Slips of the Tongue

1914

Most amusing are the slips of the tongue which so often lead to embarrassing situations.

At an evening party a lady said to her partner, "Can you tell me who is that exceedingly plain young man opposite?"

"That is my brother," was the reply.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," she said in great confusion. "I did not notice the resemblance."

At a certain concert a lady asked a gentleman how he liked the duet she had just sung. "You sang charmingly," was the reply; "but why did you select such a horrid piece of music?"

"Sir, that was written by my late husband," was the indignant reply.

"Ah, yes, I did not mean — but why did you select such an ass to sing with you?"

"Oh, you brute!" screamed the lady. "That is my present husband."


Charity

Charity begins at home, and often ends there. It is usually divided into two kinds, namely, public and private. Public charity consists of a salaried office force and a subscription list. Private charity is what we give when we don't know what to do with the surplus.

There is also a species of charity known as genuine. Inasmuch, however, as it is never advertised in the newspapers, scarcely anything is known about it. — Life.


Saves Fisherman Trouble

Harness to hold a fishing pole, so as to leave a fisherman's hands free to manage his bait or catch, is an English invention.

Valentine's Day Brings Tender and Rough Greetings

1910

PETTY SPITE AND TENDER MISSIVES MINGLED IN MAIL

School Children, Grown-Up Women and Even Business Men Prepare for Valentine.

THOUSANDS ARE BOUGHT

Mail Will Be Loaded With Letters Bearing Tender and Rough Greetings

"This heer looks like teccher."

Hundreds and thousands of school children, wherever Valentine's day is a recognized institution, are today with laborious effort and ink bedaubed fingers preparing the hideous caricatures bearing inscriptions like the above, which will tomorrow give their instructors the pupil's conception of their mental and physical shortcomings.

Likewise, Mrs. Flaherty, who last summer made a remark reflecting on the girth line of Mrs. Hoolihan, just around the corner, will receive a carefully enclosed but unsigned tribute which may depict her either as a "cat" or a "gadabout." They all forget to put on the name with the original draft, but Mrs. Flaherty, like all the rest of womankind, is never uncertain of the source, and hurrying into her best "rags" just as promptly visits the corner drug store. The next mail brings the answer and the merry war is on.

Full grown men, too, men of affairs and recognized business ability, take advantage of the opportunity offered to vent petty spite and grievances against their competitors and business adversaries.

The day is also one, however, which marks the universal exchange of pretty sentiments and tender missives of love. Today and tomorrow the mails will be encumbered with delicately framed boxes carefully tied with baby ribbons, from which emanates the scent of the perfumed missives.

Some will be beautifully engraved and embellished, while others will carry only hastily scrawled notes in school boy hand. All will carry the name sentiment, however, of childish affection and adoration of first love and as Nellie with coy diffidence exhibits the missive to mamma and receives the reproof she expected, she fails to detect the flicker of the eye or the unconscious softening of the lines about the mouth, as mamma's mind reverts back to a similar occasion in her own life, when a similar missive was received and she was rebuked in the same manner.

--The Des Moines News, Des Moines, Iowa, February 13, 1910, page 8.

Comment: I had never heard of Valentine cards meant as insults, but it looks like they really did that. At Wikipedia, there's an article on "vinegar valentines" that says, "Vinegar valentines are greeting cards, or, rather, insult cards, that come in the form of an insult, decorated with a caricature and, below that, an insulting poem. Ostensibly given on Valentine's Day, the caricature and poem is about the "type" that the recipient belongs to--spinster, floozy, dude, scholar, etc. ... The cards were first produced in the late Victorian era and enjoyed their greatest popularity in that period and in the first quarter of the 20th century."

Man Charged With Insulting Women

Centralia, Washington, 1913
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CHARGED WITH INSULTING WOMAN

A warrant was sworn out Thursday by Justice Jones at Morton for the arrest of S. W. Jordan for alledged discourtesies applied to the wife of R. L. Shepherd, a brakeman living in West Morton. Owing to the absence of Jordan no hearing has as yet been secured. Public sentiment in the town is divided in regard to the matter.

--Daily Chronicle-Examiner, Centralia, Washington, August 16, 1913, page 6.


The Letters Undertakers Get
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Chehalis, Washington, 1921
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The Sticklin Undertaking Company reports that every week letters continue to arrive from all parts of the country asking for pictures and descriptions of the young boy who was killed in the Chehalis railroad yards in August, following the night of the Palmer Bros. circus being in the city, and whose remains were buried here. Only a few days ago a woman came from Portland to look at the pictures of the boy, hoping against hope that it might be her lost son. A letter arrived a few days ago from a small California town, asking for information. Evidently none of us realize how many aching mother hearts there are in this country, yearning for news of an absent son.

--The Chehalis Bee-Nugget, Chehalis, Washington, October 28, 1921, page 4.