 Some aspects of game captaincy by Pidgey Woodhouse Recorded for LibriVox Coffee Break Recollection Volume 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by secrets Some aspects of game captaincy. To the game captain of the football variety, the world is people to buy three classes Firstly, the keen and regular player. Next, the partial slacker. Thirdly and lastly, the entire abject and absolute slacker. Of the first class, the keen and regular player, little need be said. A keen player is a gem of purest rays serene, and when to his keenness he adds regularity and punctuality, life ceases to become the mere hollow blank that it would otherwise become, and joy reigns supreme. The absolute slacker, to take the worst at once and have done with it, needs the pen of a swift before adequate justice can be done to his enormities. He is a blot, an excreance. At those moments which are not spent in avoiding games, by means of that leave which is unanimously considered the peculiar property of the French nation, he uses in concocting ingenious excuses. Armed with these, he faces with calmness the disgusting curiosity of the game captain, who officially desires to know the reason of his non-appearance on the preceding day. These excuses are of the had to go and see a man about a dog type, and really meet with that success for which their author hopes. In the end, he discovers that his chest is weak, or his heart is subject to palpitations, and he forthwith produces a document to this effect, signed by a doctor. This has the desirable result of muzzling the tyrannical game captain, whose soul solace is a look of intense and withering scorn. But this is seldom fatal, and generally we rejoice to say ineffectual. The next type is the partial slacker. He differs from the absolute slacker in that at rear intervals he actually turns up, changed with all into the garb of the game and thirsting for the fray. At this point begins the time of trouble for the game captain. To begin with, he is forced by stress of ignorance to ask the newcomer his name. This is, of course, an insult of the worst kind. A being who does not know my name, argues the partial slacker, must be something not far from a criminal lunatic. The name is, however, extracted, and the partial slacker strides to the arena. Now arises insult number two. He is wearing his cap. A hint as to the advisability of removing this piece de resistance need not being taken. He is ordered to assume a capless state, and by these means a coolness springs up between him and the GC. Of this, the game captain is made aware when the game commences. The partial slacker, scorning to insert his head in the scrum, assumes a commanding position outside and from this point criticizes the game captain's decisions with severity and pith. The last end of the partial slacker is generally a sad one. Strung by some pungent home thrust, the game captain is feigned to try justizement and by these means silences the enemy's battery. Sometimes the class is overlap, as for instance a keen and regular player may, by some more than usually gross bit of bungling on the part of the GC, be moved to a fiver and eloquence worthy of juvenile. Or again, even the absolute slacker may for a time emulate the keen player, provided an opponent plant a shrewd kick on a dangerous spot. But broadly speaking, there are only three classes. End of recording. End of some aspects of game captaincy. Beyond Pandora by Robert J. Martin. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Beyond Pandora by Robert J. Martin. The doctor's pen paused over the chart on his desk. This is your third set of teeth, I believe. The patient nodded. That's right doctor, but they were pretty slow coming in this time. The doctor looked up quizzically. Is that the only reason you think you might need a booster shot? Oh no, of course not. The man leaned forward and placed one hand, palm up on the desk. Last year I had an accident. Stupid. Lost a thumb. He shrugged apologetically. It took almost six months to grow back. Thoughtfully the doctor leaned back in his chair. Hmm. I see. As the man before him made an involuntary movement toward his pocket, the doctor smiled. Go on, smoke if you want to. Picking up the chart he murmured. Six months. Much too long. Strange, we didn't catch that at the time. He read silently for a few moments then began to fill out a form clip to the folder. Well, I think you probably are due for another booster about now. There'll have to be the usual test. Not that there's much doubt, we like to be certain. The middle-aged man seemed relieved. Then on second thought he hesitated un-easily. Why? Is there any danger? Amusement flickered across the doctor's face and turned smoothly into a reassuring half-smile. Oh no. There's absolutely no danger involved. None at all. We have tissue regeneration pretty well under control now. Still, I'm sure you understand that accurate records and data are very necessary to further research and progress. Reassured the patient thought and became confidential. I see. Well, I suppose it's kind of silly, but I don't much like shots. It's not that they hurt. It's just... I guess I'm old-fashioned. I still feel kind of creepy about the whole business. Slightly embarrassed, he paused and asked defensively, is that unusual? The doctor smiled openly now. No, not at all. Not at all. Things have moved pretty fast in the past few years. I suppose it takes people's emotional reactions a while to catch up with developments that logically we accept as a fact. He pushed his chair back from the desk. Maybe it's not too hard to understand. Take fire, for instance. Man lived in fear of fire for a good many hundred thousand years. And rightly so, because he hadn't learned to control it. The principles is saying, first you learn to protect yourself from the thing, then control it. And eventually we learn to harness it for a useful purpose. He jenstered toward the man's cigarette. Even so, man still instinctively fears fire, even while he uses it. In the case of tissue regeneration where the change took place so rapidly, in just a generation or so, that instinctive fear is even more understandable. Although quite as unjustified, I assure you. The doctor stood up, indicating that the session was ending. While his patient scrambled to his feet, hastily putting out his cigarette, the physician came around the desk. He put his hand on the man's shoulder. Relax. Take it easy. There's nothing to worry about. This is a wonderful age we live in, barring a really major accident. There's no reason why you shouldn't live at least another 75 years. After all, it's a very remarkable complex we have doing your repair work. As they walk through the door, the man shook his head. Guess you're right, Doc. It's certainly done a good job so far. And I guess you specialists know what you're doing, even if folks don't understand it. At the door he paused and half turned to the doctor and said, something I meant to ask you, this stuff, this vaccine, where did it come from? Seems to me I heard somewhere that way back before you fellas got it tamed, it was something else, something dangerous. There was another name for it. Do you know what I mean? The doctor's hand tightened on the doorknob. Yes, I know, he said grimly, but not many laymen remember. Just keep in mind what I told you. With any of these things, the pattern is protection, then control, then useful application. He turned to face his patient. Back in the days before we put it to work for us, rebuilding tissue, almost ending aging and disease. The active basis for our vaccine caused a whole group of diseases in itself. Returning the man's searching gaze, the doctor opened the door. We've come a long way since then. You see, he said quietly, in those days they called it cancer. End of Beyond Pandora by Robert J. Martin. There is a back way onto the lawn, said Mrs. Philidor Stossen to her daughter. Through a small grass paddock, and then through a walled fruit garden full of gooseberry bushes, I went all over the place last year when the family were away. There is a door that opens from the fruit garden into a shrubbery, and once we emerge from there we can mingle with the guests, as if we had come in by the ordinary way. Much safer than going in by the front entrance, running the risk of coming bang up against the hostess. That would be so awkward when she doesn't happen to have invited us. Isn't it a lot of trouble to take for getting admittance to a garden party? To a garden party, yes. To the garden party of the season, certainly not. Every one of any consequence in the county, with the exception of ourselves, has been asked to meet the princess, and it would be far more troublesome to invent explanations as to why we weren't there than to get in by a roundabout way. I stopped Mrs. Kuvering in the road yesterday, and talked very pointedly about the princess. If she didn't choose to take the hint and send me an invitation, it's not my fault, is it? Here we are. We just cut across the grass and threw that little gate into the garden. Mrs. Stossen and her daughter suitably arrayed for a county garden party function with an infusion of Almanac de Gota, sailed through the narrow grass paddock and the ensuing gooseberry garden with the air of state barges making an unofficial progress along a rural trout stream. There was a certain amount of furtive haste mingled with the statelyness of their advance, as though hostile searchlights might be turned on them at any moment. And as a matter of fact they were not unobserved. Matilda Kuvering, with the alert eyes of thirteen years old, and the added advantage of an exalted position in the branches of a