your meals?"

"Enjoy my meals?" snorted the indignant dyspeptic. "My meals are
merely guide-posts to take medicine before or after."

"Dyspepsia seldom kills anyone," said Akinside, "but--"

"No," returned old Festus Pester. "It makes them so talkative that
everybody else wants to kill them."

EATING

_If We Didn't Have To Eat_

Life would be an easy matter
If we didn't have to eat.
If we never had to utter,
"Won't you pass the bread and butter,
Likewise push along that platter
Full of meat?"
Yes, if food were obsolete
Life would be a jolly treat,
If we didn't--shine or shower,
Old or young, 'bout every hour--
Have to eat, eat, eat, eat, eat--
'Twould be jolly if we didn't have to eat.
We could save a lot of money
If we didn't have to eat.
Could we cease our busy buying,
Baking, broiling, brewing, frying,
Life would then be oh, so sunny
And complete;
And we wouldn't fear to greet
Every grocer in the street
If we didn't--man and woman,
Every hungry, helpless human--
Have to eat, eat, eat, eat, eat--
We'd save money if we didn't have to eat.

All our worry would be over
If we didn't have to eat.
Would the butcher, baker, grocer
Get our hard-earned dollars? No, Sir!
We would then be right in clover
Cool and sweet.
Want and hunger we could cheat,
And we'd get there with both feet,
If we didn't--poor or wealthy,
Halt or nimble, sick or healthy--
Have to eat, eat, eat, eat, eat--
We could get there if we didn't have to eat.

--_Nixon Waterman_.

ECONOMY

TOM--"I've seen the girl I want to marry. I stood behind her at
the ticket window this morning and she took seven minutes to buy a
five-cent elevated ticket."

ALICE--"Did that make you want to marry her?"

TOM--"Yes, I figured out that she could never spend my income at that
rate."

BOOK AGENT--"This book will teach you the way to economize."

THE VICTIM--"That's no good to me. What I need is a book to teach me
how to live without economizing."

How oft economy grows gay
And boasts of its efficient work,
When it has merely stopped the pay
Of some two-thousand-dollar clerk!

Little June's father had just returned from the store and was opening
up some sheets of sticky fly-paper and placing it about the room. June
watched a minute and then burst out with: