Volume IX Part 24 (2/2)
Jimaboy sat back in his chair and laughed uproariously. The most confirmed sentimentalist may have a saving sense of humor. Indeed, it is likely to go hard with him in the experimental years, if he has it not.
”It's perfectly feasible--perfectly,” he chuckled. ”It would be merely pounding sand into the traditional rat-hole with all the implements furnished--teaching our specialty to a world yearning to know how. You could get up the lectures and question schedules for the men, and I could make some sort of a s.h.i.+ft with the women.”
”Yes; but the text-books. Don't these 'Fit-yourself-at-Home' schools have text-books?”
”Um, y-yes; I suppose they do. That would be a little difficult for us--just at the go-off. But we could get around that. For example, 'Dear Mrs. Blank: Replying to your application for members.h.i.+p in the Post-Graduate School of W. B., would say that your case is so peculiar'--that would flatter her immensely--'your case is so peculiar that the ordinary text-books cover it very inadequately. Therefore, with your approval, and for a small additional tuition fee of $2 the term, we shall place you in a special cla.s.s to be instructed by electrographed lectures dictated personally by the princ.i.p.al.'”
Isobel clapped her hands. ”Jimmy, love, you are simply great, when you are not trying to be. And, after a while, we could print the lectures and have our own text-books copyrighted. But don't you think we ought to take in the young people, as well?--have a--a collegiate department for beginners?”
”'s.h.!.+” said Jimaboy, and he got up and closed the door with ostentatious caution. ”Suppose somebody--Lantermann, for instance--should hear you say such things as that: 'take in the young people'! Shades of the Rosicrucians! we wouldn't 'take in' anybody. The very life of these mail things is the unshaken confidence of the people. But, as you suggest, we really ought to include the frying size.”
It was delicious fooling, and Isobel found a sketch-block and dipped her pen.
”You do the letter-press for the 'collegiate' ad., and I'll make a picture for it,” she said. ”Hurry, or I'll beat you.”
Jimaboy laughed and squared himself at the desk, and the race began.
Isobel had a small gift and a large ambition: the gift was a cartoonist's facility in line drawing, and the ambition was to be able, in the dim and distant future, to ill.u.s.trate Jimaboy's stories.
Lantermann, the _Times_ artist, whose rooms were just across the hall, had given her a few lessons in caricature and some little gruff, Teutonic encouragement.
”Time!” she called, tossing the sketch-block over to Jimaboy. It was a happy thought. On a modern davenport sat two young people, far apart; the youth twiddling his thumbs in an ecstasy of embarra.s.sment; the maiden making rabbit's ears with her handkerchief. Jimaboy's note of appreciation was a guffaw.
”I couldn't rise to the expression on those faces in a hundred years!”
he lamented. ”Hear me creak:”
DON'T MARRY
until you have taken the Preparatory Course in the Post-Graduate School of W. B. Home-Study in the Science of Successful Heart-Throbs. Why earn only ten kisses a week when one hour a day will qualify you for the highest positions? Our Collegiate Department confers degree of B. B.; Post-Graduate Department that of M. W. B. Members of Faculty all certificated Post-Graduates.
A postal card brings Prospectus and application blank.
Address: The Post-Graduate School of W. B., 506 Hayward Avenue, Cleland, Ohio.
Isobel applauded loyally. ”Why, that doesn't creak a little bit! Try it again; for the unhappy T. M.'s, this time. Ready? Play!”
Her picture was done while Jimaboy was still nibbling his pen and scowling over the scratch-pad. It was a drawing-room interior, with the wife in tears and the husband struggling into his overcoat. To them, running, an animated United States mail-bag, extending a huge envelope marked: ”From the Post-Graduate School of W. B.”
Jimaboy scratched out and rewrote, with the pen-drawing for an inspiration:
HEARTS DIVIDED BECOME HEARTS UNITED
when you have taken a Correspondence Course in Wedded Bliss. A Scholars.h.i.+p in the Post-Graduate School of W. B. is the most acceptable wedding gift or Christmas present for your friends. Curriculum includes Matrimony as a Fine Art, Post-Marriage Courts.h.i.+p, Elementary and Advanced Studies in Conjugal Harmony, Easy Lessons in the Gentle Craft of Eating Her Experimental Bread, Practical a.n.a.lysis of the Club-Habit, with special course for wives in the Abstract Science of Honeyfugling Parsimonious Husbands. Diploma qualifies for highest positions. Our Gold Medalists are never idle.
The Post-Graduate School of W. B., 506 Hayward Avenue, Cleland, Ohio.
N. B.--Graphophone, with Model Conversations for Married Lovers, furnished free with lectures on Post-Marriage Courts.h.i.+p.
They pinned the pictures each to its ”copy” and had their laugh over the conceit.
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