* * *
“I don’t like your heart action,” said the doctor, applying his stethoscope.
“You’ve had some trouble with angina pectoris, haven’t you?”
“You’re partly right, Doc,” answered the young man, sheepishly. “Only that ain’t her name.”—Pathfinder.
* * *
When I was farmin’ in North Dakota I raised spuds an’ one day I went out to see how my spuds was comin’. The patch was right on a side hill. Well, sir, do you know that when I pulled up that vine two bushels of spuds rolled out of that hill before I could plug up the hole.
* * *
The colored minister had just concluded a powerful sermon on “Salvation is Free” and was announcing that a collection would be taken. Up jumped a brother in the back of the church. “If salvation is free,” he interrupted, “what’s the use paying for it? I’m going to give you nothing till I find out. Now—”
“Patience, brother, patience,” said the parson. “I’ll illustrate. Suppose you were thirsty and came to a river. You could kneel right down and drink, couldn’t you? And it would cost you nothing, would it?”
“Of course not. That’s just what I—”
“That water would be free,” continued the parson. “But supposing you were to have that water piped to your house, you would have to pay, would you not?”
“Yes, sir, but—”
“Well, brother, salvation is free, but it is the having it piped to you that you got to pay for. Pass the hat, sexton.”
* * *
It was rather quiet at the postoffice the other day and outside of the Whiz Bang mail our genial postmaster, Bud Nasset, sorted out only two letters. The first one was addressed to Deacon Miller from his son, reading as follows: “Dear Father—I am in jail. Son.” The Deacon’s answer was the other letter, “Dear Son—So am I. Father.”
Chinese Nightmare Cities
BY REV. “GOLIGHTLY” MORRILLPastor People’s Church, Minneapolis, Minn.
All aboard for China, the country of Confucius and chop suey! At Canton a wonderful spectacle took place at the wharf. A sampan man had beaten his wife and thrown her on the dock where she sat and chanted in a monotonous voice while a hundred coolies gathered round and watched the interesting ceremony. She referred to her husband and his ancestors, then scraped up a little pile of dirt, spat on it, molded it into the image of a man, addressed it with a few words, suddenly knelt and foully insulted it, and so eased her conscience, balanced the books of honor and “saved her face.”
From the Hotel Victoria in the Shameen, or Foreign Quarter, two cadaverous coolies carried me in a coffin-shaped sedan chair across a stinking canal into native Canton. My guide, Ah Cum, led the way. The streets were so narrow and the show windows so near that I could have been a shoplifter with both hands. If hungry, there was a free lunch counter extendingalong the streets with tea and rice, live fish, glazed ducks, gory pigs, a choice assortment of fresh entrails, some dead dogs and rats, crates of yowling cats, and huge pots of slimy soup thickened with animal, vegetable and other matter that would make the Witches’ Cauldron in “Macbeth” look like a cup of consomme in comparison.
At the Temple of the Five Hundred Genii, where the prayers of the holy had given way to the harangues of the politicians, I saw a gilded statue big as life of the first European globe-trotter to China, Marco Polo. Such a traveler was a novelty then, but now is a nuisance. I went by old walls whose painted dragons the new Chinese had wiped out; by temples whose only occupants were a few second-hand gods and bats; took time to visit the water-clock tower where drops of water instead of grains of sand mark the time of China’s millions towards the grave; passed through gates of the old city wall to the hillside where hundreds had been shot; looked into the graveyard where the poor common people rest after life’s fitful fever, while the restless rich, who shunned them in life, lie apart from them in the City of the Dead.
Like mummies in a museum, they sleep unburied in their rich caskets and await the grafting geomancer, that oriental undertaker, who promises the relatives to find some place in the ground undisturbed by the Great Dragon.By the religious milestone of the five-storied, weedy, seedy Pagoda, whose oracles are dumb, I headed for the Execution Grounds in the pottery district where the sharp sword had sent many a man back to his original clay.
