The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, September 25, 1904, Page 13

THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. ) R when people reach the age of discretion they do not . - - only decree ever awarded by the school of - N * 1t take a tug and go to meet it. d selitude are the philosopher’s laboratory. | | | P | e wo ther we should thank heaven that the | | | watered stock. - s eise. Money that whispers re-echoes where save many a broken heart from a might e & R - &H. o 4& el * wiien he 1ld not think of gziving love of any clime wer down if given time. * « e lay of the hen are widely different, but ess cackling just the same. * * fool is never the “missing link.” He’s always Johnnie on your wad is always the very fi et that ing cquamtance k over her matrimonial woes to another woman v telephone receiver. . N * s meeting a widow referred to her dear de- o rest ten years before.” No doubt she told \ " * * v happy as when list g to his hen- - . * You ng on thin ice ong all right, or you may land in a mighty cold berth * * * of the transgress r is very like skat e 2 ¥ 4 g woman may jar you, but the kittenish old * * * s two bars. One pays out what the other \ . - | a fool for having married, always insist to make him laugh himself into hysterics. * * If, you will never be able to please any one . . . What me when you come in late and cannot find a match? * * * What is home when you're dressing in a hurry and can’t find any pins? * * * fe goes to F rope and leaves her whole * * * of the, flat above feeds 2 wake to save vourself from g that looks like a Russian war 1e old maid your bed, 1 whiskers? t is home without a woman with a dorg? . * * a “speak easy,” a poker outfit and a baby? * * - What is home witl What is home w and-a-half yard thirst hout any ice on a hot night when you have a two- Fables for the Foolish R. J. MILTON MAYBE was an author; at least he took that position. No one else was particularly aware of him or his work, although the office boys of various and sundry publica- tions in different parts of the country could probably remem- ber reading the first page of some of his manuscripts preparatory to pinching half of the inclosed postage and returning the manu- script to him with twelve cents due on it. Mr. Maybe and other uafor- ilk were of the opinion that most of the profits of maga- zine manufacturers come from the malicious and surreptitious appropri- ation of return postage forwarded by hopeful but deluded authors. For some time J. Milton had been assisting several publishers to pry the mortgages off their country places and add an annex to their brown- stone fronts on Fifth avenue—half of the publishing business is front, anyway, and the other half is side; very few of the participants have any backing. tunates of When J. Milton Maybe first purchased his typewriter and came to the conclusion that the literary life was the life for him, he hadn’t any doubts whatever as to how he was to turn the trick. He was to deluge the reading public from Machias to Guam with draughts from an un- failing well of English, pure and undefiled. It wasn’t his intention to write for a living, except incidentally. That's the way most writing people live, anyway, so he wasn’t contemplating any serious break with the traditions of the profession. Where he did turn his back on a long and glorious past was in the assumption that an author didn’t need to pay any particular attention to what people wanted. This is ons of the cheerfully idiotic theories formulated by alleged authors who have had the good sense to choose rich parents and can induce impecunious pub- lishers to commute their sclf-respect for gold. It's not an easy task to buy a publisher, unless you have the money or a certified check right with you, but it can be done by those who know the ropes. 's a remarkable fact that the only class of individuals who appear nk that they are absolved from any considerations of common 1se are the ones who are torturing typewriters and adding to the in- come of the United Stlates Postal Department. The man who caters to the fleshly wants of the population doesn’t try to sell watérmelons when the populace are clamoring for buckwhecat cakes and maple syrup, or fur-lined overcoats when the general demand is for duck trousers and paim leaf fans. A man who has a job lot of rat traps to dispose of doesn’t send agents to Greenland to place his goods before the public. I O ISP IS £ F IS el e A QAT GOOD NAMES MADE TO Home is (sometimes) a place of torture where souls are prepared for another and better world. 7 Some people are so mean that they would not gven give you a prom- ise without breaking it. ¥ With the exception af the gentlemen who are producing literature, the working classes generally proceed on the assumption that the proper thing to turn loose on the world is the article that the world wants, or thinks it wants, which amounts to the same thing. Only the littera- teurs—which is French for people who live without working—have the idea firmly rubbed into their cerebellums that the proper caper is to find out what a man wants and then offer him something else. Mr. Maybe held to the belief that a literary man should be quiet and retiring. When he had turned out something that occurred to him as rather more than half good, the right play was to abuse it as though it was a lost dog that had camped in his alley over might. He should never under any circumstances admit that there was anything in the children of his brain that was worth the - consideration of a sensible man for more than seven or eight minutes, and not for that long if there was gnything else in sight worth doing. He would point to Shakespeare and Dante and Old Sleuth and other classical authors as examples of modest and retiring authorship. These men didn't need press agents to impress the public with their fine points or to boost themselves up into the list of the six best sellers. g What the world needed was men who would pour their souls out on paper and then set them away to dry, trusting to luck and the ulti- mate destiny of literature and murder and the point of an English joke to come to the surface to save them from oblivion. Having laid out the ground plan for his idea of the literary’ life inga manner to satisfy his inmost desire for obscurity, Mr. Maybe proceeded to withdraw into the inmest recesses of his inner consciousness, where no one could see him and he could be alone with his soul. It never occurred to him that it might be as well to let people know something about the source from which the healing streams of literature were to flow. People