Little Waldo Suffers

1910

"It's disgusting," said Mrs. Waldo Beaconhill of Boston; "the makers of children's blocks never think of putting Greek letters on them; and there is my poor little Emerson simply dying of ennui for the want of a good fairy tale in words of moderately extensive syllabification."



Slap on the Wrist

Tightwad — Did you ever notice, my dear, that nearly all these misers reported in the papers are single men?
Mrs. Tightwad — Yes; but that's only natural. Married misers are too common to be worth mentioning.

Insurance Against Surgical Operations

1902

In England people of moderate means are beginning to insure themselves against surgical operations. The plan is that subscribers who pay an annual fee shall be entitled either to free admittance to a hospital or nursing at home and a free operation or to a fixed sum paid down to defray the cost of an operation if one becomes necessary.

In England, as here, the cost of surgical repairs to the human body has become oppressively great to persons who just manage to pay their way. People who are obviously poor get a great deal of excellent surgical and medical treatment in hospitals and elsewhere for nothing, but for the next class above them a serious illness — especially if it involves an operation — is almost ruinous. It would seem as if the time was near when societies for insurance against specialists might be profitably organized in the larger American cities.

The specialist has come to be a very important — indeed, an indispensable — institution, especially to families in which there are children. The office of the family doctor has now become simplified to the task of coming in and telling the patient which specialist to go to. It is not that specialists charge too much, for their honorable services are above price. It is that landlord, butcher, baker, grocer, milkman, coalman, dentist, and trained nurse do not leave you money enough to pay them appropriately.

To subscribe a considerable sum annually and have all the repairs and desirable improvements made in one's family without further disbursement would be a comparatively simple way out of a troublesome predicament. — Harper's Weekly.

As Straight Men See Him

1909

The Dead-Beat is Probably the Most Despised Creature That Walks the Earth

No man is wholly free from sin, but so many lesser evils are tolerated that a man should hesitate long before becoming a dead-beat.

Criminals are despised and abhorred, but to the dead-beat all that is coming, as well as the contempt of his fellow men. There is something at once so mean and so little in taking advantage of the confidence which comes with friendship that the hand of every man is turned against a dead-beat as soon as his reputation is well established.

The dead-beat may fondly imagine he is living easy and making money without work, and, of course, he takes no account of the confidence he violates and the hardships he inflicts on others. But, that aside, he really has a harder time than the man who is honest and fair. He is compelled to move a good deal, and peace of mind he knows not. Like other types of crooks, he doesn't prosper, and his finish is more unpleasant than the beginning. — Atchison Globe.


1900

Deadly Blunderbusses of Guatemala

Down in Guatemala the favorite weapon of the native bandits and desperadoes is a sawed-off muzzle-loading shotgun of the blunderbuss pattern, and when they run short of buckshot they sally out to the railroad and steal a few dozen seals, which are simply disks of soft lead about the size of quarters. Pounded into rough balls, they make projectiles by the side of which a Dumdum is an angel of mercy, and when one of their blunderbusses goes off it generally kills everything in sight except the man directly behind it.

Deceased is a "Graded" Body in This Cemetery

August 1926

Folkstone, England — Folkstone's new cemetery is to have first, second and third class graves.

The question whether the graves should be graded has been agitating residents here for months, and the controversy was finally settled by the town council which adopted a resolution in favor of the grading system.



Miners' Dogs Have Day

London — Miner's dogs had a "day out" at the fashionable and exclusive Ranelagh club to which they were brought by their owners to compete for the Sporting Chronicle Lonsdale trophy for "whippets."

Fashionable Mayfair dames rubbed shoulders with miners' wives and West End aristocrats hobnobbed with miners during the excitement of the racing. The Duchess of Newcastle acted as judge.



Dog Wrecks Car

London. — When his pet dog leaped into his lap, K. B. Harris lost control of his automobile. It ran into a ditch and turned a somersault. The man was unhurt, but the dog suffered serious injuries.