I Like to See an Autoist

I like to see an autoist
Adjust his spectacles and twist
Himself into that posture grand
Assumed when he starts overland
a mile.

And then to watch him crawling in
Between the wheels as black as sin
To fix the compos mentis spring,
And tie the dudad with a string
meanwhile.

I love to see him cock his ear
Just when the thing declines to steer,
And watch his corruscated brow
When telling me me just when and how
it quits.

----------
Nothing contributes so much to promote the art of ambidexterity in a fat man as to have both suspenders break at the same time.
----------
Mr. Roosevelt is introducing American farm machinery into Africa. His lion gun is a "check roar."
----------
The less agitation in any country, the more contentment; the less disquiet, the more prosperity.
----------
"It is more blessed to give than to receive." This is especially applicable in regard to giving advice.
----------
A Will and a Way
A little slip of a girl built like a wasp will marry a great, big, two-fisted lummux with feet like a ham and a head as big as a horse, and in less than a year she will wind him around her finger like a hank of floss and make him kowtow like a bootblack before a Chinese Mandarin. He has strength enough to throw a cow over a barn, but she has will power, ambition, and energy enough to run a church, half the charitable institutions and societies in the town and a battleship to boot if it were necessary.
----------
Can You Can a Knothole?
The photographer has succeeded in putting a market value on shadows, the phonograph has bottled the echo and given it commercial value, the butchers have utilized the squeal of the hog and the curl in its tail, and about all that is left in the field of science that has not been commercialized is the canned knothole and the storage of heat so it can be corked up in August and tapped in the winter when "Boreas" comes down from Medicine Hat with his tail rolled over his back and his hind leg kicking apertures in the atmosphere.

--The Iowa Homestead, February 3, 1910, page 12, "Wheat and Chaff" by E. N. Bailey