Part 9 (1/2)

{quibbles queer and quaint.

Do you fancy _that_ is easy?

Well--it {is.

{ain't.

The dissolution of Farmer Pierson, of Princeton, Ill., from rough-on-rats administered, it is charged, by his wife and her gentleman friend, is a murder case that reminds us of New England, where that variety of triangle reaches stages of grewsomeness surpa.s.sed only by ”The Love of Three Kings.” How often, in our delirious reporter days, did we journey to some remote village in Vermont or New Hamps.h.i.+re, to inquire into the pa.s.sing of an honest agriculturist whose wife, a.s.sisted by the hired man, had spiced his biscuits with a.r.s.enic or strychnine.

On the menu of the Woman's City Club: ”Scrambled Brains.” Do you wonder, my dear?

We quite understand that if Mr. Moiseiwitsch is to establish himself with the public he must play old stuff, even such dreadful things as the Mozart-Liszt ”Don Giovanni.” It is with Chopin valses and Liszt rhapsodies that a pianist plays an audience into a hall, but he should put on some stuff to play the audience out with. Under this arrangement those of us who have heard Chopin's Fantasie as often as we can endure may come late, while those who do not ”understand” Debussy, Albeniz, and other moderns may leave early. The old stuff is just as good to-day as it was twenty years ago, but some of us ancients have got past that stage of musical development.

THE MOST EMBARRa.s.sING MOMENT.

Sir: This story was related to me by Modeste Mignon, who hesitates to give it to the ”Embarra.s.sing Moments” editor:

”Going down Michigan avenue one windy day, I stopped to fix my stocking, which had come unfastened. Just as my hands were both engaged a gust of wind lifted one of my hair tabs and exposed almost the whole of my left ear. I was never so embarra.s.sed in my life.”

Ballymooney.

THE ENRAPTURED REPORTER.

[From the White Salmon Enterprise.]

The bridal couple stood under festoons of Was.h.i.+ngton holly, and in front of a circling hedge of flowering plants, whose delicate pink blossoms gave out a faint echo of the keynote of the bride's ensemble.

EVERYTHING CONSIDERED, THE COMMA IS THE MOST USEFUL MARK OF PUNCTUATION.

[From the El Paso Journal.]

Prof. Bone, head of the rural school department of the Normal University, gave an address to the parents and teachers of Eureka, Sat.u.r.day evening.

Galesburg's Hotel Custer has sprung a new one on the gadders. Bub reports that, instead of the conventional ”Clerk on Duty, Mr. Rae,” the card reads: ”Greeter, Rudie Hawks.”

A communication to La Follette's Magazine is signed by W.E.T.S. Nurse, N. Y. City. What is the ”S” for?