medler tree, had enjoyed a good view of the Stossen flanking movement and had foreseen exactly where it would break down in execution. They'll find the door locked and they'll jolly will have to go back the way they came," she remarked to herself. Serves them right for not coming in by the proper entrance. What a pity Tarquin's purpose isn't to loosen the paddock. After all, as everyone else is enjoying themselves, I don't see why Tarquin shouldn't have an afternoon out. Matilda was of an age when thought is action. She slid down from the branches of the medler tree and when she clambered back again, Tarquin, the huge white Yorkshire bore pig, had exchanged the narrow limits of his stye for the wider range of the grass paddock. The discomforted Stossen expedition returning in recriminatory, but otherwise orderly retreat from the unyielding obstacle of the locked door came to a sudden halt at the gate dividing the paddock from the gooseberry garden. What a villainous looking animal! exclaimed Mrs. Stossen. It wasn't there when we came in. It's there now, anyway, said her daughter. What on earth are we to do? I wish we had never come. The bore pig had drawn nearer to the gate for a closer inspection of the human intruders and stood, champing his jaws and blinking his small red eyes in a manner that was doubtless intended to be disconcerting and, as far as the Stossen's were concerned, thoroughly achieved that result. Shoo! Hish! Hish! Shoo! cried the ladies in chorus. As they think they're going to drive him away by reciting lists of the kings of Israel and Judah, they're laying themselves out for disappointment, observed Matilda from her seat in the meddler tree. As she made the observation aloud, Mrs. Stossen became, for the first time, aware of her presence. A moment or two earlier she would have been anything but pleased at the discovery that the garden was not as deserted as it looked, but now she hailed the fact of the child's presence on the scene with absolute relief. Little girl, can you find someone to drive away? She began, hopefully. Comment? Comprime pas, was the response. Oh! Are you French? Est-vous Française? Pas de tout, suis anglaise. Then why not talk English? I wanted to know if, permettez-moi expliquer. You see, I'm rather under a cloud, said Matilda. I'm staying with my aunt, and I was told I must behave particularly well today, as lots of people were coming for a garden party, and I was told to imitate Claude. That's my young cousin, who never does anything wrong except by accident, and then is always apologetic about it. It seems they thought I ate too much raspberry trifle at lunch, and they said Claude never eats too much raspberry trifle. Well, Claude always goes to sleep for half an hour after lunch, which he's told to, and I waited till he was asleep, and tied his hands and started forcible feeding with a whole bucketful of raspberry trifle that they were keeping for the garden party. Lots of it went on to his sailor's suit, and some of it on to the bed. But a good deal went down Claude's throat, and they can't say again that he has never been known to eat too much raspberry trifle. That is why I am not allowed to go to the party, and as an additional punishment I must speak French all the afternoon. I've had to tell you all this in English, as there were words like forcible feeding that I didn't know the French for. Of course, I could have invented them, but if I had said nourriture obligatoire, you wouldn't have had the least idea what I was talking about. Mais maintenant, nous parlons français. Oh, very well. Très bien, said Mrs. Dawson, reluctantly, in moments of flurry, such French as she knew, was not under very good control. Là, à l'autre côte de la porte, est un cochon. Un cochon? Ah, le petit charmant! exclaimed Matilda with enthusiasm. Mais non, pas du tout petit. Et pas du tout charmant. Un bête feroce. Une bête. Corrected, Matilda. A pig is masculine, as long as you call it a pig. But if you lose your temper with it and call it a ferocious beast, it becomes one of us at once. French is a dreadfully un-sexing language. For goodness sake, let us talk English, then, said Mrs. Dawson. Is there any way out of this garden except through the paddock where the pig is? I always go over the wall by way of the plum tree, said Matilda. Dressed as we are, we could hardly do that, said Mrs. Dawson. It was difficult to imagine her doing it in any costume. Do you think you could go and get someone who would drive the pig away? asked Mrs. Dawson. I promised my aunt I would stay here till five o'clock. It's not four yet. I am sure under the circumstances your aunt would permit. My conscience would not permit, said Matilda, with cold dignity. We can't stay here till five o'clock, exclaimed Mrs. Dawson with growing exasperation. Shall I recite to you to make the time pass quicker? asked Matilda, obligingly. Belinda, the little breadwinner, is considered my best piece. Or perhaps it ought to be something in French. Henri Catres' address to his soldiers is the only thing I really know in that language. If you will go and fetch someone to drive that animal away, I will give you something to buy yourself a nice present, said Mrs. Dawson. Matilda came several inches lower down the medler tree. That is the most practical suggestion you have made yet for getting out of the garden, she remarked cheerfully. Claude and I are collecting money for the children's fresh air fund, and we are seeing which of us can collect the biggest sum. I shall be very glad to contribute half a crown, very glad indeed," said Mrs. Dawson, digging that coin out of the depths of a receptacle which formed a detached outwork of her toilette. Claude is a long way ahead of me at present, continued Matilda, taking no notice of the suggested offering. You see, he is only eleven, and has golden hair, and those are enormous advantages when you are on the collecting job. Only the other day a Russian lady gave him ten shillings. Russians understand the art of giving far better than we do. I expect Claude will net quite twenty-five shillings this afternoon. He'll have the field to himself, and he'll be able to do the pale, fragile, not long for this world business, to perfection after his raspberry trifle experience. Yes, he'll be quite two pounds ahead of me by now. With much probing and plucking and many regretful numbers, the beleaguered ladies managed to produce seven and sixpence between them. I am afraid this is all we've got," said Mrs. Dawson. Matilda showed no sign of coming down, either to the earth or to their figure. I could not do violence to my conscience for anything less than ten shillings. She announced, stiffly, mother and daughter muttered certain remarks under their breath, in which the word beast was prominent and probably had no reference to Tarquin. I find I have got another half-crown, said Mrs. Dawson in a shaking voice. Here you are. Now please fetch someone quickly. Matilda slipped down from the tree, took possession of the donation, and proceeded to pick up a handful of overripe meddlers from the grass at her feet. Then she climbed over the gate and addressed herself affectionately to the boar pig. Come, Tarquin, dear old boy, you know you can't resist meddlers when they're rotten and squashy? Tarquin couldn't. By dint of throwing the fruit in front of him at judicious intervals, Matilda decoyed him back to his stye, while the delivered captives hurried across the paddock. Well, I never. The little minx exclaimed Mrs. Dawson when she was safely on the high road. The animal wasn't savage at all, and as for the 10 shillings, I don't believe the fresh-air fund will see a penny of it. There she was unwarrantedly harsh in her judgment. If you examine the books of the fund, you will find the acknowledgement collected by Miss Matilda Kuvering, two shillings and sixpence. The End of The Boar Pig by Saki. I am going to finish with a story that has two bows in it. There was an old English actor who had struggled all his life for recognition and never got it. He had never been in a decent company, never had a decent part in his life, and for years he had been reading of the wonderful successes many of the English players were meeting with in America, so at last he sailed for that land of promise. But it was the same sad story it had been at home. And dollar by dollar, and penny by penny, his money went until at last he was penniless, and then came that longing for home that could not be resisted. And one dark night he went down and stowed away on a steamer bound for Liverpool. The next morning he was discovered and put to work helping in the kitchen. This was the last straw. There he sat in his fur-lined overcoat and silk hat peeling potatoes. That night he decided to end it all. So at midnight he said, Farewell, vain world! And went over the rail. Man overboard cried the look out. The life belts were thrown over. The powerful electric surge lights were thrown upon the waters. These life belts, as soon as they strike the water, begin to burn a bright red light. The poor old actor came up for the last time and just between the two life belts with their red fires burning. At the same moment the dazzling stream of light from the searchlight fell full upon him. The man opened his eyes and a look of ineffable joy came over his face. For the first time in his life he was in the spotlight. So he took two bows and went down forever. End of Closing Number Recording by Alana Jordan in the great state of Missouri. A Cosmopolite and a Café by O. Henry Recorded for LibriVox Coffee Break Collection. Volume 1 This is a LibriVox recording. LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Reading by Bologna