people who look in the store windows the most buy the least.

The public will soon decide whether you are a head-liner or a filler-in.

Spring heels help some, but a springy disposition gets you there quicker.

A long friend doesn’t win any friends, not yet any favors from the gods.

It is better to be tracked by peanut shells than by champagne’ corks.

An automobile gait on a wheelbarrow salary means ditching at the turn of the road.

All the world loves a lover, but not with the love a lover loves his love.

The sight of a woman sharpening a pencil proves that she is out of place doing men’s work.

The man who uses religion for a cloak is worse than he who deliberately swaps coats in a restaurant.

______

Aeroplane Hither

O, you, Miss Spring,

So light of wing,

     Come cheer us once again;

If you can’t pass

The guards, alas!

     Come in your aeroplane.

O, springtime maid,

Be not a jade,

     Our hopes are in the wane;

Please do not wait

To come by freight,

     Come in your aeroplane.

______

Aviation Acrostic

(Contributed.)

An airship high is winging it flight;

Eager the crowd is watching the sight.

Round and round it circles the air,

Over the meadows and woodlands fair.

Pulsing away, it forges ahead,

Like a giant bird on pinions spread.

Aviation now is the right thing,

New routes of travel us it will bring;

Everyone wants to be up to date –

Soon through the sky we shall navigate.

     Dorchester.                W. E. F.

______

Not Good Getters

Hank Stubbs – I see these ere big pollerticians are sayin’ they’s a lot o’ money in farmin’.

Bige Miller – So they is; the hull trouble is gittin’ it out.

______

A Royal Chap

“What do you think of our new neighbor?”

“O, he’s all right; he’ll be a perfect success here. Why, he spent the evening with me last night, and hadn’t heard a single one of my stories.”

______

Some Bad Breaks

“It used to be the ponies that broke a good many men.”

“And now?”

“It’s the coats.”

______

The Old Cookie Jar

(Contributed.)

‘Mid sounds that come back to the ear from the past

I hear the shrill challenge that heralds the morn;

I hear the cows loo at the pasture lane gate,

I hear the doves coo, and the rustle of corn.

I hear the horse stamp in his stall in the barn,

I hear the boy’s boisterous shouting at ball;

I hear the lambs bleat, and the swish of the scythe,

And a thousand sounds else, but clearest of all

Of the echoes of youth, the clearest by far,

Is the click of the lid of the old cookie jar!

The old cookie jar that our mother kept filled,

Just inside the door of the pantry it stood;

How oft in the day did our grimed little hands

Dive into its depths for its wonderful food!

Oft since I have tasted some marvelous dish

Of a world-famous cook, but O, by long odds!

When hungry from school, or from chores or from play,

Those cookies of mother’s were food for the gods.

Blest echoes of youth; but the dearest by far

Is the click of the lid of the old cookie jar!                            T. FARDON.

  Melrose.

______

Paterson Not so Many

A Paterson (N. J.) woman was found by surgeons to be harboring a mole which had to be ensconced in the region of her chest several months. That’s nothing; we know a Massachusetts girl who has had a mole on her back for 18 years!

____________

Feb. 20, ‘10

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

Spring Wishin’

I wish the skies would brighten,

     I wish the snow would go;

I wish the clouds would lighten,

     An’ spring-like winds would blow.

I wish the cold wold hurry

     An’ go where it belongs;

I wish the birds would scurry

     Back to us with their songs.

I wish the buds were poppin’

     On all the shrubs an’ trees;

Bluebirds an’ robins hopin’

     Ez sassy ez you please!

I wish the frogs were croakin’

     Down in marshy bogs,

An’ ol’ mud-turkles pokin’

     Round on the sunny logs.

I wish the maples hardy

     Were sending out their sap;

I wish the ol’ spring tardy

     Would wake up from its nap.

I wish ‘twas time fur fishin’

     Down on ol’ “Lizzard Crick”;

I wish – but O, this wishin’

     Just makes a feller sick!

______

Uncle Ezra Says:

“Sometimes it is a hull lot better to be comin’ a few than goin’ some!”

