*

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I: The ninth letter of the alphabet. Used principally by touchers in
connection with O and U. Thus, I. O. U.
###

* * * * *

ICE. A substance the world uses to put a damper on swelled heads.

IGNORANCE. A lack of knowledge. For instance: The man who never heard of
a microbe sometimes has the colic, but he never gets appendicitis.
(Milton, page 7.)

IMPOSSIBILITY. A stuttering man trying to make a bluff.

[Illustration]

INCONGRUITY. A man who prays with such noise in Sunday School that he
sprains his voice and then goes home and beats his child for talking too
loud on the Sabbath day.

INDOLENT. A lazy man just before he becomes a loafer.

IRONY OF FATE. A man with an invitation to a beefsteak dinner who has to
stay home because his wife has acute indigestion.

INDIAN COMMISSIONER. The gentleman who invented the idea of opening up
barber shops near the Indian reservations, so that Lo could get his hair
clipped by a reaping machine once every year, whether he needed it or
not.

* * * * *

The idea of Marconi's wireless telegraph system pales into
insignificance before the idea of coaxing a wild Indian away from the
reservation and running the remorseless horse-clippers over the wild
foliage to which his head has been acclimated these many years.

This is a noble suggestion, and no doubt the Indians will take kindly to
the barbers and pay them much attention even if their tommyhawks and
scalping knives are a little dull at first.

In the dramatic language of the plains Biff Hawkins, of Spotted Dog,
Idaho, thus describes the opening of the first barber shop in the
vicinity of an Indian reservation:

"Hist!"

The speaker was the bootblack in one of those handsome hand-painted
barber shops which a loving government at Washington has placed at
intervals along the border of the Indian Reservation.

"What is it, Mike?" said Sniffles, the barber.

"Hist!"

Again that ominous word, and Mike pointed feverishly at the distant
horizon.

On it an Indian was walking, steadfastly, onward, onward, onward!

Remorseless as a gas bill the Indian came onward to the barber shop.

Sniffles, the barber, jumped quickly into his armor-plated working
clothes, and Mike, with a sad smile of farewell, crawled into the
cyclone cellar and closed the steel doors.

The Indian entered the barber shop.

"You are next!" said Sniffles, politely.