Times. A Cosmopolite and a Café by O. Henry At midnight the café was crowded. By some chance the little table at which I sat had escaped the eye of the encomers and two vacant chairs extended their arms with venal hospitality to the influx of patrons. And then a Cosmopolite sat in one of them and I was glad for I held a theory that since Adam no true citizen of the world has existed we hear of them and we see foreign labels on much luggage but we find travelers instead of Cosmopolites. I invoke your consideration of the scene. The marble topped tables. The range of leather upholstered wall seats. The gay company. The ladies dressed in demi-state toilettes. Speaking in an exquisite visible chorus of taste, economy, opulence, or art. The sedulous and largest loving garçons. The music wisely catering to all with its raids upon the composers. The melange of talk and laughter. And, if you will, the Wartsberger in the tall glass cones that bend to your lips as a ripe cherry sways on its branch to the beak of a Robert J. I was told by a sculptor from Marc Chonk that the scene was truly Parisian. My Cosmopolite was named E. Rushmore Coglin and he will be heard from next summer at Coney Island. He is to establish a new attraction there, he informed me, offering kingly diversion. And then his conversation rang along parallels of latitude and longitude. He took the great round world in his hand, so to speak, familiarly, contemptuously, and it seemed no larger than the seed and a tall grapefruit. He spoke disrespectfully of the equator. He skipped from continent to continent. He derided the zones. He mopped up the high seas with his napkin. With a wave of his hand, he would speak of a certain bazaar in Hyderabad with, he would have you on skis in Lapland, zip. Now you rode the breakers from the Canacas at Keelay Cajiqui, Presto. He dragged you through an Arkansas post oak swamp, let you drive for a moment on the alkali plains of his Idaho Ranch, then world you into the society of Viennese Archdukes. Anon, he would be telling you, of a cold he acquired in a Chicago lake breeze and how old Escamilla cured it in Buenos Aires with a hot infusion of the Chuchula weed. You would have addressed a letter to E. Rushmore Coglin, Esquire, the earth, solar system, the universe, and have mailed it, feeling confident that it would be delivered to him. I was sure that I had found, at last, the one true cosmopolite since Adam, and I listened to his worldwide discourse, fearful, lest I should discover, in it, the local note of the mere globetrotter. But his opinions never fluttered or drooped. He was as impartial to cities, countries, and continents as the winds or gravitation, and as E. Rushmore Coglin prattled of this little planet, I thought with glee of a great, almost cosmopolite who wrote for the whole world and dedicated himself to Bombay. In a poem he has to say that there is pride and rivalry between the cities of the earth and that the men that breed from them they traffic up and down, but cling to their cities, him, as a child to the mother's gown. And whenever they walk, by roaring streets unknown, they remember their native city most faithful, foolish, fond, making her mere-breathed name their bond upon their bond. And my glee was roused because I had caught Mr. Kipling napping. Here I had found a man not made from dust, one who had no narrow boasts of birthplace or country, one who, if he bragged at all, would brag of his whole round globe against the Martians and the inhabitants of the moon. Expression on these subjects was precipitated from E. Rushmore Coglin by the third corner to our table. While Coglin was describing to me the typography along the Siberian railway the orchestra glided into a medley. The concluding air was Dixie, and as the exhilarating notes tumbled forth they were almost overpowered by a great clapping of hands from almost every table. It is worth a paragraph to say that this remarkable scene can be witnessed every evening in numerous cafes in the city of New York. Tons of brew have been consumed over theories to account for it. Some have conjectured hastily that all Southerners in town hide themselves to cafes at nightfall. This applause of the rebel air in a northern city does puzzle a little, but it is not insolvable. The war with Spain, many years generous mint a few long shot winners at the New Orleans racetrack and the brilliant banquets given by the Indiana and Kansas citizens who compose the North Carolina society have made the South rather a fad in Manhattan. Your manicure will lisp softly that your left forefinger reminds her so much of a gentleman's enrichment Virginia. Oh certainly, but many a lady has to work now the war, you know. When Dixie was being played a dark-haired young man sprang up from somewhere with a Mosby guerrilla yell and waved frantically his soft-bremmed hat. Then he strayed through the smoke, dropped into the vacant chair at our table, and pulled out cigarettes. The evening was at the period when reserve is thawed. One of us mentioned three Würzburgers to the waiter. The dark-haired young man acknowledged his inclusion in the order by a smile and a nod. I hastened to ask him a question because I wanted to try out a theory I had. Would you mind telling me, I began, whether you are from the fist of E. Rushmore Coglin bang the table, and I was jarred into silence. Excuse me, said he, but that's a question I never liked to hear asked. What does it matter where a man is from? Is it fair to judge a man by his post-office address? Why, I've seen Kentuckians who hated whiskey, Virginians who weren't descended from Pocahontas, Indianans who hadn't written a novel, Mexicans who didn't wear velvet trousers with silver dollars sewed along the seams, funny Englishmen, spin-thrift Yankees, narrow-minded Westerners, and New Yorkers who were too busy to stop for an hour on the street to watch a one-armed grocer's clerk do up cranberries and paper bags. Let a man be a man and don't handicap him with a label of any section. Pardon me, I said, but my curiosity was not altogether an idle one. I know the South, and when the band plays Dixie I like to observe. I have formed the belief that the man who applauds that air with special violence and ostensible sectional loyalty is invariably a native of either Sacacas, New Jersey or the district between Murray Hill Lyceum and the Harlem River, this city. I was about to put my opinion to the test by inquiring of this gentleman when you were interrupted with your own larger theory, I must confess. And now the dark-haired young man spoke to me, and it became evident that his mind also moved along its own set of grooves. I should like to be a periwinkle, said he mysteriously, on the top of a valley and sang Tu Ralu Ralu. This was clearly too obscure, so I turned again to Coughlin. I've been around the world twelve times, said he. I know an Eskimo and an Upernavik who sends to Cincinnati for his neckties. And I saw a goat-herder in Uruguay who won a prize in a Battle Creek breakfast food puzzle competition. I pay rent on a room in Cairo, Egypt, and another in Yokohama, all the year round. I've got slippers waiting for me in a tea house in Shanghai and I don't have to tell them how to cook my eggs in Rio de Janeiro or Seattle. Any little old world. What's the use of bragging about being from the north, or the south, or the old manor house in the Dale, or Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, or Pike's Peak, or Fairfax County, Virginia, or Hooligan's Flats, or anyplace? It'll be a better world when we quit being fools about some mildewed town or ten acres of swamp land just because we happen to be born there. You seem to be a genuine cosmopolite, I said admiringly, but it also seems that you would decry patriotism. A relic of the Stone Age declared Coughlin warmly. We are all brothers, Chinaman, Englishman, Zulus, Patagonians, and the people in the bend of the Ca River. Someday all this petty pride in one city, or state, or section, or country will be wiped out, and will all be citizens of the world as we ought to be. But while you are wandering in foreign lands, I persisted, do not your thoughts revert to some spot, some dear and nary a spot, interrupted E. R. Coughlin flippantly. The terrestrial, globular, planetary hunk of matter slightly flattened at the poles and known as the earth is my abode. I've met a good many object-bound citizens of this country abroad. I've seen men from Chicago sit in a gondola in Venice on a moonlight night and brag about their drainage canal. I've seen a southerner on being introduced to the king of England hand that monarch without batting his eyes the information that his great aunt on his mother's side was related by marriage to the Perkins's of Charleston. I knew a New Yorker who was kidnapped for ransom in Afghanistan, Banditz. His peoples sent over the money and he came back to Kabul with the agent. Afghanistan? The natives said to him through an interpreter. Well, not so slow, do you think? Oh, I don't know, says he. And he begins to tell them about a cab driver at 6th Avenue and Broadway. Those ideas don't soothe me. I'm not tied down to anything that isn't 8,000 miles in diameter. Just put me down as Rushmore Coglin, citizen of the terrestrial spear. My cosmopolite made a large edu and left me, for he thought he saw someone through the chatter and smoke whom he knew. So I was left with the would-be periwinkle, who was reduced to Würzburger without further ability to voice his aspirations to perch melodious upon the summit of a valley. I sat reflecting upon my evident cosmopolite and wondering how the poet had managed to miss him. He was my discovery, and I believed in him. How