______

Cheerful Comment

Memorial Hall objections going up in smoke!

Looks like the “peepul” are going to raise the Maine.

“The Midnight Sons” have great attractions for the 8 to 11 daughters.

If your hens don’t lay make “Chanticler” hats out of ‘em.

Kermit should be kept from swimming in the Nile for divers reasons.

Speaking of the way B. Tumbo will come home, why not let him have his own way?

The appendix record to date is 6 7/8 inches long. This opens up a new field of endeavor. Cut in, boys!

______

Seasonable

(Contributed.)

Each season has its charm;

     In spring before the dawn

A fateful voice is heard:

     “Rise John, and mow the lawn!”

Each season has its charm;

     In summer, ‘mid the heat:

“Dear mother’s coming love,

     John, make the garden neat!”

Each season has its charm;

     In autumn nature grieves:

“John, won’t you get the rake

     And gather up the leaves?”

Each season has its charms;

     In winter ‘tis, you know:

“John, get the ashes out,

     Then shovel off the snow!”

     Melrose.                         T. F.

______

A Stronger Weapon

An argument out in Hyde Park over the age of a piece of cheese led to a stabbing affray. Perhaps more serious results could have been obtained by the aggressive party if he had used the cheese instead of a stiletto.

______

The Man Lower Down

“The beef trust don’t worry me any.”

“What then is your worry?”

“The marketman who won’t trust.”

____________

Feb. 21, 1910

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

Alice Nielsen, Aviatress

O, Alice, sweet Alice,

     Don’t aeroplane, please!

O’er Boston’s uncharted,

     Mysterious seas.

Suppose that the motors

     Should col’ or relapse –

O, “Alice, Where Art Thou?”

     If anything haps?

______

Uncle Ezra Says:

“With some folks, it is either a grin or a grouch.”

______

“Stage Children”

In his list of long-life players at the Hollis, Sunday night, Francis Wilson might have included “Plutano,” the wild man of Borneo, who is still living in Waltham at the tender age of 90 years!

______

Cheerful Comment

He was a good “Father,” too.

Today is also the birthday of “Jocosities.”

Tell a good Washington story today if you can hatch-it.

The winter overcoat is beginning to have a hang-dog look.

T. R. isn’t so much of a ‘press agent,” either; the public has always done it for him.

Cheer up; spring poems will blossom on the morning of March 21, regardless of weather of other obstacles.

______

George Washington, Feb. 22d

(Contributed.)

George Washington his people loved,

     And they reciprocated;

O, ‘tis a blessed thing to know

     Our happy land was slated

For such a fate, for rare it is –

     Nay, ‘tis pot-luck rather –

For any man to have a chance

     To choose and name his father!

But could the good man see us all,

     ‘Twould set his calm blood rushing,

And when we all acclaimed him “dad,”

     We’d doubtless have him blushing!

                                    T. F. Melrose.

______

Confessions of a Humorist

A Near-Autobiography.

XVIII.

“Is it necessary to have a photograph?” I asked, coquettishly.

“Why, of course,” she replied. “An interview would be pretty flat without a picture.”

“Some of us are pretty flat with them. However, I don’t like to part with mine,” I mused, reaching eagerly toward a pigeon hole.

“O, I will be careful of it, and see that it is returned.”

“It isn’t that,” I said, blushingly.

“What is it, then, if I may be so bold?”

“Well, you see, I – I promised when I left home I wouldn’t give my picture to any other young lady.”

For the first time the pretty interviewer was phased. Then, assuming a manly attitude, she remarked stiffly: “But this is a business proposition, entirely.”

“Of course, of course,” I agreed hastily. “I hope it will be good business for the magazine.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Humorist,” she said, tucking the photo out of sight.

“You are very welcome, Miss Interviewer,” and as a cloud shuts out the beautiful sun and light, the door swung between me and her, and she was gone. She was gone, and around the half-done sheet of jokes that lay on my desk there appeared to be a border of mourning!