China is becoming civilized now and stands her criminals up against a wall and shoots them. Here was a narrow alley lined with earthen pots covered with mats, under which were fleshless skulls. One of them seemed to look imploringly at me, and I picked it up. Alas, some poor Chinese Yorick! I was anxious to see the man who struck the fearful blows, and Ah Cum called the executioner who came out with a knife estimated to have cut off 300,000 heads in thirty years. There is a death here by “seventy-two cuts,” but one from his sword was enough.
Bayard Taylor said China was a good place to leave, and I was not very sorry when the whistle blew to cast off and say good-bye to the city of dreadful sights, sounds, suffering and smells. Leaving the grotesque outline of an old fort, a little island stained by some dark murder, a place where pirates had scuttled a ship, a picturesque Pagoda looking like an eight-story Easter bonnet, Grecian-bend shaped junk-boats and sampans like big, broken barrels floating along, we sailed down the Pearl River and at midnight reached the Portuguese town of Macao. On deck we were surprised to find the officers embracing the coolies. Were they tryingto relieve them of their hard-earned spoils of fan-tan which they had won during the night? No, the honest officials were only searching for concealed arms, but found only those which Nature had allowed and provided.
An illuminated sign, “First-class Gambling House,” drew my attention. Gambling, next to loafing and the manufacture of opium, is the principal occupation of the youngest and oldest inhabitants. Macao is the Oriental Monte Carlo. Gambling here is backed by the government which gets back a certain per cent of the earnings which it invests in hospitals, asylums and cheap lodgings for the people who have been beaten at the game. At this gambling-hell one could play at the big table downstairs, or drop into the game by lowering his money in a small basket from the balcony above. Tired of the game, the player recuperates his wasted energies here by eating bird-nest soup and shark-fins, or drinking Portuguese wines. If he is sleepy, he may take the opium-pipe train of thought to the Flowery Land where every-day is Sunday.
At a “song-parlor” some Chinese dolls amused us with their squeaky voices and knife-scraping music. It sadly recalled my visit to a Hongkong house of pleasure whose almond-eyed inmates illustrated Confucius’ remark that “women had no souls,” and the Chinese philosophy which attributes death and evil to Yin, the female principle in Nature. Their artificiallywhitened and rouged faces were ghastly, and their flower-and-jewel-bedecked hair glued down to the skull was anything but attractive to an Occidental eye. Their lips were red like the dawn of day, their complexions like congealed ointment, and their betel-nut-stained teeth like black watermelon seeds. They unfurled painted fans, sipped tea, nibbled sweetmeats, puffed at opium-pipes, and looked quite flowery in their blue collars, purple tunics and bright green trousers. I wonder if the men, whom they were entertaining, remembered the Chinese proverb, “There is no such poison in the green snake’s mouth or in the hornet’s sting as in a woman’s heart.”
After visiting next day a firecracker factory, temples, joss-houses, and a tobacco plant where little children and old women were at work sorting the leaves, I was conducted to Macao’s notorious opium factory. I entered a low-ceiling room where men were stripped to their waists like blacksmiths at the forge. They picked up the crude opium, shaped like a cocoanut shell, scooped out the chocolate-looking substance, threw it into a kind of brass wash-basin under which roared the fire, until it steamed and blubbered like a pot of hot mush or molasses. They darted here and there like imps with these pans. Then the liquid was poured in porcelain boxes of various sizes. The whole place seemed like a Devil’s smithyshop where chains were being forged for lost souls. The odor waspeculiar and penetrating. I must have absorbed some of the dope, for I felt dizzy and was glad to get outside in the fresh air.
There is no more melancholy sight, in China’s teeming nightmare cities, than a drug-befuddled victim staggering out in the early dawn from some hasheesh house and tumbling down in the street where he dreams he is in the Celestial City with his ancestors. When he is rudely awakened by a hungry rat gnawing his hand or foot, the golden vision vanishes. In the cold light of the morning, racked with nameless pains, he crawls off to work at some mean job, hoping to make enough for another night’s opium dream in which to forget the hell of this tormenting world.
