Judge — February 27, 1915 — page 8: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

HE SPRING will be here in the wag of an ear, and splen- dor and beauty and solace are hers! The winter is gone, and we hasten to pawn superfluous clothing and laprobes and furs. The spring is at hand, and the arable land is calling the farmer. ‘‘Get busy!"’ it croons. ‘‘Oh, hitch up your mules to your dodgasted tools and sow your tomatoes and spinach and prunes!"* The spring is in sight, and ‘My hat is a fright!"’ observes Arabella, my excellent wife. ‘*Oh, a new one I need; this is all gone to seed. 1 simply won't wear it the rest of my life! I saved and I skimped, in old footwear I limped; I'm busy retrenching each hour of the day. I tried, so I did, to retrim my old lid, and still it’s a horror—such work doesn't pay !"" The spring, with its bees and its breeze and its trees, will bring to my dwelling the iceman, I wist; with his tongs and his pail and his small piece of hail, he'll collar the coin that the coal dealer missed. He'll boost up the price of his frag- ment of ice, because of the war that is harrying France; he’s a jolly old soul, and he'll slope with my roll and bear it away in the bust of his pance. The spring, oh, the spring, when the doodle birds sing, and poets are busy assaulting their harps! It's then, it is then we are touched for the yen, by agents and fakers and all kinds of sharps! The breezes of March sort of thaw out the starch and make uS so easy, our innocence shines; we fall for the tricks of the dealer in bricks and blow in our savings for ranches and mines. Then the book agents come with a book that is bum and sell us the same on the plunk-a-month plan; then for forty-eight years, in our sorrow and tears, we are handing our coin to the book-agent man. And the agent for trees and the agent for cheese and the agent for this and the agent for that—oh, they’re all on the wing at the coming of spring, and they get all I have, from my shoes to my hat! The spring, she is sprung while the year is yet young; the singers all hail her with jubilant cries. All gorgeous her clothes, and she brings us the rose, the birds and the chiggers, the snakes and the flies. She brings us the rain that refreshes the plain; she brings us the rainbow, the roorback and rill. Her days and her nights are replete with delights—but every- thing costs like old Samuel Hill! Pretty Fair Going Tim—I heard Diggs boasting of his descent. Tom—So would I if my creditors let me down so easily! The Explanation HEN Smith entered his office at nine o'clock in the morning, the lovely face «f his beautiful stenographer was blazing red. Has. tily arising from the dictaphone, the fair one fussed her head into a charming turban, handed the boss a slip of paper on which was writ- ten, “I resign,’’ and imperiously beat it for the elevator Smith was dumfounded. He was also nonplused. The thing was inexplicable, Finally he came to, and a minute later he was telling it to his friend Jones ‘n the next suite of offices. “Say, old man,"’ suddenly remarked Jones, as a light of under- standing floated over his features, en't you dictating some im. portant letters when I stopped in your office late last night?"* “Yes,"’ answered Smith. “And didn’t you pause in the dictation to tell mea rather glad story that you had heard at a smoker?"" “*Yes,"’ smiled Smith; ‘*but'’—— “That's it,’ declared Jones. ** forgotten to turn off the dictaphone. recital you must have —John H. Naylor, We abuse those we love, because no one else will stand for it. INCREDIBLE “Eh? What's that, little girl?" “* Please, sir, 1 was just tellin’ Woodrow that once you was nothin’ but infant like he is."’