was it? The men that breed from them they traffic up and down, but cling to their cities him as a child to the mother's gown. Not so, E. Rushmore Coglin. With the whole world for his my meditations were interrupted by a tremendous noise and conflict from another part of the café. I saw above the heads of the seated patrons E. Rushmore Coglin and a stranger to me engaged in terrific battle. They fought between the tables like titans, and glasses crashed, and men caught their hats up and were knocked down and a brunette screamed, and a blonde began to sing, teasing. My cosmopolite was sustaining the pride and reputation of Earth when the waiters closed in on both combatants with their famous flying wedge formation, and bore them outside still resistant. I called McCarthy one of the French garcons and asked him the cause of the conflict. The man with the red tie that was my cosmopolite said he got hot on account of things said about the bum sidewalks of the place he come from by the other guy. Why, said I, bewildered that man is a citizen of the world, a cosmopolite. He originally from Matawamkeg, Maine, he said continued McCarthy, and he wouldn't stand for no knocking in the place. End of A Cosmopolite in a Café English S. Shears wrote by Anonymous recorded for LibriVox Coffee Break Collection Volume 1 This is the LibriVox Recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Maryann Coleman Hibkins English S. Shears wrote by advertisers and on signboards Two young women want washing, teeth directed with great pains. Babies taken and finished in ten minutes by a country photographer. Wood and coal split. Wanted. A female who has the knowledge of fitting boots of a good moral character. For sale. A handsome piano, the property of a young lady who is leaving Scotland in a walnut case with turned legs. A large Spanish Blue Gentleman's Cloak lost in the neighbourhood of the market. To be sold, a splendid grey horse calculated for a charger or would carry a lady with a switch tail. Wanted a young man to take charge of horses of a religious turn of mind. A lady advertises her desire for a husband with a Roman nose having strong religious tendencies. Wanted a young man to look after a horse of the Methodist persuasion. A chemist inquires will the gentleman who left his stomach for analysis please call and get it together with the result. Wanted an accomplished poodle nurse. Wages $5 a week. In the far west a man advertises for a woman to wash iron and milk one or two cows. Lost a cameo brooch representing Venus and Adonis on the Drum Condra Road about 10 o'clock on Tuesday evening. An advertiser having made an advantageous purchase offers for sale on very low terms. $6000 of prime port wine late the property of gentleman 40 years of age full of body and with a high bouquet. A steamboat captain and advertising for an excursion closes thus tickets $0.25 children half price to be had at the captain's office. A man carriages to be disposed of, mention is made of a male faton. The property of a gentleman with a movable head as good as new. An inducement to return property is offered as follows. If the gentleman who keeps the shoe store with a red head will return the umbrella of a young lady with a well-worn ribs and an iron handle to the slate-roofed grocer's shop he will hear of something to his advantage as the same as a gift of a deceased mother. Now know more with the name engraved upon it. An English matrimonial advertisement reads as follows A young man about 25 years of age in a very good trade whose father will make him worth £1,000, will willingly embrace a suitable match. He has been brought up a dissenter with his parents and is a sober man. A landlady innocent of grammatical knowledge, advertises that she has a fine, eerie, well-finished bedroom for a gentleman 12 foot square. Another has a cheap and desirable suit of rooms for a respectable family and good repair. Still, another has a hall bedroom for a single woman 8 times 12. A photographer sign reads, this style three pictures finished in 15 minutes while you wait with 25 cents beautifully coloured. A cheap restaurant displays this sign. Westerpies open all night, and coffee and cakes off the griddle. A baker displays this sign. Family baking done here. The sign would look more appropriate if it were in front of some of our cool and well-ventilated summer resort hotels. The sign at Abraham Lowe's Inn, Douglas, Isle of Man is accompanied by this quaint verse, I'm Abraham Lowe and halfway at the hill. If I were higher up, what's funny is still, I should be low. Come in and take your fill of porter, ale, wine, spirits, what you will. Step in my friend, I pray, no further go. My prices like myself are always low. On a vacant lot back of Covington, Kentucky has posted this sign. No plane, base bowl on these prim aces. Noticed in a Hobok and ferry boat. The seats in this cabin are reserved for ladies. Gentlemen, I requested not to occupy them until the ladies are seated. A sign in a Pennsylvania town reads as follows. John Smith teach of Caltillians and other dancers. Brama taught in the neatest manner. Fresh salt herring on draft. Likewise Godfrey's cordial. Roots sesage and other garden truck. MB ball on Friday night, prayer meet on Tuesday. Also Sam singing by the choir. The following notice appeared on the fence of a vacant lot in Brooklyn. All persons are forbidden to throw aces on this lot under penalty of the law or any other garbage. A barber sign in Buffalo, New York is the following. This is the place for physionomical cutting. An ecstatic shaving and shampooing. A San Francisco boot black of poetic aspirations. Proclaims his superior school in the following lines. Paste it over the door of his establishment. No day was there so bright. So black was never a night. As will your boots be if you get then blacked right in here you bet. The following appears on a Welsh shoemaker's signboard. Price, Dyer's cobbler, dealer in Bakko Shag and pigtail bacon and dinner bread. Eggs laid by me and very good paradise in the summer. Gentleman and lady can have good tea and crumpets and strawberry with skim milk because I can't get no cream. Note be shoes and boots mended very well. An Irish in exhibits the following in large type. Within this hive we're all alive with whisky sweet as honey. If you are dry step in and dried but don't forget your money. An in new London displays the board with the following inscription. Call softly. Drink moderately. Pay honourably. Be good company. Part friendly. Go home quietly. Let those lines be no man's sorrow. Pay today and I'll trust tomorrow. End of English as she is wrote. Chapter 2. Recording by Mary Ann Coleman-Hitkins www.thisvoiceforyou.com English as she is wrote. By Anonymous. Recorded for LibriVox Coffee Break Collection Volume 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Mary Ann Coleman-Hitkins English as she is wrote. By Anonymous. Chapter 3. Four Epitaphs A tourist account of an untimely ant is given upon a stone in the Mexican churchyard. He was young, he was fair but the engines raised his hair. The following may be read upon the tombstone of Lottie Merrill the Huntress of Wayne County, Pennsylvania. Lottie Merrill lays here. She didn't know what it was to be a fed but she has head her last tussle with the bars and they scooped her, she was a good girl and she is now in heaven. It took six big bars to get away with her. She was only 18 years old. Upon the tomb of a boy who died of eating too much fruit faint epitaph conveys a moral. Currents have checked the current of my blood and berries have brought me to be buried here. Pears have peared off my body's hardy hood and plums and plumbers spear not so one so spear. Fane I would feign my fall so fear are fear. Lessons not hate yet tis a lesson good. Guilt will not long hide guilt. Such thin washed wear wears quickly and its rude touch is soon rude. Grave on my grave some sentence grave in tuss. That lies not as it lies upon my clay but in a gentle strain of unstrained verse prays all to pity a poor patty's pray. Rehearses I was fruitful to my hearth tells that my days are told and soon I'm told away. In Glasgow Cathedral is an epitaph which is engraved on the lid of a very old sarcophagus discovered in the crypt. Our lives are flying shadow gods the pole the index pointing at him is our soul. This the horizon when our son is set which will through Christ a resurrection get. In a graveyard at Montrose in Scotland this inspiration may be seen. Here lies the body of George Young and all of his posterity for 50 years backwards. This brief announcement may be read in Wrexham Churchyard Wales. Here lies five babies and children dear, three at Austria and two here. In a churchyard near London the following may be deciphered. Killed by an omnibus why not? So quicker death a burn is not as Wren's lamented slot for Moore's omnibus communus. There is an unqualified hiberaneism in the following. Here lies the remains of Thomas Malstrom who died in Philadelphia March 17th. Had he lived he would have been buried here. A good deal of positive information is conveyed in this epitaph. Here lies cut down like unripe fruit. A wife of Deacon Amishoo she died of drinking too much coffee Annie Domini 1840. To the victim of an accident. Here lies the body of James Hambrink which was accidentally shot in the Packers River by a young man with one of Colt's large revolvers with no stopper for the hand to rest on. It was one of the old fashion sort, brass mounted and of such is the kingdom of heaven. William Curtis who is famous for his bad grammar may have composed his own epitaph. Here lies William Curtis our late Lord Mayor who has left this world and