* * *
As on through Life’s journey we go, day by day,There are two whom we meet, at each turn of the way,To help or to hinder—to bless or to ban,And the names of these two are “I Can’t” and “I Can!”“I Can’t” is a dwarf, a poor, pale, puny imp,His eyes are half blind and his walk is a limp,He stumbles and falls, or lies writhing in fits,And for those who would help him plants snares and digs pits.“I Can” is a giant, unbending he stands,There is strength in his arms, and skill in his hands,He asks for no favors, he wants but a shareWhere labor is honest and wages are fair.
As on through Life’s journey we go, day by day,There are two whom we meet, at each turn of the way,To help or to hinder—to bless or to ban,And the names of these two are “I Can’t” and “I Can!”“I Can’t” is a dwarf, a poor, pale, puny imp,His eyes are half blind and his walk is a limp,He stumbles and falls, or lies writhing in fits,And for those who would help him plants snares and digs pits.“I Can” is a giant, unbending he stands,There is strength in his arms, and skill in his hands,He asks for no favors, he wants but a shareWhere labor is honest and wages are fair.
As on through Life’s journey we go, day by day,There are two whom we meet, at each turn of the way,To help or to hinder—to bless or to ban,And the names of these two are “I Can’t” and “I Can!”
As on through Life’s journey we go, day by day,
There are two whom we meet, at each turn of the way,
To help or to hinder—to bless or to ban,
And the names of these two are “I Can’t” and “I Can!”
“I Can’t” is a dwarf, a poor, pale, puny imp,His eyes are half blind and his walk is a limp,He stumbles and falls, or lies writhing in fits,And for those who would help him plants snares and digs pits.
“I Can’t” is a dwarf, a poor, pale, puny imp,
His eyes are half blind and his walk is a limp,
He stumbles and falls, or lies writhing in fits,
And for those who would help him plants snares and digs pits.
“I Can” is a giant, unbending he stands,There is strength in his arms, and skill in his hands,He asks for no favors, he wants but a shareWhere labor is honest and wages are fair.
“I Can” is a giant, unbending he stands,
There is strength in his arms, and skill in his hands,
He asks for no favors, he wants but a share
Where labor is honest and wages are fair.
* * *
“Now, let’s stick together, boys,” said the first of three flies as they lit on the piece of tanglefoot.
* * *
Ikey kicked in the bathroom door and discovered Rebecca dead in the bath tub. For a moment he gazed horror stricken, then rushed to the head of the stairs and shouted to the maid, “Mary, Mary!”
“Yes, sir,” answered the shixa.
“Only von egg for breakfast dis morning, Mary.”
* * *
Engagement wanted. Small part, such as dead body or outside shouts.
* * *
Father got his hand blown off. That was a terrible sin. It could have been worse if it was the hand that he had his wages in.
* * *
“Paris is falling,” delicately hinted the maiden, as her escort’s garter snapped and fell over his shoe-top.
* * *
“Trash!” exclaimed the president of the Ash Men’s Union, as the secretary finished reading the reports.
* * *
Lady went into a store and asked for a camisole. “What bust?” asked the salesman. “I didn’t hear anything,” she replied.
* * *
Tell the truth and shame the family.
* * *
A good story is told on our old friend Colonel Luce of the Minnesota National Guard. Two battalions of the Colonel’s regiment were staging a sham battle at their summer encampment.
The defending forces took possession of a small hill overlooking a river and destroyed the only bridge by the simple method of tacking up a notice on it stating that they had done so. As a result it was quite a surprise to them to see the attacking forces swarming across the bridge, making extraordinary motions in front of them with their hands.
“Hold on there, men!” shouted the Colonel’s aide from the observer’s post, “you can’t cross that bridge. It has been blown up.”
“Tuhel with that!” retorted the Major of the other side, “we’re not crossing it, can’t you see we are swimming the dang river?”
* * *
I love a lassie,She’s naughty, but,She’s classy.
I love a lassie,She’s naughty, but,She’s classy.
I love a lassie,She’s naughty, but,She’s classy.
I love a lassie,
She’s naughty, but,
She’s classy.
* * *
When we were in the army we used to read “The Daily Undershirt.”
* * *
A woman’s beauty is always a liability, although at times considered a big asset.
Classified Ads
(From the L. A. Times)
Personal—Lady 26, quiet, traveled, experienced in business or will assume domestic work for opportunity in music and art. Prefer aged person financially able who would appreciate ray of sunshine. Address MP.
* * *
(Cuba City, Wis., News-Herald)
An auto load of Benton girls, consisting of the Hunter sisters, Miss Calvert, Miss Ayer, and another one, attended the funeral Tuesday, and put in the rest of the time fishing, etc. They had a jolly fine time.
* * *
(From the Peoria Journal)
Would like acquaintance of good business man or a young farmer, like one with car, for pastime and results. Address C. A., care Star.
* * *
(Adv. of Chicago Beach Hotel)
Patrons not wearing bathing suits will find the cafe very comfortable.
* * *
(From the Denver Post)
Caring neither for life, limb or anything, I will consider any proposition you may have, regardless of what it may be; must earn money; do anything; go anywhere; fear nothing; answers confidential. I need money. Will go the limit to get it.
* * *
Years ago when W. A. McConnell was manager of the Brooklyn theater he had a pet parrot which was kept in the box office. During a “big run” the ticket seller was wont to say, “Get in line, please; one at a time, one at a time, gentlemen.”
The bird escaped one afternoon, and McConnell commissioned some boys to find it, which they did on an old tree in a nearby park, where several crows were making its feathers fly. McConnell asked if the bird said anything and the leader of the boys replied: “Yes, he said, ‘Get in line, please; one at a time, one at a time, gentlemen.’”
* * *
The porch was dark. The hour was late. The couple sat whispering among the shadows.
“Mary,” called a voice, “it’s time for you to come in.”
No movement.
“Come in, Mary.”
Still no movement.
He asked: “Don’t you mind your mother?”
“Not unless you do, Jimmy.”
* * *
Boy—“What is a grass widow?”
Father—“A woman whose husband died with the hay fever.”
* * *
Among the things you read about but never see is a crease in a fat man’s trousers.
* * *
I walked a mile with Pleasure;She chattered all the way,But left me none the wiserFor all she had to say.I walked a mile with SorrowAnd ne’er a word said she;But oh, the things I learned from herWhen Sorrow walked with me!
I walked a mile with Pleasure;She chattered all the way,But left me none the wiserFor all she had to say.I walked a mile with SorrowAnd ne’er a word said she;But oh, the things I learned from herWhen Sorrow walked with me!
I walked a mile with Pleasure;She chattered all the way,But left me none the wiserFor all she had to say.
I walked a mile with Pleasure;
She chattered all the way,
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.
I walked a mile with SorrowAnd ne’er a word said she;But oh, the things I learned from herWhen Sorrow walked with me!
I walked a mile with Sorrow
And ne’er a word said she;
But oh, the things I learned from her
When Sorrow walked with me!
* * *
(From New York Times)
HOMELESS HUSBANDS—If you want a friend, a pal—a WIFE!—look for one like the Lonely Lady in BEAUTY AND NICK. Such as she is rarely to be found in this, the age of sex and shekels—surely not in the endless procession of poppy-painted dames and damsels, young as youth, wrinkled as an O’Shanter witch; all with skirts so tight as to make them goat-gaited; so short that these bogus beauties have turned the most beautiful Avenue of the world into a mere leg lane—a free rival of the sash-clad ladies of a Broadway burlesque.
* * *
“Step up, boys! Ladies not allowed! See for yourself. And we all paid the two bits and saw a jackass.”
* * *
Let me introduce myself. My name is Sol.
Any relation to Lysol?
No, Ingersoll. Watch me!
* * *
It’s a long road that has no roadhouse.
Our Rural Mail Box
Bridget—Better put on your woolen socks, Bridget, or you will catch cold in your lungs.
* * *
Andy Gump—A continuous buzzing noise in your ears is not always a sign of serious mental trouble, or any other illness. It is probably the first indication that your wife needs a new hat.
* * *
Sweet Marie—You are mistaken, Marie. The Scottish Highlanders are not members of the Middlesex Regiment.
* * *
Weeping Winnie—Cheer up, Winnie. You are overdosed on pessimism and, in retrospection, I feel sure you have presented a very sad aspect to the cynics of humanity.
