Genre Humor. Page - 22

d is a mother apiece.

I plunged into this thing lightly enough, partly because you were too persuasive, and mostly, I honestly think, because that scurrilous Gordon Hallock laughed so uproariously at the idea of my being able to manage an asylum. Between you all you hypnotized me. And then of course, after I began reading up on the subject and visiting all those seventeen institutions, I got excited over orphans, and wanted to put my own ideas into practice. But now I'm aghast at finding myself here; it's such a stupendous undertaking. The future health and happiness of a hundred human beings lie in my hands, to say nothing of their three or four hundred children and thousand grandchildren. The thing's geometrically progressive. It's awful. Who am I to undertake this job? Look, oh, look for another superintendent!

Jane says dinner's ready. Having eaten two of your institution meals, the thought of another doesn't excite me.

LATER.

The staff had mutton hash and spinach, with tapioca

napping sound from below, and David's foot was released. He unstuck the snag from his shirt, pushed his way out of the thicket, and sat down weakly on the grass. Whew! At least the bird was not going to harm him. It seemed to be quite a kindly creature, really. He had just frightened it and made it angry by bursting out of the bushes so suddenly.

He heard a flailing in the thicket, followed by the bird's anxious voice: "Hello! Are you still there?"

"Yes. What--?"

There were more sounds of struggle. "This is rather awkward. I--the fact is, I am afraid, that I am stuck myself. Could you--"

"Yes, of course," said David. He smiled to himself, a little shakily, and re-entered the thicket. When he had disentangled the bird, the two of them sat down on the grass and looked at each other. They hesitated, not quite sure how to begin.

"I trust," said the bird at last, "that you are not of a scientific turn of mind?"

"I don't know," said David. "I'm interested in things, if that

cafico | Heuth-cock Calander | Whoop Stor | Pea cock Yeung turkey | Pinch Red-Breast, a robin

Insects-reptiles.

Asp, aspic | Fly Morpion | Butter fly Serpent.

Fishes and shell-fishes.

Calamary | Large lobster Dorado | Snail A sorte of fish | Wolf Hedge hog | Torpedo Sea-calf.

Trees.

Lote-tree lotos | Service-tree Chest nut-tree | Jujube-tree Linden-tree.

Flowers.

Anemony | Mil-foils Blue-bottle | Hink Turnsol.

Hunting.

Hunting dog | Picker Relay dog | Gun-powder Hound dog | Priming-powder Hound's fee | Hunts man

Colours.

White | Gridelin Cray | Musk Red.

Metals and minerals.

Starch | Latten Cooper | Plaster Vitriole

Common stones.

Loadstones | White lead Brick | Gum-stone

Weights.

Counterpoise | An obole A pound an half | A quater ounce.

Games.

Football-ball | Pile Bar | Mall Gleek | Even or non even Carousal | Keel

Perfumes.

Benzion | Pomatum Perfume paw |

They must sacrifice their beauty
Who would do their civic duty,
Who the polling booth would enter,
Who the ballot box would use;
As they drop their ballots in it
Men and women in a minute,
Lose their charm, the antis tell us,
But--the men have less to lose.

Partners

("Our laws have not yet reached the point of holding that property whichis the result of the husband's earnings and the wife's savings becomestheir joint property.... In this most important of all partnershipsthere is no partnership property."--_Recent decision of the New YorkSupreme Court_.)

Lady, lovely lady, come and share

All my care;
Oh how gladly I will hurry
To confide my every worry
(And they're very dark and drear)

In your ear.

Lady, share the praise I obtain

Now and again;
Though I'm shy, it doesn't matter,

No matter how exciting a tale we might be rehearsing, the mere shifting of a cloud shadow in the landscape near by was sufficient to change our impulses; and soon we were all chasing the great shadows that played among the hills. We shouted and whooped in the chase; laughing and calling to one another, we were like little sportive nymphs on that Dakota sea of rolling green.

