Like Swearing When They Meet

1916

LA CROSSE, Wisconsin — Clerks in the Wisconsin-Minnesota Light & Power Company offices sat up with a shocked and startled expression when a stranger walked up to a desk and announced his name. It sounded like an outburst of profanity, but it was only a Chicago book salesman introducing himself. The salesman was G. O. Tuhell, and the man he met was Chief Clerk S. Damm.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 7.

Why Lawyers Escape Going To Hell (poetry)

1902

WHY LAWYERS ESCAPE.

The devil came up to the earth one day,
And into a court house he wended his way.
Just then one attorney, with very grave face,
Was proceeding to argue a point in a case.

Now a lawyer his devilship never had seen,
For to his dominion none ever had been.
And he felt very curious the reason to know
Why none had been sent to the region below.

'Twas the fault of his agents his majesty thought,
That none of these sharpers had never been caught.
And for his own pleasure he had a desire
To come to the earth and the reason inquire.

Well, the lawyer who rose with a visage so grave
Made out his opponent a consummate knave,
And the devil was certainly greatly amused
To hear the attorney so roundly abused.

As soon as the speaker had come to a close,
The counsel opposing him fiercely arose,
And heaped such abuse on the head of the first
That he made him a villain of all men the worst.

Thus they quarreled, contended and argued so strong,
'Twas hard to determine the one that was wrong,
And concluding he'd heard quite enough of this fuss,
Old Nick turned away and soliloquized thus:

"If all they have said of each other be true,
The devil has surely been robbed of his due;
But I'm satisfied now that it's all very well
For these lawyers would ruin the morals of h—l.

"They've puzzled the court with their villainous cavil,
And I'm free to confess they have muddled the devil.
My agents are right to let lawyers alone.
If I had them they'd swindle me out of my throne."

—AARON LISCHY.

—Fort Wayne News, Fort Wayne, IN, June 23, 1902, p. 4.

A Family With Faith in Asbestos

Short Stories
1922

The late Mrs. George Gould hated any desecration of the Sabbath. Motoring one summer Sunday in Lakewood, she encountered a family whose fortune had been made in asbestos. The rich asbestos makers were picnicking, fathers and sons over whisky and poker, mother and the girls with cigarets and bridge. Mrs. Gould drew up to speak to her acquaintances. "Well," she said pleasantly, "I didn't know you Smiths had such faith in your asbestos."

A storyette that dates to the eighteenth century is as follows: Dr. Johnson once met the village postman one summer afternoon. The postman observed that he had still a mile to walk just to deliver one newspaper. "My goodness!" exclaimed the sympathetic doctor, "I'd never go all that distance for such a trifle. Why don't you send it by post?"

Former Postmaster General Hays, as every one knows, is an advocate of the air mail. "Of course, it gets criticized," he said, "and criticism is a good thing, but it can be run into the ground. I am reminded of the vaudeville producer who muttered as he read the press-notices of his program, 'These critics are thorough, all right. They don't leave a turn unstoned.' "

With reference to the millennium, Samuel Gompers recently said: "It is still a long way off, of course, but the workman is not the downtrodden slave he once was." He quoted the case of the tennis pro who was giving a new club member some pointers. "Hold your racket loosely, sir," he said. "Oh! more loosely! You hold it as stiff as if you were a hod-carrier." "But I am a hod-carrier," said the new member mildly.

The southern Californian may think himself an adept making seductive pictures of his end of the state, but he can still learn from the Honolulan, out in the north Pacific. Down there they say a drummer from San Francisco sojourned a month, and when they took him to the homeward-bound steamer and put leis around his neck and sang "Aloha Oi" to him a few times, he cried like a baby and said he had forgotten his wife's first name.

HELL DOES NOT EXIST IN OLD SENSE OF WORD, POET MARKHAM DECLARES

ST. LOUIS, Nov. 15 - "There is no hell at all in the old sense of the word," said Edwin Markham, famous American poet, in a lecture at Sheldon memorial, 3648 Washington avenue.

The author of "The Man and the Hoe" lectured on Immanuel Swedenborg, calling him "the eyeball in the front of the eighteenth century." Elucidating the Swedenborgian idea of the postmortem universe, Markham said, in part:

"What, in brief does Swedenborg tell us of the world beyond? He tells us that the spiritual world is divided into three realms necessary for evolution of the human spirit. It contains a realm called heaven, another called hell, and still another called the spirit world, a realm between heaven and hell. There is nothing irrational or arbitrary about these realms. The world of spirits receives all men and women as they leave the earth; and it is the realm of education and preparation for the heaven country or the hell country.

"Love, the service of love, is the hinge of destiny. No one is forced into the heaven country or the hell country, but each one goes to the realm that is the choice of his own heart.

"There is no literal hellfire, for all hellfire is only the burning of evil desire. All hells, therefore, are created by men. Men go to hell only because they prefer hell to heaven. Indeed, hell is the heaven of the selfish."

-- Des Moines Register, Nov. 16, 1917