Judge — August 19, 1916 — page 12: what you’re looking at

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

per calm and sweet, if people didn’t come and sa “Great Scott! This is a frightful day!” I try to talk of other things than all the woes that summer brings; I think it is the wiser part to talk of music, books and art, and let thermometers go hang, but none will list to my harangue. Old Bildad came along to-da I knew just what he wished to say, and so, to head him off, I said, “The old-time pocts should be read. In this cheap, gross, commercial age, we rather dodge the bard and sage; in eagerness to swell our rolls, we starve our minds and stunt our souls. For instance, if you don’t read Pope, you miss a lot of high-class dope. How he could make the ance and grace were his! It’s true his thoughts were not profound; but he could write a ring around the tinhorn poets of to-day, who twang their harps for union pay.” Old Bildad said, ** Pray, can that guff; what use in springing poet stuff, when I am melting on my feet id all broke out with prickly heat? I cannot eat, I cannot sleep, I can’t do any- thing but weep, and wish the winter'd come once more, with blizzards from the arctic shore.” Then came old Pulsifer, who sat upon my porch and k the cat; with red bandanna mopped his, brow, and heaved a sigh, and groaned, “I swow——” I knew just what he hoped to say; something about the torrid day; and so I interrupted him, and spoke with cloquence and vim: “The works of Rembrandt are sublime; he was the wonder of his time. His works we can’t too much admire; his spirit seethed with noble fire. In these gross days our thoughts are prone to dwell upon the plunk and bone; ‘twould pay us all to scorn the cush, and contemplate the master’s brush.” Old Pulsifer got up and said, ‘Go, have a tinsmith fix your head. A man whose thoughts on chromos run, when that dod-rotted, blazing sun is cooking people in their lard, has got the bugs, and got them hard.” More S I could endure the heat, and keep my tem- ed Original Wanted Mr. Richquicke—What's this painting? His Art Buyer—That is an exact reproduction of the Aurora Borealis. Mr. Richquicke—Take it a you that I'll have no copies. Ge gardless of cost. How often must I tell me the Aurora Borealis re- SHOVELS SHOVEL is the greatest finger-nail saver since an invent- A ive genius of the iron age gave up trying to drive nails with a cobble-stone and invented the hammer. With- out the shovel, tion would be a comparative stranger to gardens, post-holes, subways, cellars and irrigation ditches, The facial contour of man has doubtless been greatly influenced by the shovel. If our forebears had been forced to do their gardening with their hands instead of with shovels, and such a state of affairs had continued for generation after genera- tion, mankind would probably have developed an appetite for raw meat rather than for potatoes, and for hay instead of early peas and California asparagus. In such a case, man’s features would have developed either a vulpine or an equine cast, and he could not have been brought into a refined home without putting his paws on the upholstery or kicking over an expen- sive vase. All available evidence tends to prove that the shovel has been in use on the planct Mars for a much greater length of time than on our own, and that the Martians have twice as many back muscles as we have. Otherwise they would have found it difficult to dig such prominent and successful canals. As soon as Professor Lowell obtains the $10,000,000 which he claims will make it possible for him to communicate with Mars, he will do well to discover for this nation the plans of the Martian shovel, in order that this country may shovel a few pork-barrel Congressmen into the appropriate vacuity of interstellar space. Kenneth L. Roberts, “America for the Americans”—sure, we're for that—but what would you do with all the rest of it? Nearrich—Yes, I'm proud to say that forty years ago I came to this country a barefooted boy. Saphley—By Jove! And now, I daresay, you have more shoes than you really need!