Part 51 (1/2)

Prop.: ”Take the elevator down.”

Voice: ”Is the elevator ready?”

[Proprietor sends bellboy to Room 30 to escort newly-wedded couple to terra firma.]

”Weds 104th Veteran.”--Springfield Republican.

The first hundred veterans are the hardest.

For official announcer in the Academy, E. K. proposes James Hollerup of Endeavor, Wis.

SHE PREFERRED HER PSYCHOPATHY STRAIGHT.

Sir: At a party last night one of my s.e.x read the recent buffoonery, ”Heliogabalus,” by the Smart Set editors. When the reader reached the choice second act one of the women (the bobbed hair type) refused to listen to any more of the ”salacious rot,” and walked over to the bookcase, from which, after careful study, she picked out Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia s.e.xualis. I ask you, ain't women funny?

Philardee.

No, not in this instance. We quite sympathize with the lady. We much prefer Havelock Ellis to ”Jurgen,” for example. Chacun a son gout.

This peculiar and unliterary preference of ours may be due to the fact that once upon a time, in a country job-print, we were obliged to read the proofs of a great many medical works, made up largely of ”Case 1, a young man of 28,” ”Case 2, a woman of thirty,” etc. These things were instructive, and sometimes interesting. But when ”Case 1” is expanded to a novel of three or four hundred pages, or ”Case 2” expressed in the form of hectic vers libre, a feeling of la.s.situde comes o'er us which is more or less akin to pain.

THE COME-BACK.

Click! Click!

Goes my typewriter, Transcribing letters That the Boss dictates around His chew After he has discussed the weather, And the squeak in his car, And his young hopeful's latest, And the L. of N.

Click! Click!

While he writes impudent Things For the Line About the Stenos, And asks me how to spell The words.

Hark!

To the death rattle of The cuspidor Upset, As he departs at two o'clock To golf, While I type on Till five.

Agnes.