On one occasion I forgot the cloud shadow in a strange notion to catch up with my own shadow. Standing straight and still, I began to glide after it, putting out one foot cautiously. When, with the greatest care, I set my foot in advance of myself, my shadow crept onward too. Then again I tried it; this time with the other foot. Still again my shadow escaped me. I began to run; and away flew my shadow, always just a step beyond me. Faster and faster I ran, setting my teeth and clenching my fists, determined to overtake my own fleet shadow. But ever swifter it glided before me, while I was growing breathless and hot

t on the river?'

'Toad's out, for one,' replied the Otter. 'In his brand-new wager-boat; new togs, new everything!'

The two animals looked at each other and laughed.

'Once, it was nothing but sailing,' said the Rat, 'Then he tired of that and took to punting. Nothing would please him but to punt all day and every day, and a nice mess he made of it. Last year it was house-boating, and we all had to go and stay with him in his house-boat, and pretend we liked it. He was going to spend the rest of his life in a house-boat. It's all the same, whatever he takes up; he gets tired of it, and starts on something fresh.'

'Such a good fellow, too,' remarked the Otter reflectively: 'But no stability--especially in a boat!'

From where they sat they could get a glimpse of the main stream across the island that separated them; and just then a wager-boat flashed into view, the rower--a short, stout figure--splashing badly and rolling a good deal, but working his hardest. The Rat stood up a

ill be most pleased as she ships you off to the state hospital at Osawatomie!"

Buddy took a few steps back from the camera and shifted the Strat into playing position. "That's all the sign says, but I'll repeat the address in a while in case nobody's listening right now." He looked up and around, as if watching an airplane cross the sky. "Seems like I'm in a big glass bubble, and I can't tell where the light's coming from. It's a little chilly, and I sure hope I don't have to be here long. In the meantime, here's one for your family audience, Mr. Sullivan." He struck a hard chord and began singing "Oh, Boy!" in a wild shout.

I remote-controlled the Sony into blank-screened silence. Poor Buddy. He had seemed to be surrounded by nothing worse than stars and shadows, but I remembered enough from my Introductory Astronomy course to know better. Ganymede was an immense ice ball strewn with occasional patches of meteoric rock, and its surface was constantly bombarded by vicious streams of protons and

moking a cigarette and entertaining himself with meditations in which thoughts of Alice competed for precedence with graver reflections connected with the subject of the correct stance for his approach-shots. Reggie's was a troubled spirit these days. He was in love, and he had developed a bad slice with his mid-iron. He was practically a soul in torment.

"Lady Caroline asked me to tell you that she wishes to speak to you, Mr. Byng."

Reggie leaped from his seat.

"Hullo-ullo-ullo! There you are! I mean to say, what?"

He was conscious, as was his custom in her presence, of a warm, prickly sensation in the small of the back. Some kind of elephantiasis seemed to have attacked his hands and feet, swelling them to enormous proportions. He wished profoundly that he could get rid of his habit of yelping with nervous laughter whenever he encountered the girl of his dreams. It was calculated to give her a wrong impression of a chap--make her think him a fearful chump and what not!

"La

t's a good thing we're not in that crowd."

In spite of the gruesome setting and the gory antics of the bull, the story is amusing in a way quite harmless. Similarly, too, there is only wholesome amusement in the woman's response to a vegetarian, who made her a proposal of marriage. She did, not mince her words:

"Go along with you! What? Be flesh of your flesh, and you a-living on cabbage? Go marry a grass widow!"

The kindly spirit of British humor is revealed even in sarcastic jesting on the domestic relation, which, on the contrary, provokes the bitterest jibes of the Latins. The shortest of jokes, and perhaps the most famous, was in the single word of Punch's advice to those about to get married:

"Don't!"

The like good nature is in the words of a woman who was taken to a hospital in the East End of London. She had been shockingly beaten, and the attending surgeon was moved to pity for her and indignation against her assailant.

"Who did this?" he demanded. "