“That interview never saw the light of day. Shortly afterward there appeared a speck upon the financial horizon, no bigger than a man’s hand. It soon developed into a cloudburst, and the little bark was shipwrecked upon the rocks that have claimed so many wanderers of the deep. That was before the days of “C. Q. D.” and “S. O. S.,” or it might have been saved.

Now that I was well established on the staff of the Bilford Banner, I felt I should know more about the great Boston dailies, and that, incidentally, the dailies should know more about me. So, arraying myself in a new straw hat and a big bow tie, and purchasing a cigar with a band on it to present to the editor, I started out for the office of a prominent daily on Washington street.

“May I see the editor of this paper?” I inquired, in a ground-floor room that looked like a big bank.

“Which one?” asked the man who looked at me through a hole in the wire fence.

“Which one? Why, do you have more than one?”

“I should say we did,” replied the man behind; “we’ve got 32, not counting the spares.”

“Gee!” said I; “you don’t tell me? What do they all do?”

“Well, I can’t go into that, young man; this is the advertising department and is our busy day. The editor floor is       flights up.”

“A whole floor of editors?”

“Sure thing. What’s the nature of your business, anyway? Maybe I can direct you.”

“My business is quite confidential,” I replied, “and there are a good many ears about here and they all appear to be open. Say, if you will name over some of the different editors I can tell you which one I want.”

He threw a nervous look at the clock, and began: “We have the editor-in-chief, the managing editor, the city editor, the news editor, the Sunday editor, the night editor, the foreign editor, the local editor, the assistant editors, the art editor, the literary editor, the financial editor, the sporting editor, the dramatic editor, the music editor, the complaint editor, the exchange editor, the religious editor, the political editor, the society editor, the cooking editor, the law editor, the railroad editor, the baseball editor, the bicycle editor, the agricultural editor, the medical editor, the horse editor, the graveyard editor, the         ”

“Hold on!” I interrupted, “you’ve gone far enough; haven’t you got a funny editor?”

“They’re all funny to me.”

“I mean a humorous editor; one who writes funny things?”

“Nothing doing,” said the man behind the wicket.

(To Be Continued.)

____________

Feb. 22, 1910

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

When Teddy Leaves

When Teddy leaves the jungle depths,

     Whatever be the date,

What animals are left intact

     Are going to celebrate.

‘Twill be a wondrous day for them,

     They’re laughing in their sleeves

At all the things they’ve planned to do

     The moment Teddy leaves.

The rhino he will blow his horn,

     The one upon his snout,

All up and down the wilderness,

     To call the others out.

The gnu will help to spread the gnus,

     And laugh himself to bits;

The dig-dig he will dig for fair’,

     The day that Teddy quits.

The elephant will bring his trunk

     Prepared to stay a while;

O, there will be a jubilee

     When Teddy leaves the Nile!

But here at home, I’m sore afraid,

     Some folks will have the heaves,

Or maybe something just as bad,

     The day that Teddy leaves.

______

Uncle Ezra Says:

“One good turn desarves another, but lots o’ folks don’t seem to know when their turns come.”

______

Confessions of a Humorist

A NEAR-AUTOBIOGRAPHY

XIX.

“I’m sure I don’t want to see the graveyard editor, and the financial editor is somewhat out of my line,” I reflected. “What sort of fellow is the agricultural editor?”

“He’s a woman; a graduate of Wellesley,” replied the teller.

“I guess he – I mean she – won’t do. What is the cooking editor like?”

“He’s a young fellow trying to cook – I mean work his way through college.”

“Gee Whizz! This must be a funny old paper,” I replied. “Say, what’s the exchange editor like? I’m on an exchange, and maybe he’ll do?”

“O, he’s a clipper.”

“A clipper, eh? Regular old sport, I suppose?”

“I mean he clips exchanges.”

“O, gee, yes! What a darn fool! I might have known that. What does the horse editor do? I know a thing or two about mules, myself.”

“The horse editor takes the proprietor out to drive. Say, young fellow, I guess you’d better go up and have a look for yourself. Elevator in the rear.”

I turned round quick and looked behind me. “What are you giving us?” I asked.

“In the rear building, I meant. You’d better go up and ask for the managing editor; he’ll take care of you all right.”