gone to that there. In a churchyard in London evidently written by a cockney. Here lies John Ross kicked by a horse. In Trinity Churchyard New York this inscription may be read Val. Sydney Breeze June 917 made by himself Sydney Sydney liest thou here I lie here till time's last extremity. Upon a stone under the grocer's arms is this inscription in memory of Gerard, a tea dealer. Garrett some called him but that was too lie. His name was Gerard who now here doth lie. We've not for him since he has gone before to heaven with grocers. There are many more. The value of phonetics spelling is set forth in this test memorial. Here lies two brothers by his fortune surrounded one died of his wounds, the other was drowned it. Resignation in an eye to the main chance are combined in the following. Beneath this stone in a hope of Zion doth lie the landlord of the lion. His son keeps in the business store resigned unto the heavenly will. In a churchyard in Wiltshire, England Beneath this stone lies our dear child who's gone away from we for evermore into eternity. When we do hope that we shall go to he but him can never come back to we. On Mrs. Sarah Newman pain was my potion physics was my food groans was my devotion drugs done me no good Christ was my physician knew what way was best to ease me of my pain he took my soul to rest an inscription to four wives to the memory of my four wives who all died within the space of ten years but more particularly to the last Mrs. Sally Horn who's left me and four dear children she was a good sober and clean soul may I soon go to her dear wives if you and I shall all go to heaven the Lord be blessed for then we shall be even William Joy Horn carpenter on a dire he died to live and lived to die on Mrs. Lee and her son in her life she did her best and now hope her soul's at rest also her son Tom lies at her feet he lived till he made both ends meet at Edinburgh John McPherson was a wonderful person he stood six foot two without a shoe and he was slow at Waterloo one John round was lost at sea and in the grave out of his native place a stone was erected with the following couplet inscribed there on under this bed lies John round who lost at sea and never found in an old churchyard in Ireland he lies John Hickley whose father and mother were drowned on their passage to America had they lived they would have been buried here in a churchyard in Ohio under this sod and under these trees laughed the bod ear of Simon peace he's not in this hole but only his pod he shelled out of his soul and went up to his God tombstone in Cornwall England father and mother and I lie buried here asunder father and mother lie buried here and I lie buried yonder on Eliza Newman like a tender rose tree was my spouse to me her offspring plucked too long deprived of life was she three went before her life went with the six I stay with three our sorrows full to mix to Christ our only hope our joys doth fix on a drama in an English churchyard Tom Clark was a drama who went to the war and was killed by a bullet in his soul sent for there were no friends to mourn him for his virtues were rare he died like a man and like a Christian bear on a stone near Appomattox courthouse Virginia Robert C. Wright was born June 26 1772 died July 2nd 1815 by the blood thirsty hand of John Sweeney senior who was massacred with the knife then a London gun discharge a ball penetrate the heart that gives the immortal wound at Middleton Connecticut is the following this lovely pleasant child he was the only one although we've buried three before two daughters and a son the controlling power of rhyme as well illustrated in the sub joined from a tombstone in Manchester he lies alas more as the pity or that remains of Nicholas New City N.B. his name was Newton another instance of how rhyming difficulties may be overcome as this follows he lies the remains of Thomas Woodhen the most amiable of husbands and excellent of men N.B. his name was Woodcock but it won't come in rhyme his widow the sub joined contains a solemn morning my wife has left me she's gone up on high she was thoughtful while dying and said Tom don't cry she was the great beauty so everyone knows with heby like features and a fine Roman nose she played the piano and was learning a ballad when she sickened and died did from eating veal salad upon a tombstone in Pennsylvania Battle of Shiloh April 6th 1862 John D.L. was born March 26th 1839 in the town of West Dresden State of New York where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest a tombstone in Pittsfield, Massachusetts has these lines the new my friends are passing by and this inform you where I lie remember you Elon must have like me a mansion in the grave also three infants two sons and a daughter end of English as she is wrote Chapter 3 Recording by Mary Ann Coleman Hipkins www.thisvoiceforyou.com The Greedy Dog by Lyda Brown McMurray Recorded for LibreVox Coffee Break Collection Volume 1 This is a LibreVox recording All LibreVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibreVox.org Recording by Alana Jordan The Greedy Dog What a good time I shall have eating this meat when I get home said a dog as it started to cross a stream of water he stopped suddenly and looked down into the water there was a shadow that dog has a larger piece of meat than I he said I want that piece of meat and I will have it he growled but the dog in the water did not move nor drop his piece of meat he snapped at the dog in the water he was soon sorry for that for the meat slipped from his mouth and sank to the bottom of the stream and the dog in the water lost his meat at the same time End of The Greedy Dog Recording by Alana Jordan in the great state of Missouri Hard Guy by H.B. Carlton Recorded for the LibreVox Coffee Break Collection Volume 1 This is a LibreVox recording All LibreVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibreVox.org Recording by Graham Dunlop Hard Guy by H.B. Carlton He was standing at the side of the Glarsight Super Highway His arm half raised Thumb pointed in the same direction as that of the approaching rocket car Ordinarily Frederick Martin would have passed a hitchhiker without stopping but there was something in the bearing and appearance of this one that caused him to apply his brakes Martin opened the door next to the vacant seat beside him Going my way he asked A pair of steady, unsmiling blue eyes looked him over Yeah Alright then hop in The hitchhiker took his time He slid into the seat with casual deliberateness and slammed the car door shut The rocket car got underway once more They rode in silence for half a mile or so Finally Martin glanced questingly at his companion's expressionless profile Where are you headed for? He asked Dentonville He spoke from the corner of his mouth without turning his head Ah yes That's the next town isn't it? Yeah Not very communicative, reflected Martin noticing the rather ragged condition of his cello lex clothing Have much trouble getting rights? The passenger turned his head his blue eyes without emotion Yeah Most guys are leery about picking up hitchhikers Scared they'll get robbed Martin pursed his lips nodded Yeah, something to that alright I'm usually pretty careful myself but I figured you looked okay Can't always tell by looks was the kind reply Cause us guys mostly pick out some guy with a swell atomic mobile if we're gonna pull a stick up When we see an old heap like this one there's usually not enough dough to make it pay Martin felt his jaw drop Say you sound like you're going for that sort of thing I'm telling you right now I haven't got enough cash on me to make it worth your while I'm just a salesman trying to get along You got nothing to worry about His passenger assured him Stick ups ain't my racket An audible sigh of relief escaped Martin I'm glad to hear that What is your racket anyway The blue eyes Frosted over Look chum Sometimes it ain't exactly healthy to ask questions like that Pardon me Martin said hastily I didn't mean anything My business of course The calm eyes flicked over his contrite expression Skip it pal, you look like a right guy I'll put you next to something Only keep your lip button, see Oh absolutely I'm Mike Egan Head of the Strato Rovers No Martin was plainly awed The Strato Rovers, eh? I've heard of them all right The other nodded complacently Yeah Where about the toughest mob this side of Mars We don't bother honest people though We get ours from the crooks and racketeers They can't squeal to the interplanetary police There's a lot in what you say Agreed Martin And of course that puts your mob In the Robin Hood class Robin Hood Nuts, that guy was a dope Running around with bows and arrows Why are we gonna mystery ray That paralyzes anybody that starts up with us They're all right when it wears off But by that time we get away Martin was properly impressed A mystery ray With a weapon like that You should be able to walk into a bank And clean it out without any trouble His passengers lips curled I told you we don't bother honest people We even help the SP sometimes Right now we're working with The Earth Mars G-Men And rounding up a gang of fifth columnists That are planning on taking over the government They're led by the Black Hornet This Black Hornet goes around pretending Like he's a big businessman But he's really an inter-natural spy A what? An inter-natural spy Repeated Martin's companion shortly The EMG men say He's the most dangerous man in the country But he won't last long with the straighter Wolves on his tail Martin nodded I can believe that Tell me Egan, what are you doing out here In a small earth town like Dentonville Yeah The government's building some kind of Ammunition