Life — April 1, 1897 — page 14: what you’re looking at

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

THE ABSENT GHOST. ERE are spooks and wraiths and gobble-uns That fill the night with awe; There are shapes accurst whom no man durst Portray them, if he saw. In the gloomy deep of outer Space, Where Cold and Darkness reign, a new language for themsel like the wonderful children in Miss Ingelow's ‘*Off the Skel- ligs.” It has been flippantly re- marked that had the Romans been obliged to begin life by learning Latin, they would never have found time to conquer the world; and if we are forced to work and compose a domestic vocabulary, shall have scant leisure for our other engrossing occupations. As for the people who earn their modest livelihood by litera- ture, they will be constrained to either adopt permanently one of the popular dialects, in which the British may possibly recognize the tongue they lent s, Or to write their books, like Erasmus and Sir Thomas More, in a dead language, to which no nation can reasonably lay claim. Perhaps, in view of this latter emergency, it would be as well for our colleges to cultivate their classics more as- siduously, Unless we strengthen our coast defenses, the day may dawn when our newspaper edi- torials will be written in Latin, and Lire’s jokes, like the in- explicable jokes of Aristophanes, make their modest appearance in Greek. Agnes Repplier. go to we not CLAIRVOYANCE UP TO DATE. “ARE you the celebrated Mme. Roulette?” he asked, after he had climbed four flights of stairs, and was admit- ted into the mysterious interior. “Yes,” replied the bizarre- looking personage who had re- ceived him, . “The great clairvoyant?" “Yes.” “And you foretell ture?” “Itisso.” + “And read the mind?” “Verily.” “And unfold the past?” “Ido.” “* Then,” said the visitor, eag- erly, he took a large wad out of his pocket, ‘please tell me what it was my wife asked me to bring her home to-night.” the fu- A QUESTION OF VALUE. “yt seems to me,” said Mr. Severed to Attorney Cut- tem, ‘* that $100 is a very exorbi- tant fee for obtaining a divorce.” “It is our usual charge, sir, when the suit is not opposed. It is more if there is opposition to overcome.” “But I paid the minister only $to for marrying me. Your There are grewsome Things with obscure wings That haunt the shoreless main. We shudder beneath the coverlid When the Nightmare kneads our breast, And the Incubus sits down cn us, And the weary are nof at rest. But the Spectre dear whom all men fear, And no cye would fain behold— At whose step, wrtheard, the soul is stirred, And the hottest blood runs cold; Who blanches the cheek of fairest hue, And crumbles the bones like chalk ; Who turns the merry green-room blue— Is the Ghost that does not walk. James Jeffrey Rocke. charge seems out of proportion to his.” ‘It does not seem so to me, sir, Just com- pare the relative benefits arising from the re- spective services.” Wm, H. Siviter. A MAN is happiest when he is giving a woman advice on a subject of which he knows nothing. “ \ J OU don’t mean to say she’s gone on the stage! How is she getting on?’ “1 believe that she is making a bare living.” PAT ary Usp A BENCIL SHOW. comicbooks.com