I didn’t like the sound of those last words. Still, I reflected, as I am out I might as well see it through.

Approaching the elevator, I said to the boy: “Take me to the managing editor’s office.”

“I’ll take you to the editorial floor, mister; dat’s as fur as me license goes.”

“Thank you for that much,” said I, “do you smoke?”

I handed him a long, thin cigar; a kind I smoked when alone.

He took the cigar, looked it over, then handed it back, saying, “No, thank you, Bill, I don’t smoke.”

I finally landed in a small room which I learned was the managing editor’s ante-room. I had heard long before that editors were great players. By actual count there were 19 men in line, apparently waiting. Each one wore an anxious look on his face, as though he’d either lost, or else hadn’t found. Then I happened to remember that I had heard somewhere that there was always something besides hens laying for editors.

“You will be number 20,” said the boy shoving me in line.

“Are these fellows waiting to see the managing editor?” I whispered.

“Sure thing; this is a poor morning; usually dey’s twice as many.”

“This is a poor day for me, too,” I replied. I consulted my watch, considered my appetite, and after patronizing a near-by restaurant, I took the first train back to Bilford.

(To be continued.)

______

Cheerful Comment

Anyway, Philadelphia is lively at times.

That appendix record won’t stay put; 7 ½ inches is the latest.

They say Jeff has changed; still room for improvement before July 4.

Zelaya is going to write a book. We dare him to go into “vaudyvil!”

It is said some of the descendants of certain illustrious Americans are Stark mad.

Some people don’t believe anything concerning Doc. Cook even though it comes from other sources.

A dispatch from Chicago says, “Hogs break all records.”

We knew they broke some of them, but this is news that all records are broken by them.

______

Lucky George

In some respects ‘twere better so,

     The “Father of His Country” dear,

Could not have lived today to know

     The doings of his children here.

______

There Are Others

“February is a short month, anyway.”

“I should have been called ‘February.’”

____________

Feb. 23, 1910

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

The Missus to Blame

It is so strange

Complaining wives

Should so torment

Their husbands’ lives

By putting up

Such stubborn fights

Because they stay

Out late o’ nights,

When months before

The wedding date

They’ve taught them how

To stay out late!

______

Uncle Ezra Says:

“Mighty few folks kin blow a good clear note on the horn uv plenty.”

______

Musings of the Office Boy

You often see senterment and bus’ness hand in hand.

Lots of office perfumery is wasted on the desert air.

Some folks have a good many days off when they’re still on the job.

It’s a great thing to have bus’ness slack up just as soon as the baseball rush comes on.

______

Anxiety

How dear to us

     The robin’s call;

But dearer still

     The words, “Play ball!”

______

Confessions of a Humorist

A Near-Autobiography.

XX.

There are two things which the average humorist, “in the course of human events,” must sooner or later face: First the public, and finally his Maker. About the time he should be letting the public alone and getting down to brass tacks, he is invariably called upon to face that misguided and over-indulgent public. Not, perhaps, as the man about to be hung faces the public, not yet the man about to hand out election promises; but rather in the ticklish guise of a funny speaker, or that most unfortunate victim, “a reader of his own works.”

And what is the position of the “reader of his own works” when it is common knowledge that the works ought to be shut down and a keeper put over them? What of the man who is invited by an audience to “give something of his own,” when the audience in turn feels that it should receive something for taking it?

That was the trying situation in which I found myself ere I had been the scintillating humorist of the Bilford Banner for a period of something less than six months. I laid the matter before the editor, whose enthusiasm knew no bounds. My own didn’t possess even a weak jump.

“Do it by all means, old man, he said. “You’ve got to come to it sometime, and you might as well begin now. It will be a fine start for you, as well as a little local boom for the paper. You see, you’ve got them going, or they never would have invited you.”

“It’s better I should have them going than that they should get me going,” I protested; “besides, I’ve never read any of my stuff in public, anyway, much less given a whole evening’s humorous lecture. The largest public I ever faced was a room full of my relatives, and you know what they are when they think your stuff is just too cute for anything.”