place near here And I understand the Black Hornets Figuring on wrecking everything Of course he won't get away with it Scattered plastic-aid houses on either side Of the road indicated they'd reached The outskirts of Dentonville Mike Egan pointed ahead To a small white house Set back among a cluster of trees That's where I'm holed up Dropped me off in front A young woman in a faded blue satin-glass house dress Was standing at the gate Of the white picket fence She watched in silence as the passenger Stepped from the rocket car And lifted his hand to the driver In careless farewell Thanks for the lift, chum Not at all, replied Martin Glad to have been of service to Mike Egan The woman smiled to him He's told you his name I see Martin lifted his hat Indeed he has Michael's alright, she said I do think though that he Reads too many Buck Gordon Into planetary comic books For a boy of eleven End of Hard Guy Journalism in Tennessee By Mark Twain This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings Are in the public domain For more information Or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Reading by Greg Marguerite Journalism in Tennessee By Mark Twain The editor of the Memphis Avalanche Swoops thus mildly down Upon a correspondent who posted Him as a journalist And a correspondent who posted Him as a radical While he was writing the first word The middle, dotting his eyes Crossing his t's and punching his period He knew he was concocting a sentence That was saturated with infamy And reeking with falsehood Exchange I was told by the physician That a southern climate would Improve my health and so I went down To Tennessee and got a birth on The morning glory in Johnson County When I went on duty I found the chief editor Sitting tilted back in a three-legged chair With his feet on a pine table There was another pine table in the room And another afflicted chair And both were half-buried under newspapers And scraps and sheets of manuscript There was a wooden box of sand Sprinkled with cigar stubs And old soldiers And a stove with a door Hanging by its upper hinge The chief editor had a long-tailed Black cloth frock coat on And white linen pants His boots were small and neatly black He wore a ruffled shirt A large seal ring A standing collar of obsolete pattern And a checkered neckerchief With the ends hanging down Date of costume about 1848 He was smoking a cigar And trying to think of a word And in pawing his hair Had rumbled his locks a good deal He was scowling fearfully Cocking a particularly naughty editorial He told me to take the exchanges And skim through them and Write up the spirit of the Tennessee press Condensing into the article All of their contents that seemed of interest I wrote as follows Spirit of the Tennessee press The editors of the semi-weekly Earthquake evidently labor under A misapprehension with regard to The Daily Hack Railroad It is not the object of the company To leave Buzzardville off to one side On the contrary, they consider it one of the most important Points along the line And consequently can have no desire To slight it The gentlemen of the earthquake will, of course, Take pleasure in making the correction John W. Blossom, Esquire The able editor of the Higginsville Thunderbolt and Battlecry of Freedom Arrived in the city yesterday He is stopping at the Van Buren House We observe that our Contemporary of the Mud Springs Morning Howl has fallen Into the error of supposing that the election Of Van Werter is not an established fact But he will have discovered his mistake Before this reminder reaches him No doubt He was doubtless misled by Incomplete election returns It is pleasant to note that the city Of Blathersville is endeavoring to Contract with some New York gentlemen To pave its well-nigh impassable streets With the Nicholson pavement The Daily Hurrah urges the measure With ability and seems confident Of ultimate success I passed my manuscript over To the chief editor for acceptance Alteration or destruction He glanced at it and his face clouded He ran his eye down the pages And his countenance grew portentous It was easy to see that something was wrong Presently he sprang up and said Thunder and lightning Do you suppose I'm going to speak Of those cattle that way? Do you suppose my subscribers are going To stand such cruel as that? Give me the pen. I never saw a pen scrape And scratch its way so viciously Or plow through another man's verbs And adjectives so relentlessly. While he was in the midst of his work Somebody shot at him through the open window And marred the symmetry of my ear. Ah! said he. That is the scoundrel Smith Of the moral volcano. He was due yesterday. And he snatched a navy revolver From his belt and fired. Smith dropped, shot in the thigh. The shot spoiled Smith's aim Who was just taking a second chance And he crippled a stranger. It was me. Merely a finger shot off. Then the chief editor went on With his erasure and inter-lineations. Just as he finished them A hand grenade came down the stove pipe And the explosion shivered the stove Into a thousand fragments. However it did no further damage Except that a vagrant piece Knocked a couple of my teeth out. The stove is utterly ruined. Said the chief editor. I said I believed it was. Well, no matter. Don't want it this kind of weather. I know the man that did it. I'll get him. Now, here is the way this stuff ought to be written. I took the manuscript. It was scarred with erasures and inter-lineations Till its mother wouldn't have known it if it had had one. It now read as follows. Spirit of the Tennessee Press And veterate liars of the semi-weekly earthquake Are evidently endeavoring to palm off Upon a noble and chivalrous people Another of their vile and brutal falsehoods With regard to that most glorious conception Of the nineteenth century The Ballyhack Railroad. The idea that Buzzardville was to be left off At one side originated in their own fulsome brains Or rather the settlings Which they regard as brains. They had better swallow this life. They want to save their abandoned reptile carcasses And cow-hiding they so richly deserve. That ass blossom of the Higginsville Thunderbolt And battle cry of freedom is down here again Spunging at the Van Buren. We observe that the besotted, Blaggard of the Mudspring's morning howl Is giving out with his usual propensity for lying That Van Werder is not elected. The heaven-born mission of journalism Is to disseminate truth, to eradicate error, To educate, refine and elevate the tone Of public morals and manners and make all men More gentle, more virtuous, more charitable And in all ways better and holier and happier. And yet this black-hearted scoundrel Degrades his great office persistently To the dissemination of falsehood, Calumny, Vituperation, and vulgarity. Blathersville wants a Nicholson pavement. It wants a jail and a poor house more. The idea of a pavement in a one-horse town Composed of two ginmills, a blacksmith's shop, And that mustard plaster of a newspaper, The Daily Hurrah. The crawling, insect buckner who edits The Hurrah's brain about his business With his customary imbecility, And imagining that he is talking sense. Now, that's the way to write. Peppery, and to the point. Mush and milk journalism gives me the fantods. About this time a brick came through the window With a splintering crash and gave me A considerable jolt in the back. I moved out of range. I began to feel in the way. The chief said, That was the Colonel likely. I've been expecting him for two days. He will be up now, right away. He was correct. The Colonel appeared in the door a moment afterward With a dragoon revolver in his hand. He said, Sir, I have the honor of addressing the paltrune Who edits this mangy sheet. You have. Be seated, sir. Be careful of the chair. One of its legs is gone. I believe I have the honor of addressing The putrid liar, Colonel Blatherskite Tecumseh. Right, sir. I have a little account to settle with you. If you are at leisure, we will begin. I have an article on the encouraging Progress of moral and intellectual development In America to finish, but there is no hurry. Begin. Both pistols rang out their fierce Clamor at the same instant. The chief lost a lock of his hair And the Colonel's bullet ended its career In the fleshy part of my thigh. The Colonel's left shoulder was clipped a little. They fired again. Both missed their men this time But I got my share, a shot in the arm. At the third fire both gentlemen were wounded slightly And I had a knuckle chipped. I then said I believed I would go out And take a walk as this was a private matter And I had a delicacy about participating in it further. But both gentlemen begged me to keep my seat And assured me that I was not in the way. They then talked about the elections And the crops while they reloaded And I fell to tying up my wounds. But presently they opened fire again With animation and every shot took effect. But it's proper to remark That five out of six fell to my share. The sixth one mortally wounded the Colonel Who remarked with fine humor That he would have to say good morning now As he had business uptown. He inquired the way to the undertakers and left. The chief turned to me and said I am expecting company to dinner And shall have to get ready. It will be a favor to me if you will read proof And attend to the customers. I winced a little at the idea of attending to the customers But I was too bewildered by the fuselod That was still ringing in my ears To think of anything to say. He continued, Jones will be here at three. Cowhide him. Perhaps throw him out of the window. Ferguson will be along about four. Kill him. That is all for today, I believe. If you