AMERICAN HUMOUR

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 93, 1 April 1911, Page 2

AMERICAN HUMOUR

THE PATIENT MAN

Mr Henpeck had hesitated a long while about doing this bold thing, but he felt that now was the time or never. “Dear,” he said in a very timid voice, “I wish you wouldn’t cad me ‘Leo’ any more?” “Why not?” demanded his wife explosively. “Leo is your given name.'’ “1 know, my dear, but it makes my friends laugh when you call me that. 1 was thinking you might call me ‘Job’ just for a pet name.” INCONSIDERATE MAN.

A lecturer who was talking recently at a woman’s club about famous men of letters, said in his remarks about Hawthorne that as soon as the author married he took his wife to the Old Manse. After the lecture, says a writer in the New York Sun, two members of the audience were discussing what thej’ had heard. “I was surprised that he should be so indelicate in his remarks about Hawthorne,” said one of the two. “I didn’t notice anything out of the way,” said her companion. “What did he say?” “He spoke of Hawthorne’s taking his wife to the old man’s. I think it would have sounded better if he had said that he took her to his father’s.” A MODEL PLATFORM.

One of the shortest political platforms ever written is that of Mr Solomon P. Rodes. Solomon, according to the ex-Vice-President Adlai E. Stevenson’s “Something of Men I. have known,” was wont to say that he would rather “go to the Missouri Legislator than be the Czar of Kooshy.” a convention which purposed to nominate him for this office was once held at the schoolhouse. The committee to draw up the resolutions adjourned tor consultation to a log back of the building. When the committee finally returned, these resolutions, two in number, were presented to the assembly, and adopted unanimously and with great enthusiasm:

(1) Resolv that in the declaration of independence and likewise in the constitution of the united states we recognise a able and well ritten document, and that we are tetotually oppose to the repeal of airy one of the aforesaid instruments of riting. Re- ! solv: (2) that in our fellow-townsman, Solomon P. Rodes, we view an onest man and hereby annominate him for the legislatur. . A LITERARY SHRINE. Tlie car was delayed by a hot box, and some of the passengers descended and strolled up and down the long green tunnels of the elm-shaded street and up at the quaint old-fashioned houses, commented on the beauty of the place. “Got a kind of’ a Sarah-Orne-Jew-ett-Mary-E.-Wilkins-Alice-Brown look co it, somehow, Say, 1 believe somebody must have written this place up: it looks so natural. Let’s ask the oldest inhabitant over there.”

Two aged villagers on the curb were arguing the respective merits of dashing on water from a pail or beating out the fire with a broom. He hailed them genially. “Say, this little old town of yours belongs in the birthplace-of-distin-guished-people and homes-ef-authors class, doesn’t it? Real scene of So-and-so’s romance—illustrated supplement—special article, with photographs kind of thing? New England notabilities? Daughters of the Puritans in Literature? Who’s your most distinguished citizen?” The aged natives looked at him reflectively, and then at each other. “Jonas Bardwell, lie owns the biggest place,” ventured one of them, cautiously, “but Enos Rodman, he’s about as smart as anybody.” / . “I didn’t say richest, did I? Nor I didn’t say smartest,” persisted the enquiring drummer. “Most distinguished, I said: literature and art, you know; that sort of thing.” “Oh,” echoed the second venerable native, brightening, “that sort o’ thing! Now I know who ye mean; ye must mean Cale Henderson. Cale, he’s with Slocum’s circus, and he writes the language for any billboard that show sets up, and tells the artist feller what critters to paint, doing what into the bargain.” “He’s certainly a master hand for squeezing out the biggest words in the dictionary, an’ sprinkling ’em round effective. ■ He’s art and literature, all right. Must be him ye vva a-thinkin’ of.”

“Cale, ye see, he’s some showy in dis doings, an’ ’tain’t but nateral outsiders taking him fer something extry. We ain’t never reckoned him a ‘distinguished citizen’; but mebbe if you hain’t known him, boy an’ man, es we have, ye might never notice he was jest a fool, after all.

“Cale, he was born in that house right opposite. There ain’t a tablet on it yet; but ef ye want to consider it a literary shrine, I don’t know’s anybody’ll hinder ye.”

There was a burst of laughter; and the drummer running a hasty eye over the contents of the show-window of the general store and post-office, murmured meekly: “Gentlemen, if anybody would like some gumdrops warranted genuine antiques, or striped peppermint sticks such as grandmother used to suck, I guess it’s up to me to buy ’em.”