“Never mind, old boy, make a stab at it. It’s too good a chance to let slip through your fingers, and I know you’ll make good.

‘Twon’t make any difference what you say or how you say it, they’ll think it funny anyway, just because it comes from a humorist. It’s a cinch, Joey, a perfect cinch. If I had your material, and what’s behind it, I wouldn’t hesitate a moment.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” I replied, “and if I had your nerve and my material, and what’s behind it, whatever that is, I’d give a humorous lecture every night in the week.”

“O, that particular club isn’t at all fussy what it has for entertainment, anyway. It’s a good crowd to practice on. All it wants is to be amused. Tell some funny stories, read some humorous verses, tell some more funny stories, thank ‘em for their kind attention, and there you are,” said the editor, settling the matter in much the same manner he would buy a font of new type.

After a day’s consideration, accompanied by lowering temperature, with increasing nervousness in the central portions, I sent the secretary of the club the following reply:

                                  Bilford Banner Office.

Secretary          Club:

  “Dear sir – Your kind invitation to speak before your worthy club duly received and considered. The consideration is      dollars, payable during the intermission. In all my lectures, at home and abroad, I declare an intermission of 10 minutes to allow the audience to catch its breath, AS I have always found it wise to make a hasty exit at the conclusion of my lectures, there would hardly be time for any financial matters to be transacted, hence my request for the money at the intermission.

“I shall endeavor to give your club the treat of its lifetime, for I am frank to say that I don’t believe anything like my lecture has ever been given before it, or ever will be given again,

                        “Humoratically yours,”

                                                     __________

(To be continued.)

______

The Wrong End

Hank Stubbs – They say the prices uv beef hez gone righ up ag’in.

Bige Miller – I told you the ultermate consumers didn’t hev the bull by the horns; they on’y hed a-holt the tail.

______

Not Altogether

Promoter – I’d like to bring a trolley road into your town if I can raise the wind here.

Uncle Si – Waal, I’ll be gosh derned! I s’posed they wuz still runnin’ ‘em by electricity.

____________

Feb. Mar., 24, 10

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

College Courses

The nimble correspondence school

     Will shortly be hard-pressed;

The colleges are waking up

     To do their level best.

The correspondence school has long

     Had courses while you wait;

The easy-going college says

     ‘Twill soon increase its gait.

Missouri now includes a course

     For making poets fine;

Of course the other colleges

     Will soon get into line.

And now another is to hatch

     An even greater scheme:

 The papers say ‘twill start a course

     In making pure ice cream.

But colleges won’t stop at that,

     Nay, nay, ‘twould not be fair;

There ought to be a course for fudge,

     And chocolate éclair.

And by and by when they have taught

     All these fine arts in turn,

Perhaps some one will start a course

     On how to really learn.

______

Uncle Ezra Says:

“You will notice thet them who hev reached the top done so by gittin’ in on the ground floor.”

______

Musings of the Office Boy

If it’s worry that kills, typewriters orter live forever!

Feet on the desk are mighty bad billboards to success.

Some take inventory too often, and some not often enough.

The boss says there’s room at the top, but they’re all reserved seats.

______

Cheerful Comment

The fight’s the thing!

Check kiting is aviation in finance.

Anyway, the groundhog isn’t a $10 one.

If the law protects skunks, who’s going to protect the rural late-homer?

Granted, that fudge fattens girls, but who wants a fudge-fatted girl, anyway?

Knud Rasmussen is going north to study Eskimos, and Knud’s first words will be: “Show me!”

______

A Few Substitutes

“What do you think of the brute of a husband who will spank his wife?”

“I think it’s her own fault; if she’d been wise she’d have presented him something else to spank.”

______

Confessions of a Humorist

A Near-Autobiography

XXI.

Gentle reader: did you ever feel you had an execution day approaching? Did you ever experience that horrible sensation of waiting doom? That your heretofore joyous and happy-go-lucky life was but a mournful remembrance, and that on a certain day, at a certain hour, a bell would toll and that you would be led out of a dark, damp, dank, cell, blindfolded, and then at a given signal would be a helpless target for a half-dozen of the best shots in the barracks?

