train is pulling out.

* * *

_THE GIRL OF THE PERIOD._

_She formerly talked of the weather,
The popular book, or the play;
Her old line of chat
Was of this thing or that
In the fashions and fads of the day._

_But now she discusses eugenics,
And things that a pundit perplex;
She knocks you quite flat
With her new line of chat,
And her "What do you think about sex?"_

* * *

"Are we all to shudder at the name of Rabelais and take to smelling
salts?" queries an editorial colleague. "Are we to be a wholly lady-like
nation?" Small danger, brother. Human nature changes imperceptibly, or
not at all. The objection to most imitations of Rabelais is that they
lack the unforced wit and humor of the original.

* * *

A picture of Dr. A. Ford Carr testing a baby provokes a frivolous reader
to observe that when the babies cry the doctor probably gives them a
rattle.

* * *

WHAT DO YOU MEAN "ALMOST"!

[From the Cedar Rapids Republican.]

The man who writes a certain column in Chicago can always fill
two-thirds of it with quotations and contributions. But that may be
called success--when they bring the stuff to you and are almost willing
to pay you for printing it.

* * *

WE'LL TELL THE PLEIADES SO.

Sir: "I'll say she is," "Don't take it so hard," "I'll tell the world."
These, and other slangy explosives from our nursery, fell upon the
sensitive auditory nerves of callers last evening. I am in a quandary,
whether to complain to the missus or write a corrective letter to the
children's school teachers, for on the square some guy ought to bawl the
kids out for fair about this rough stuff--it gets my goat.

J. F. B.

* * *

Did you think "I'll say so" was new slang? Well, it isn't. You will find
it in Sterne's "Sentimental Journey."

* * *

Formula for accepting a second cigar from a man whose taste in tobacco
is poor: "Thank you; the courtesy is not _all_ yours."

* * *

A number of suicides are attributed to the impending conjunction of the
planets and the menace of world-end. You can interest anybody in
astronomy if you can establish for him a connection between his personal
affairs and the movements of the stars.

* * *

WHERE 'VANGIE LIES.

_Rondeau