Ignore Them — Mosquitoes

1910

The best way to get rid of the mosquito, says the Brooklyn Eagle, is to get the habit of not minding him, like the natives. No native or resident of a few months in a mosquito section minds mosquitoes any more than he does flies. But this method is slow in its appeal to the man who finds the pests attack him with more zeal than they do the natives.


He Knew About Ice Cream

The first time three-year-old Ray noticed a rainbow he shouted: "Oh! That looks just like ice cream in the sky!"


Money Well Spent

"I suppose to educate your daughter in music costs a great deal of money?"
"Yes; but she's brought it all back for me."
"Indeed!"
"Yes; I'd been trying to buy out my next door neighbor at half price for years, and could never bring him to terms until she came home!"

Little Visits with "Uncle By"

The Globe, Cedar Falls, Iowa, Aug. 16, 1906, p. 3.

Many a dollar necktie covers a 30-cent shirt.

The baseball season is for summer only, but the moth ball is for all the year round.

"I lie in the fragrant meadows," sings a pastoral poetess. She could come into the city and make money by it. Others do.

"The House of a Thousand Candles" is to be dramatized. That many candles in the theater ought to put the footlights out of business.

The girl who is proposed to and says, "This is so sudden," should remember that the young man will always give her time to turn down the gas before answering.

It is said that smoking at great heights gives no pleasure. Presumably that is why smoking in the haymow usually turns Little Willie's stomach inside out.

Adam invented the hammer, the slangist utilized it in his infinitive "to knock," but the man who hit his finger instead of the nail, was the first man on record with a swear word.

A railway authority says one of the probabilities is the establishing of through railroad service between North and South America. Wonder what it will cost in tips to make the trip.

It is predicted that Chicago will some day be destroyed by an earthquake. In which case, if it destroyed the cable lines and the stockyards smell, the game might be worth the candle.

A Nebraska man undressed in his berth on board a sleeping car and threw his trousers out of the window instead of into the hammock as he supposed. He went to the hotel in a sheet and a sickish smile.

"Have you ever driven along a country road by moonlight?" asks Craig Law in Four-Track News. You bet, and she was the prettiest, daintiest, sweetest bunch of taffeta and frizzes that ever made a fellow's heart go pit-i-pat.

When a street car fare is paid in Copenhagen, Denmark, the conductor thanks the passenger and gives him a receipt. When a street car fare is paid in Chicago, the conductor growls because you give him a two-dollar bill and you fight for a transfer.

"The heart of a woman who has lived to be 70 has beaten 260,000,000 times," says an exchange. Does this allow for the loss of beats when the baby fell into the soapsuds or the mother swallowed a safety pin, and the heart stood still? Shouldn't there be a considerable rebate for the times "my heart just stopped beating"?

Some Burdensome Names

1914

Perhaps the most burdensome name ever given to a child was to the daughter of Arthur Pepper in 1882. It comprised one name for every letter of the alphabet, in this way: Anna Bertha Cecilia Diana Emily Fanny Gertrude Hypatia Inez Jane Kate Louise Maud Nora Ophelia Quince Rebecca Starkey Teresa Ulysis Venus Winifred Xenophon Yetty Zeno, P of course provided in the surname, Pepper.

Hundreds of examples of this poor form of parental wit occur in the entries for the past few years Noah's Ark Smith, Sardine Box, Jolly Death, Judas Iscariot Brown, One-too-Many Johnson, Not-Wanted Smith, Bovril Simpson, Merry Christmas Figgett, Odious Heaton, Anno Domini Davis, are the names of children probably living who will have to bear them through life, unless they wash themselves clean with subterfuge.

There was for a long time a curiosity in nomenclature on the Australian pension list. His name was "Through-much-tribulation-we-enter-the-Kingdom-of-Heaven Smith." But the officials of the Pension department very pardonably abbreviated him into Tribby Smith."

It is not surprising that the names of Dickens' characters — odd though they are — should be found in real life, for it was from life that many of them were taken. Some, as we know, were copied from the names over shop doors, etc, but this was not the novelist's only source of selection. Among his papers John Forster found carefully drawn up lists of names, with the source from which he obtained them and the longest lists were those drawn from the "Privy Council Education Lists." Some of the names thus noted are too extravagant for anything but reality — Jolly Stick, Bill Marigold, George Muzzle, William Why, Robert Gospel, Robin Scrubbam, Sarah Goldsacks, Catherine Two, Sophia Doomsday, Rosetta Dust, Sally Gimblett!