Did you ever feel as though you were falling from a great height, and the faster and farther you descended the more certain you felt that there was nothing to land on when you got there? And, finally, did you ever feel as though you were afloat upon a great sea of uncertainty, that there were no lands visible, that the boat under you had gone fathoms below, and that there was nothing for you to touch except the snouts of a thousand sharks who were whetting their tremendous appetites, and that although the sea was perfectly calm, still you were deathly seasick because there wasn’t motion enough to rouse your interest or cause any excitement?

If so, then you may catch a faint idea of the delightful sensations through which I passed the few days preceding my appearance as a humorist before the          Club of Bilford.

On the morning of the fateful day I was in such a state that, unbeknown to the editor of the Banner, I sought the advice of a near-by physician. He must have seen that I was terribly wrought up, for he carefully shot the office table between us,

“Doc,” said I, “I’m undergoing an awful strain.”

“Even the quality of mercy is not strained,” he mused, indifferently.

“Piffle on the quality of mercy, Doc; I want something to brace me up.”

“Are you a drinking man? he asked.

“No, but I will be if this goes on much longer!”

“I’m in the dark.”

“Well, you see, doc’, I am a humorist – begging your pardon – and I’ve got to appear before a certain club tonight and deliver a lecture – or something.”

“Well, isn’t your delivery all right?”

“O, my delivery’s all right, but I haven’t got anything to deliver except a few bunches of literary tremens.”

“Ah! I see! A genuine case of stage fright.”

“You’ve got it! You’ve got it, doc’!” I exclaimed.

“Rather you’ve got it,” returned the doctor, laconically. “So you’re the humorist of the Bilford Banner, eh?”

“How’d you guess it?”

“O, that’s easy enough. Your stuff in the Banner and your present condition so closely resemble each other.”

“Now, doc’, quit your wireless surgery and get down to brass tacks. Can you give me anything that will brace me up for a couple of hours tonight, that’s what I want to know?”

“Let me see,” said he, drumming his fingers on the office table “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” “I think I can.”

(To be continued.)

____________

Feb. 25, 1910

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

Busy Men

Cap. Wheeler runs a cattle boat,

     He works hard every trip;

He lends a hand to ship the steers,

     And also steers the ship.

                          – Chicago Post.

Bill Throttle is a railroad man,

     Towards study much inclined;

Not only does he mend his train,

     He also trains his mind.

                     – Boston Transcript.

Josh Simpkins is town constable,

     A man of deeds, not talk;

Day after day Josh walks a beat,

     But he never beats a walk.

                             – Boston Post.

Bill Count’s an honest bank cashier,

     A man of highest rank;

He daily makes the money fly,

     He never flies the bank.

______

Uncle Ezra Says:

“Competition if the life uv trade, but sometimes the death uv the trader."

______

Baseball Note

It will soon be trying time for grandfathers and grandmothers who have been dead a long time, or who, perhaps, never existed.

______

Heard on the Outskirts

“They’ve a new preserve in Boston.”

“That so?”

“Yes; the subway jam.”

______

On the Decrease

Appendix records day by day

     Go up the spout;

Think it would be a better way

     To cut it out.

______

Confessions of a Humorist

A Near-Autobiography.

XXII.

The near-doctor – I mean nearby doctor – remained in a sort of Sherlock Holmes comatose state for several minutes, during which I refrained from disturbing him. The state referred to is sort of a dark brown study, in which the wheels of the universe appear to cease spinning and the great curtain of mystery goes up, revealing answers to those perplexing questions the great master minds so frequently are called upon to solve. If I remember rightly, he used no peculiar smelling tobacco, but once he ducked behind a screen and I heard the unmistakable “pop” of a cork.

The doctor then went to a cabinet and fumbled among his vials and other receptacles, shortly returning with a long, narrow, dark-green tube, from which he poured four small, transparent pellets.

“There,” said he, rolling them into a bit of paper, “take two before you step onto the platform and two during the intermission.”

“How did you know anything about the intermission?” I asked in amazement.