have any odd time, you might write a blistering article on the police. Give the chief inspector rats. The cowhides are under the table. Weapons in the drawer. Ammunition there in the corner. Lint and bandages up there in the pigeonholes. In case of accident go to Lancet, the surgeon, downstairs. He advertises. We take it out and trade. He was gone. He shuddered. At the end of the next three hours I had been through perils so awful That all peace of mind and all cheerfulness were gone from me. Gillespie had called and thrown me out of the window. Jones arrived promptly and when I got ready to do the cowhiding He took the job off my hands. In an encounter with a stranger, not in the Bill of Fair I had lost my scalp. Another stranger by the name of Thompson left me a mere wreck And a ruin of chaotic rags. At bay in the corner and beset by an infuriated mob Of editors, blacklegs, politicians and desperados Who raved and swore and flourished their weapons about my head Till the air shimmered with glancing flashes of steel. I was in the act of resigning my birth on the paper When the chief arrived and with him a rabble of Charmed and enthusiastic friends. Then ensued a scene of riot and carnage such as No human pen or steel one either could describe. People were shot, probed, dismembered, blown up, thrown out of the window. There was a brief tornado of murky blasphemy with a Confused and frantic war dance glimmering through it. And then all was over. In five minutes there was silence and the gory chief And I sat alone and surveyed the sanguinary ruin that Srewed the floor around us. He said, You'll like this place when you get used to it. I said, I'll have to get you to excuse me. I think maybe I might write to suit you after a while As soon as I had some practice and learned the language I am confident I could. But to speak the plain truth that sort of energy of expression Has its inconveniences and a man is liable to interruption. You see that yourself. Vigorous writing is calculated to elevate the public, no doubt. But then I do not like to attract so much attention As it calls forth. I can't write with comfort when I am interrupted so much As I have been today. I like this berth well enough, but I don't like to be left here To wait on the customers. The experiences are novel, I grant you, and entertaining, too, After a fashion, but they are not judiciously distributed. A gentleman shoots at you through the window and cripples me. A bombshell comes down the stovepipe for your gratification And sends the stove door down my throat. A friend drops in to swap compliments with you And freckles me with bullet holes till my skin won't hold my principles. You go to dinner and Jones comes with his cowhide. Gillespie throws me out of the window. Thompson tears all my clothes off, and an entire stranger takes my scalp With the easy freedom of an old acquaintance. And in less than five minutes all the blaggards in the country Arrive in their war paint and proceed to scare the rest of me To death with their tommy hawks. Take it all together, I'd never had such a spirited time in all my life As I have had today. No, I like you, and I like your calm, unruffled way Of explaining things to the customers, but you see, I am not used to it. The southern heart is too impulsive. Southern hospitality is too lavish with the stranger. The paragraphs which I have written today And into whose cold sentences your masterly hand Has infused the fervent spirit of Tennessee in journalism Will wake up another nest of hornets. All that mob of editors will come, and they will come hungry too And want somebody for breakfast. I shall have to bid you adieu. I declined to be president at these festivities. I came south for my health. I will go back on the same errand, and suddenly Tennessee in journalism is too stirring for me. After which we parted with mutual regret, And I took apartments at the hospital. End of Journalism in Tennessee by Mark Twain Life's Eternal Query Collected by Thomas L. Masson Recorded for LibriVox Coffee Break Collection Volume 1 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recorded by Alana Jordan Life's Eternal Query Collected by Thomas L. Masson Did it ever occur to you that a man's life is full of cussedness? He comes into the world without his consent and goes out against his will and the trip between is exceedingly rocky. When he is little, the big girls kiss him. When he is big, the little girls kiss him. If he is poor, he is a bad manager. If he is rich, he's a crook. If he is prosperous, everybody wants to do him a favor. If he needs credit, they hand him a lemon. If he is in politics, it is for graft. If out of politics, he is no good to his country. If he doesn't give to charity, he's a tightwad. If he does, it's for show. If he is actively religious, he is a hypocrite. And if he takes no interest in religion, he is a heathen. If he is affectionate, he is a soft mark. If he cares for no one, he is cold-blooded. If he dies young, there was a great future for him. If he lives to an old age, he missed his calling. If you don't fight, you're yellow. If you do, you're a brute. If you save your money, you're a grouch. If you spend it, you're a loafer. If you get it, you're a grafter. And if you don't get it, you're a bum. So what's the use? End of Life's Eternal Query Recording by Alana Jordan in the great state of Missouri Selections by B.P. Shilliber from Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor Recorded for LibriVox Coffee Break Collection, Volume 1 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Rosie Selections by B.P. Shilliber from Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor Fancy Diseases Diseases is very various, said Mrs. Partington as she returned from a street door conversation with Dr. Bolas. The doctor tells me that poor old Mrs. Hayes has got two buckles on her lungs. It is dreadful to think of, I declare. The diseases is so various. One way we hear of people's dying of hermitage of the lungs, another way of the brown creatures. Here they tell us of the elementary canal being out of order and there about tauntsers of the throat. Here we hear of neurology in the head, there of an embargo. One side of us we hear of men being killed by getting a pound of tough beef in the sarcophagus and there another kills himself by discovering his jocular vein. Things change so that I declare I don't know how to subscribe for any diseases nowadays. New names and new nostrils take the place of the old and I might as well throw my old herb bag away. Fifteen minutes afterward Isaac had that herb bag for a target and broke three squares of glass in the cellar window in trying to hit it before the old lady knew what he was about. She didn't mean exactly what she said. Bailed out. So our neighbor, Mr. Gozzle, has been arranged at the bar for drunkardess, said Mrs. Partington. And she sighed as she thought of his wife and children at home with the cold weather close at hand and the searching winds and shrooting through the chinks in the windows and waving the tattered curtain like a banner where the little ones stood shivering by the faint embers. God forgive him and pity them, said she, in a tone of voice tremulous with emotion. But he was bailed out, said Ike, who had devoured the residue of the paragraph and laid the paper in a pan of liquid custard that the dame was preparing for thanksgiving and sat swinging the oven door to and fro as if to fan the fire that crackled and blazed within. Bailed out, was he, said she. Well, I should think it would have been cheaper to have pumped him out, for when our cellar was filled, art of the city fathers had degraded the street, we had to have it pumped out, though there wasn't half so much in it as he has swilled down. She paused and reached up on the high shelves of the closet for her pie plates while Ike busied himself in tasting the various preparations. The dame thought that was the smallest quart of sweet cider she had ever seen. Seeking a Comet. It was with an anxious feeling that Mrs. Partington, having smoked her specs, directed her gaze toward the western sky in quest of the tailless Comet of 1850. I can't see it, said she, and a shade of vexation was perceptible in the tone of her voice. I don't think much of this explanatory system, continued she, that they praise so, where the stars are mixed up so that I can't tell Jew Peter from Satan, nor the consternation of the great bear from the man in the moon. Tis all dark to me. I don't believe there is any Comet at all, whoever heard of a Comet without a tail I should like to know. It isn't natural, but the printers will make a tail for it fast enough for they are always getting up comical stories. With a complaint about the falling dew and a slight murmur of disappointment the dame disappeared behind a deal-door like the moon behind a cloud. Going to California. Dear me! exclaimed Mrs. Partington sorrowfully. How much a man will bear, and how far he will go to get the soldered dross, as Pars and Martin called it, when he refused the beggar a sixpence for fear it might lead him into extravagance. Everybody is going to California and chagrin ardor gold. Cousin Jones and the three Smiths have gone, and Mr. Chip the Carpenter has left his wife and seven children and a blessed old mother-in-law to seek his fortune too. This is the strangest yet, and I don't see how he could have done it. So ungrateful to treat Heaven's blessings so lightly. But there we are told that the love of money is the root of all evil and how true it is. For they are now rooting ardor it like pigs ardor ground nuts. Why, it is a perfect money mania among everybody. And she shook her head doubtingly as she