Life — December 2, 1901 — page 17: what you’re looking at

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

‘THI8 CLINGING YOUNG PERSON, NAMED CHLOE, WORE COSTUMES THAT SURELY WERE SUOE. BUT ALAS AND ALACK! . SHR CAUGHT COLD IN HER BACK FROM A STROLL WHEN THE WRATHER WAS SNOK. The Christmas Feeling. I LIKE the Christmas Feeling that is filling all the air, That fills the streets and busy stores, and scatters everywhere ; I like the easy manner of the people on the street, The bundle-laden people, and the shop- girls smiling sweet. There’s a glow of warmth and splendor in the windows everywhere, There's a glow in people's faces which has lately stolen there ; And everywhere the bells ring out with merry peal and chime, Which makes me like the Feeling of the happy Christmas time. 1 like the Christmas Feeling ; there is noth- ing can compare With the free and kindly spirit that is spreading everywhere ; The rich, the poor, the young and old, all catch its atmosphere, And every heart for once is full of good old Christmas cheer. “IRE I like to Feel the presents as they reach me day by day ; The presence of the presents drives my lone- lines away. To Feel that I'm remembered is a Feeling most sublime, The Feeling of the Feeling of the happy Christmas time. Joe Cone. The Cipher Manuscripts. HERE was once a man who loved a woman with his imagination ; but he called it his heart, being unable to distinguish be- tween the two. “You are a delightful puzzle,” he said to her ; ‘‘an inscrutable mystery. You fascinate and torment me at the same time, for you are a problem I cannot solve.”” Now the woman loved the man, for she had not yet discovered that he was a prig. Therefore, being kind-hearted, she laughed and said: “How absurd you are, dear ; but, since I love you, I will tell you a secret. I keep my little treasures of heart and brain carefully locked away from the moths and rust of the world, and the lock is a combination one of my own invention. But I will teach you the combination, and you may look over the contents.”” With joyful eagerness the man heard her. At last, the secret was to be his! He was to know the marvelous con- tents of her wonderful heart and brain ! Bat, as he often remarked afterward, the disappointment that awaited him proved one of the severest blows ever dealt to his sensitive nature. When he spread out to the light of day the treasures of her heart, they made a pitiful showing. Such a trumpery lot of illasions, and affections, and fancies, he had never seen. True, there was an old manuscript, scrib- bled over in cipher; but judging from the rest, it was not worth burning the mid- night oil to unriddle, He comforted himself with the reflection that her brain was still to explore; but when he came to investigate that domain, the results were no less appalling. There was a 459 job lot of intellectuality which any self-respecting auctioneer would have refused to handle; bits of knowledge, patched and pieced incongruonsly to- gether; scraps of information thrown in helter-skelter ; enough dreams to make a good bonfire, and, ashe dis- gustedly observed, some more of that dog-eared cipher manuscript. The whole thing so revolted and sickened him that, if he had not been a prig of the first water, he would have grown profane. But he controlled his feelings, for he was a ‘ perfect gentle- man,’’ and gave her back the key with icy dignity. “I think it only honest to tell you,’ he said, ‘that I find I have mis- taken my feelings. The woman I thought I loved was a creature of my imagination.” Then all the other women congratu- lated him on his narrow escape. They told him it was because he was so high-souled and pure-minded that he had been nearly taken in. And the woman whom he had loved with his imagination locked up her heart and brain again, and threw the key into the sea, “That’s to prevent my letting any more donkeys in to inspect my collec- tion,” she said, ‘Thank God, he kept his hoofs off those cipher manu- scripts !'" Mra. Wilson Woodrow, MAN’S silent adoration is not enough for a woman : she wants to hear the service. AY, YOUNG FELLOW, WHY DON'T YOU TURN THAT HORN AROUND THE RIGHT WAY AND BLOW IT?” comicbooks.com