“I’m a member of the club, and saw your melancholy letter of acceptance,” he replied.

“What do you call these little pearly-looking slugs, doc?” I asked, pocketing the packet.

“Those,” replied the man of medicine, confidentially, “are pero-radium pellets of concentrated laughing gas and hydro lafica, and when properly used will produce courage, confidence, exceptional brilliancy and a fund of good humor.”

“Exactly what I need!” I exclaimed, and, seizing the doctor’s hand, I shook it warmly; and, in my gratitude and excitement, I rushed out of his office forgetting to pay him fro the great service he had rendered me. I assure you this oversight was unintentional, and I promised myself I would rectify it the first time I saw him, providing he saw me in advance.

It was a beautiful evening, that evening of the lecture. The hall was well filled with an audience anyone might have been proud to call his own. The ladies were in the majority, as is always the case when any specially fine and lofty entertainment is in progress, I dimly remember the hearing the president of the club using my name in the introduction of the speaker of the evening, and then – something happened!

The lights swayed and my head appeared to swell up until it filled the stage end of the hall. Each footlight was as big as a locomotive coming at me full speed ahead, and the ripple of applause that followed was the coughing and sneezing that thundered from each great black throat! The sea of mocking faces beyond seemed detached from their bodies, and turned and bobbed like egg shells on a rippled ocean. My body grew hot and cold by turns, and each foot appeared to be anchored with a ball and chain. My throat closed up like a body of water that has received a falling crowbar endwise, and the desk that had been placed at stage centre for my convenience seemed several leagues away.

Finally I reached it and leaned thereon heavily. A pitcher of water and glass were at one side, and, to gain time, I took a generous sip, and then – the appearance of the whole place underwent a change; the pero-radium pellets of concentrated laughing gas and hydro-lafica had begun to work!

(To be continued.)

______

Chops

If every Mary of today

     A little lamb had, say what

An asset would be hers for pay

     With beef so costly, hey what?

____________

Feb. 26, ‘10

(This was cut off at the end of ‘Chops!’)

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

Original Toasts

THE WHIST GIRL

Here’s to the maiden

     Who likes to play whist;

Who asks all the questions,

     And more, on the list.

Who asks “What is trumps?”

     With serious face;

Who at every new deal

     Trumps her partner’s ace!

THE SAINTLY GIRL

Here’s to the maiden

     Who never knew wrong;

Whose pathway is bordered

     With flowers and song.

Here’s to her future,

     Here’s to her past;

May she travel slowly

     She’ll never go fast.

______

Uncle Ezra Says:

“Don’t forgit thet jedgment day is ev’ry day on the part uv your sharp-eyed neighbor.”

______

The Query Box

Kidder – We are not allowed to use the word “mutt” in this column.

J. O. B. – You will have to speak louder – can’t quite make out your handwriting.

Miss Frantic – We didn’t say you were as old as the hills; we referred to your question.

Collector – Our professional modesty prevents our answering your very pleasing question. However, we wrote it, just the same.

Bobby Bun – Your verses have been turned over to the airship editor. They were a little too fly for this department.

Jennie L. – As much as we’d like to, we can’t publish your photo in this column, or your article on home-made chowder. If you will send in some chocolates or other knick-knacks, we think we could use them.

Tearful – WE are very sorry your pet dog is dead, and would gladly comply with your request and write a poem on the death and burial of the same, but honest, now, we never knew your dog and he never knew us, and we are not sure he’d like us to do it. We have often tried our verses on live dogs, but think it would be unfair to take advantage of a dead one.

______

Quatrains

(Contributed.)

DOWER

What is the poet’s dower? Love and light,

Sun-thoughts by day, star-dreams by night;

Life, deep-hearted like the rose,

And heaven when his day shall close.

FLIGHT

That bird of paradise, the soul,

Escaped its cage, flies to its goal;

What matter where the cage may be,

When once its tenant is set free?

THE PROCESSION

Advance, musicians, poets, dreamers, wits,

Beauty’s wise men and nature’s favorites;

Children of bliss, forever young and bold,

Who live for joy, and warm life’s pulses cold.