are pe- culiar that way, but it's an unquestionable and undodgable fact that most of as would rather do business with an established firm that we know something about than with a lockbox in the postoffice and a guar- anteed profit of 150 per cent. This large truth began to dawn upon J. Milton's intellectual vision when his manuscripts began to round 4o in the home port, after a long but uneventful voyage. ~The editors agreed that some of them weren’t bad, at least not all bad, but they seemed to be afraid that Mr.jMaybe's name wouldn't be sufficiently impressive on the front cover as the au- thor of the valuable article on “From Congress to Jail” in this issue. It's no use trying to win the comeons’ money with a horse that one has never heard of. Therefore J. Milton discovéred that his highly in- tellectual articles on subjects that no one knew anything about were There is not much love in a sealed proposal s % 8 If you want to be thought clever always agree with people. oL T S What's the difference between suicide and matrimony? Gentlemen, please don’t all speak at once. - - - If some people were as tall as a telegraph pole it would yet be a moral impossibility to look up to them. . b Hunting for trouble and waiting for worry seems to be the obiect of many people’s lives. - - - The difference between the journalist and the newspaper man is that the journalist draws the salary and the newspaper man does the job. * * » A New York lawyer gave up a lucrative practice to go into literd- ture; then he gave up a few other things. He wrote poetry. - - - What might have been and what is ought to make some people hustle. - - - St. Louis is not profiting by Buffalo’s experience, but is putting up living expenses. Some people never will learn. But then St. Louis has her breweries. - - - The Kentucky got a jag and had to go into drydock. When anything of Kentucky has to go dry it's pretty hard lines. # * The hen is just the same as any other self-supporting lady—does a lot of cackling about it. 5 * - - People who spend every cent they can lay hands on and run into debt for the balance take so much comfort in preaching ecomomy to other people. - - - The worst microbe we ever stacked up against was the fellow with a continuous hard luck story. - . Nothing makes 2 married woman so mad as to hear her husband mumbling in his sleep and not to be able to make out what he’s get- ting at. - « * If a friend ask your opinion listen until you find out what his own may be, then smile knowingly. If the smile be sufficiently bland he will credit you with all kinds of wisdom. - " o The chin music of the mother-in-law is often the wail of the whang- doodle in the matrimonial mix-up. r g o When a good fat wad tickles your inside lining, don’t you care if you do get hysterical. ®o» - The lowest gambler on record is not half as mean as the fellow who squeals. - - - When you climb into matrimony you may not reach the stars, but you risk falling into an old volcano crater. - . - It is cheaper to pay visits than to pay hotel bills. FREBE Sy When a man gets too old to make silly speeches to a pretty woman it’s either gout or his liver. £ They want a beauty show of Kansas women at the fair. What's the matter with the freaks? Dear old Carrie wnuld__make things lots more lively and put the beauties out of business in a jiffy. ¥ e A nervous scientist says that electricity will soon supersede whisky, but the Cunnel from Kaintucky, sah, and the Majah from Miss—sippy sho’ will never exchange a “smile” for a spark. No, sar, the ‘llhc_)ck would be too great. Say the “cunnel” and the “majah” in chorus: “Give us liberty or juleps. % % % an engagement, and it does not break the man’s ir] break When & gl Jices break his neck. heart, it makes her mad enough to ORDER sichor Nemo | likely to continue in the same class as the subjects. All his cerebral out- pourings seemed destined to waste their sweetness on the desert air of the pigeon holes of J. Milton’s roll-top desk. In the course of the first year he papered his study with rejection slips from editors announcing that “circumstances compel the return of your manuscript, although our action implies no lack of merit"—meaning that the stuff was too rotten for any use. Two secretaries and an office boy were kept busy sorting the returned manuscripts and starting them out on their next trip. About this time Mr. Maybe began to wonder if he hadn’t made a mistake about the desirability of keeping himself out of the fierce light of publicity. He noticed also that most men who have something good to sell aren't particularly reluctant to tell the world that it’s the best thing ever. Just as an experiment, J. Milton decided that he would try that kind of a game fof a while himself. To this end he set his secre- taries at work sending out literary notices like the following: “That well-known man of letters, J. Milton Maybe, was stabbed in the left thumb with a fishhook yesterday. At last reports he was doing as well as could be expected and the accident is not expected to interfere with his literary labors, as he does not use his left thumb on the typewriter.” “Mr. Maybe, the famous author of ‘Manuscripts I Have Known,” has purchased a new red wheelbarrow for his country place. He says that literature pays.” “Mr. J. M. Maybe will not admit that he wrote any of Shakespeare's plays.” “It will be interesting to many of his readers to learn that Mr. J. Milton Maybe drinks water at every meal; he also wears clothes and eats food.” This sort of mental pabulum had been on the rounds for about a month when he began to observe a difference in the returns; that is to say, there weren't so many returns. In six months he had cleaned out most of the manuscripts in his desk and the editors were camping on his doorstep clamoring for more, while the presses waited. After that it was all clear sailing. Nowadays his stenographers work in shifts and three college graduates are kept busy looking up dates and names for the foundations of his historical novels. He may not be so literary, but he has the public by the ear, and when he wants to say something nice he knows that he can bank on having an audience. This may not be a cheerful tale for those who believe that literature is its own reward, but it teaches some valuable lessons for the average man who has a prejudice in favor of three square meals a day and two suits of clothes per annum. One of the most valuable of these lessons is that while a good name is more to be desired than riches, it is a whole lot more valuable if the majority of the people know just what the name is. (Copyright, 1904, by Albert Britt.)