Sap and Salt

1922

Sap and Salt
By Bert Moses

"Ambition" is the refined term for selfishness.

It is better to be lied about than to be a liar yourself.

"Don't let your brains loaf, even if you do your muscles."

Always underestimate a woman's age and always overestimate her taste in selecting hats.

It requires great wisdom to know when to slack up with your bravery and begin to hedge a little.

The trouble with a college graduate is that he shows so little inclination to get his coat off and go to work.

Hez Heck Says:
"Bitin' off more'n you kin chew ain't so bad as keepin' on eatin' after you can't swaller."

—The Coshocton Tribune, Coshocton, Ohio, June 19, 1922, page 4. Sap and Salt in the woods, Ashland, Oregon.

The Sun and the Father's Will

1905--

Back of the loaf is the snow flour,
Back of the flour, the mill;
And back of the mill is the wheat and the shower,
The sun and the Father's will. -- Anon

--Iowa State Register and Farmer, Des Moines, Iowa, October 13, 1905, page 2.


It is said that a gramaphone of twice the power of those now in use has been invented. This will make the ownership of one an indictable offense. The one owned in our neighborhood now has dried up all the cows and made the hens quit laying.

--Iowa State Register and Farmer, Des Moines, Iowa, October 13, 1905, page 3.


As To Preachers

"Show me ten preachers," said a woman, "who have even a suggestion of sympathy or pathos in their voices, or who read the services with any degree of impressiveness, to say nothing of common intelligence; and I will show you ten churches filled every Sunday to the doors and filled with no ephemeral crowd, but with congregations that are interested and in thorough accord with their respective ministers." Surely she is right. So much or just a bit of intelligence, just one touch of human sympathy.

--Iowa State Register and Farmer, Des Moines, Iowa, October 13, 1905, page 3.


By Bailey of Britt [Britt, Iowa]

We dissected a mosquito at Clear Lake the other night and this is what we found in the crop. One toad, thirteen pinchbugs, forty-eight grasshoppers, a baseball, three old socks, eighty black oak acorns and a rattail file. The darn thing was chasing editors trying to suck enough blood to soften up the sculch so the file could get hold.

--Iowa State Register and Farmer, Des Moines, Iowa, October 13, 1905, page 11.


1908--

Broad Furrows
by Geo. W. Franklin

The only honest quacks in the world are ducks.

Why spend any time worrying about troubles that have not yet come into plain sight?

There is more profit in attending to one's own business than in attending to the business of others.

If you keep a dog, keep a good one and then act humane by providing him a good place to sleep in cold weather.

A little girl said her fat uncle was good natured "because it takes him a long time to get mad clear through." That explains it.

It shortens a man's life to carry burdens not his own. When the alarm clock is set, don't lay awake all night "for fear." Let the clock do that.

Lay out the garden now—in your mind. Get busy when opportunity presents itself and don't let chickens, or "too busy to attend a garden" keep you from having a good one.

Pay as you go, friends; cease speculating and the currency business will adjust itself. Men who buy and sell blue sky will continue to be more or less "up in the air" all the time.

Sam says that judging by the present prices of beef an ox team is worth about twice as much per pound as a modern locomotive, thus making it the most expensive power in modern civilization.

Don't wait too long this time before testing the seed corn. Like the boy promised a thrashing, it is better to "have it done and over with." Give seed corn good winter care, then exercise care in testing and planting.

A friend recently told me that he did not believe in friendship. He said there was no such thing as friendship; that a man's first duty was for himself; that people pretended to be friends but arc not. That certainly is a gloomy way of looking at it. If I did not know plenty of people I could trust I would be a most unhappy creature. Don't look at the world through blue glasses. This world, after all, is just what we make it.

--The Iowa State Register and Farmer, Des Moines, Iowa, January 4, 1908, page 4.