NINA: "Tom, isn't that the same suit you wore last year?" TOм: "Yes, and it's the same suit you asked me last year if it wasn't the same suit I had the year before" Applied Psychology BOTH the photographer and the mother had failed to make the restless little fouryear-old sit still long enough to have her picture taken. Finally the photographer suggested that "the little darling" might be quiet if her mother would leave the room for a few minutes. During her absence the picture was successfully taken. On the way home the mother asked: "What did the nice man, say to make mother's little darling sit still?" "He thed, "You thit thtill, you little newthuns, or I'll knock your block off,' tho I that thtill," she explained. Local Pride A THEATRICAL company which carried its own orchestra was playing in a small town of the Middle West, and as the theater in that town had an orchestra of its own, the two orchestras "doubled up." At one point in the first performance a terrible discord was heard and the manager TELEPHONE OPERATOR: "Number, please" PROUD FATHER (absentmindedly): "Two ma'am, finest pair of twins you ever saw" A Help to the Barber A CHICAGO barber indulged in a pro pensity for relating weird stories while serving his customers. "Why," some one asked him, "do you persist in telling these blood-curdling yarns while you cut a man's hair?" "Well," explained the barber, "you see, "Yis, sor," replied Pat. "Whin I was a boy me father (rist his soul!) always said to me, Pat, learn to cut yer finger nails wid your left hand, for some day ye might lose your right."" A Considerate Musician when I tell scary stories to my customers "DAD," asked Stuyvesant, "will you . their hair stands on end, and it makes it very much easier for me to cut it." please buy me a drum for Christmas?" "But, Stuyvesant," protested Dad, "you would disturb me very much if I did." "Oh no, dad," the child hastened to explain. "I'll drum only when you are asleep." A Hydra-headed Criminal A CHICAGO lawyer tells of a man who was wanted by the police and had been photographed in five different positions, the picture being sent to the chief of police, among others, of a small town in Colorado where it was thought likely the fugitive was in hiding. After the lapse of a few days the following reply reached headquarters: DEAR SIR,-I duly received the photographs of the five miscreants whose capture is desired. I have arrested four of them and the fifth is under surveillance and will be secured shortly. FROM time to time during the last half of his life Mark Twain wrote or dictated chapters of recollections and comment which he classed under the general head of Autobiography. The early attempts were erratic, and not long continued, but in January, 1906, in conjunction with his biographer, he began a series of dictations. which continued steadily through that year, and intermittently during the years that followed, to the end of his life. Selections from these dictations which Mark Twain thought might appear with propriety during his lifetime were printed during 1906 and 1907. The greater portion of the manuscript, however, remains unpublished, and contains much of his choicest work. The Autobiography was not written as a continuous narrative. The author wrote or dictated whatever happened to be in his mind at the moment, regardless of chronology or sequence. In an introductory note he says of "the right way to do an Autobiography": "Start it at no particular time of your life; wander at your free will all over your life; talk only about the thing which interests you for the moment; drop it the moment its interest threatens to pale, and turn your talk upon the new and more interesting thing that has intruded itself into your mind meantime." This was the "methodless method," as he called it, of the dictations, and the same general idea has been followed in making the present selections. PREFATORY person's his bulk, a mere skin enveloping it! The mass of him is hidden-it and its vol WHAT a wee little part farords! canic fires that toss and boil, and never life are his acts his His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, and every day, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those other things, are his history. His acts and his words are merely the visible thin crust of his world, with its scattered snow summits and its vacant wastes of water-and they are so trifling a part of rest, night nor day. These are his life, and they are not written, and cannot be written. Every day would make a whole book of eighty thousand words-three hundred and sixty-five books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man-the biography of the man himself cannot be written. Copyright, 1922, by Harper & Brothers. All rights reserved ~(Written in 1906) |