    Somerville.      H. A. KENDALL

______

Pavement Philosophy

Idle hands make busy evils.

Cut prices mean cut incomes.

No news is good news if it isn’t bad.

To err is human; to not forgive is inhuman.

There’s no fool like an old fool, unless it’s one older still.

Life is what we make of it for ourselves and for those around us.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, but how about a block in Chicago?

If you hate anybody, you are doing yourself a personal injury.

He who shares not his happiness with others has no happiness.

If you find you can’t buck the stream, get on shore and let it go by you.

Some folks say they work so hard through the week they just can’t rest on Sunday.

A long look ahead is likely to make you forget several things that you should have done yesterday.

When you are “beating the devil around the stump,” it is just as well not to chase him until you are dizzy.

The truth hurts, but a little pain now and then is beneficial to the best of men.

Did you ever know of anybody who couldn’t say, “Well, I’ve had my troubles, too.”

Even standing by their dignities, some folks aren’t quite as tall as they’d like to be.

Your heart is always in the right place to the one whom you have never crossed.

It is good to be alive, but it is a good deal better to have others glad you’re alive.

____________

Feb. 27, ‘10

JOCOSITIES

____

By JOE CONE

Business, Plus Art

They say he’s great in business,

     And has been from the start;

He knows the ins and outs of trade,

     But nothing knows of art.

They say he’s worth ten millions cool,

     All collared in the mart;

He’s bright in canning coin,

     But rusty in his art.

And yet upon his roomy walls,

     Are costly paintings hung;

Fine masterpieces by the score,

     Unheralded, unsung.

And he, Napoleon of trade,

     Boasts thus in manner bluff:

“Can’t tell you who the artists be,

     I’ve got ‘em – that’s enough!”

______

Uncle Ezra Says:

“It makes a diffrunce whose corn is stepped on, an’ then ag’in it makes a diffrunce who does it.”

______

Musings of the Office Boy

A pretty smile is a powerful argument.

It ain’t no joke that barrettes orter be barred.

I wonder how the idea ever got around that no tips are allowed in this office?

A bunch of violets by any other name

______

Confessions of a Humorist

A Near-Autobiography

XXIII.

To make a long story short – and all long stories should be made as short as possible, the lecture, under the influence of four pellets of pero-radium of concentrated laughing gas and hydro-lafica, was a success, financially and otherwise. The editor of the Banner had not been talking through his mildewed Panama when he told me that anything a humorist said or did, within the pales of the law, would go. The average listener doesn’t want his neighbor to think he can’t see through a joke, no matter how thick it may be, consequently he laughs; and others, hearing him laugh, laugh themselves because they think there must be something to laugh at.

And so it goes, and so it went that night. It’s a cinch, this being a humorous lecturer and reading from one’s own works. And when one’s own works are out of repair, or shut down for one reason or another, use some other fellow’s works, but call them your own. Humorousing is dead easy. The only difficulty is to get the label, but once you are labelled “Humorist,” the rest is a walk-over. Sometimes one feels guilty in taking the money. That is, I should think one would if one ever got any.

Way down deep I knew that 99 percent of my success that evening was due to the doctor’s pellets. As soon as the show was over I sought him out and thanked him over and over, and told him I would see him later, and all that line of conversation. I told him, also, that I wished to purchase a big supply of his wonderful discovery to keep on hand, as I expected calls now from all over the country. I also informed him that I would be glad to pay him at the same rate I paid him for the first lot.

Alas! It was a long time, however, before I had occasion to use the doc’s transparent courage producers again. Fame seldom comes in bunches to the youngster in his teens. It may be said to come in bounds, but the bounds usually are a long way apart; almost without bounds, so to speak.

At the close of the humor obsequies that memorable evening, a young lady pressed forward and seized my limp hand. Instantly I recognized the pretty interviewer of a few weeks before. It was like receiving money from home, that cheery, welcoming smile.

“Congratulations!” she exclaimed; “congratulations! You done well.”

(To be continued.)

____________

Feb. 28, 1910