* * *
Queen Liz—Your singing lessons may keep the wolf away from the door, ’tis true, if the wolf hears you.
* * *
“You can’t pick me up—I’m not of that metal,” said the piece of glass to the bar magnet.
* * *
Naughty Nellie—Where does your lap go when you stand up?
* * *
Willie Zatso—It is considered bad manners for children to stick their elbows out when cutting their meat at dinner. You might make your father cut his mouth.
* * *
A knock-kneed man walked down the street. Said the right knee to the left knee, “If you let me get around this time I’ll let you get around next time.”
* * *
I saw a dog chasing a jackrabbit down the hill and it was so hot the dog and rabbit were both walking. (Lie down, Fido, you’re all wet.)
* * *
“I’ve got that down Pat,” said Mrs. Flanigan, as she gave her son a dose of castor oil.
* * *
Bob—“You look sweet enough to eat.”
Gert—“I do! Where shall we go?”
* * *
Frank Adams in a recent Cosmopolitan story describes the modern dance thusly:
“If there wasn’t any music they would be arrested.”
* * *
My head is dizzy,My eyes are getting sore,That’s all for this issue,There ain’t any more.
My head is dizzy,My eyes are getting sore,That’s all for this issue,There ain’t any more.
My head is dizzy,My eyes are getting sore,That’s all for this issue,There ain’t any more.
My head is dizzy,
My eyes are getting sore,
That’s all for this issue,
There ain’t any more.
The Winter AnnualCONTENTSDrippings from the FawcettGirl in Blue Velvet BandFace on the Barroom FloorFrankie and Johnnie BluesShooting of Dan McGrewWedding of the Persian CatAce in the HoleBooze Fighter’s DreamDiary of a DivorceeFable of the BullHighty Tighty AphroditeGolightly HighballsHow to Kiss DeliciouslyHunting the Wily Pole CatMohammedan BullOur Own Fairy QueenTool House on the FarmThe Old SmokehouseQuestions and AnswersGila Monster RoutePasture Pot PourriHooch Cure BluesDying HoboLascaSam’s GirlToledo SlimEvolutionPoppiesAfter the RaidThe HarpyThe SuicideTarnished GoodsSeparationLittle Red GodThe LadiesLimber KicksNaughty But NiceTo the GirlRural Mail BoxTired Hired ManLife’s a Funny Proposition After All
CONTENTS
Pedigreed Follies of 1921-22256 pages of fun. The gems of 25 early editions of Capt. Billy’s Whiz Bang. Stories, toasts, poems, drippings and pot pourri comprise this greatest Whiz Bang book.Only a Few LeftIf your newsdealer’s supply is exhausted, pin a dollar bill, or your check, money order or stamps to the coupon below and receive this peppy collection.Whiz Bang,Robbinsdale, Minnesota.Gentlemen:Enclosed is dollar bill, check, money order or stamps for $1.00 for which please send me the Winter Annual of Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang, “Pedigreed Follies of 1921-22.”NameAddress
256 pages of fun. The gems of 25 early editions of Capt. Billy’s Whiz Bang. Stories, toasts, poems, drippings and pot pourri comprise this greatest Whiz Bang book.
Only a Few Left
If your newsdealer’s supply is exhausted, pin a dollar bill, or your check, money order or stamps to the coupon below and receive this peppy collection.
Whiz Bang,Robbinsdale, Minnesota.
Gentlemen:
Enclosed is dollar bill, check, money order or stamps for $1.00 for which please send me the Winter Annual of Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang, “Pedigreed Follies of 1921-22.”
Name
Address
Everywhere!Whiz Bangis on sale at all leading hotels, news stands, 25 cents single copies; on trains 30 cents, or may be ordered direct from the publisher at 25 cents single copies; two-fifty a year.One dollar for the WINTER ANNUAL.A bull
Everywhere!
Whiz Bangis on sale at all leading hotels, news stands, 25 cents single copies; on trains 30 cents, or may be ordered direct from the publisher at 25 cents single copies; two-fifty a year.
One dollar for the WINTER ANNUAL.
A bull