pensively watched a small mug of cider with an apple in it simmering by the winter fire. She was somewhat fond of a drink made in this way. Mrs. Partington in court. I took my knitting work and went up into the gallery, said Mrs. Partington, the day after visiting one of the city courts. I went up into the gallery, and after I had adjusted my specs, I looked down into the room, but I couldn't see any courting going on. An old gentleman seemed to be asking a good many impertinent questions, just like some old folks, and people were sitting around making minutes of the conversation. I don't see how they made out what was said, for they all told different stories. How much easier it would be to get along if they were all made to tell the same story? What a sight of trouble it would save the lawyers. The case, as they call it, was given to the jury, but I couldn't see it, and a gentleman with a long pole was made to swear that he'd keep an eye on them and see that they didn't run away with it. By and by, in they came again, and they said somebody was guilty of something, who had just said he was innocent, and didn't know nothing about it no more than the little baby that had never subsistence. I come away soon afterward, but I couldn't help thinking how trying it must be to sit there all day, shut out from the blessed air. A propo of Superintendent Andrews reported objection to the singing of the recessional in the Chicago Public Schools on the ground that the atheists might be offended. The Chicago Post says, For the benefit of our skittish friends, the atheists, and in order not to deprive the public school children of the literary beauties of certain poems that may be classed by Dr. Andrews as hymns, we venture to suggest this compromise, taking a few lines and illustration from our national anthem. Our father's God, assuming purely for the sake of argument that there is a God, to thee, author of liberty, with apologies to our friends, the atheists, to thee I sing, but we needn't mean it, you know. Long may our land be bright, with freedom's holy light. Protect us by thy might, remember this is purely hypothetical, great God, again assuming that there is a God, our King, simply an allegorical phrase and not intended offensively to any taxpayer. End of Selections by B. P. Shilliber. Recording by Rosie. Selections from Mr. Punch-A-Wheel. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Rosie. Selections from Mr. Punch-A-Wheel, edited by J. A. Hammerton. Page 14. Hints for biking beginners. Number one. Ensure your life in limbs. The former will benefit your relations, the latter yourself. Number two. Learn on a hired machine. The best plan is to borrow a machine from a friend. It saves hiring. Should the tire become punctured, the brake be broken, the bell cracked, the lamp missing, and the gear out of gear, you will return it as soon as possible. Advising your friend to provide himself with a stronger one next time. Number three. Practice on some soft and smooth ground. For example, on a lawn. The one next door for choice. A muddy road, although sufficiently soft, is not recommended. The drawbacks are obvious. Number four. Choose a secluded place for practicing. It may at first sight appear somewhat selfish to deprive your neighbors of a gratuitous performance which would be certain to amuse them. Nevertheless, be firm. Number five. Get someone to hold you on. Engage your friend in an interesting conversation while you mount your bicycle. Do you remember Mr. Winkle's dialogue with Sam Weller when he attempted skating? You can model your conversation on this idea. Friend will support you while you ride and talk. Keep him at it. It will be excellent exercise for him physically and morally. Also economical for you, as otherwise you would have to pay a runner. Number six. Don't bike, trike. Page 62. Broken on the wheel. First lesson. Held on by instructor, a tall muscular young man, thought it was so easy. Cling for dear life to handle as beginners in horsemanship cling to the reins. Instructor says, I must not. Evidently cannot hold on by my knees. Ask him what I am to hold on by. Nothing, he says. How awful! Feel suspended in the air. That is what I ought to be. At present am more on ground. Anyway, one foot down. Even when in movement, position of feet uncertain. Go a few yards supported. Muscular instructor rather hot and tired, but says civilly, you're getting on nicely, sir. At this, get off unexpectedly, and, when I am picked up, reply, very likely, only my feet were off the pedals all the time. Then rest and watch little children riding easily. One pretty girl. Wonder whether she laughed at me. Probably. Shall have another try. Second lesson. Held on by another instructor who urges me to put more life into it. Hope it won't be the death of me. Work in a manner which even the treadmill, I imagine, could not necessitate, and get the wheel round a few times. Painful wobbling. Instructor says I must pedal more quickly. Can't. Rest a minute. Panting. Offally hot. Observe little children going round comfortably. Pretty girl here again, looking as fresh and cool as possible. Suddenly managed to ride three yards unsupported, then collapse. But, and progressing, shall come again soon. Third lesson. Endeavor to get on alone. Immediately get off on other side. Nearly upset the pretty girl. Polite self-effacement impossible when one is at the mercy of a mere machine. After a time, manage better. And at least get started and ride alone for short distances. Always tumble off ignominiously just as I meet the pretty girl. Instructor urges me to break the record. Hope I shan't break my neck. Finally go all round the ground. Triumph! Pretty girl seems less inclined to laugh. Delightful exercise bicycle riding shall come again tomorrow. Fourth lesson. High northeast wind. Hot sun. Regular May weather. Clouds of cold dust from track. Pretty girl not there at all. Start confidently. Endeavor to knock down a wall. Wall does not suffer much. Start again. Faster this time. The pretty girl has just come. We'll show what I can do now. Career over large hole. Bicycle sinks and then takes a mighty leap. Unprepared for this. And cast into the air. Picked up. Can't stand. Something broken. Doctor will say what. Anyhow. Clothes torn. Bruised. Disheartened. Dare not catch the eye of pretty girl. Carried home. Shall give up bicycle riding. Awful fag. And no fun. Page 24. That bicycle lamp. The other Sunday afternoon I rode over on my bicycle to see the Robinsons. They live seven miles away. Tomkins and others were there. People who live in remote country places always seem pleased to see a fellow creature, but Robinson and his wife are unusually hospitable and good-natured. After I had some tea and thought of leaving, a hobnail was discovered in the tire of Tomkins' bicycle. He, being very athletic, was playing croquet, a game which requires vast muscular strength. However, he said that his tires were something quite new, and that in one minute one man or even one child would stick one postage stamp or anything of the sort over that puncture and mend it. So all the rest of us and the butler, principally the butler, who was an expert in bicycles, went at it vigorously, and after we had all worked for nearly an hour the tire was patched up and Tomkins, having finished his game, rode coolly away. I was going to do the same, but Robinson wouldn't hear of it. I must stay to dinner. I said I had no lamp for riding home in the dark. He would lend me his. I said I should have to dine in knickerbockers. That didn't matter in the country. The next Sunday I rode over again. I started directly after lunch, lest I should seem to have come to dinner, and I gave the butler that lamp directly I arrived. But it was all no good, for I stayed till ten and had to borrow it again. Bring it back tomorrow morning, said Robinson, and help us with our hay-making. Again dined in knickerbockers. On Monday I resolved to be firm. I would leave by daylight, rode over early. After some indifferent hay-making and some excellent lunch I tried to start. No good. Robinson carried me off to a neighbor's tennis party. After we returned from that, he said I must have some dinner. Couldn't ride home all those seven miles starving. Knickerbockers didn't matter. Again dined there and rode home at ten thirty. So I still have Robinson's lamp. Now I want to know how I'm going to get it back to his house. If I haven't taken by anybody else, he will think I don't care to come, which would be quite a mistake. Have vowed that I will not dine there again, except in proper clothes. A hospitable threshold, even before breakfast, I shall never get away before bedtime. Can't ride seven miles in evening dress before breakfast, even in the country. Besides, whatever clothes I wore, I should never be able to leave by daylight. I should still have his lamp. Can't take a second lamp. Would look like inviting myself to dinner. So would the evening clothes at breakfast. What is to be done? End of Selections from Mr. Punch a Wheel Recording by Rosie My Watch An Instructive Little Tail by Mark Twain This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Reading by Greg Marguerite My Watch An Instructive Little Tail by Mark Twain My beautiful new watch had run eighteen months without losing or gaining and without breaking any part of its machinery or stopping. I had come to believe it infallible in its judgments about the time of day and to consider its constitution and its anatomy imperishable. But at last one night I let it run down. I grieved about it as if it were a recognized messenger and forerunner of calamity. But by and by I cheered up, and commanded my boatings and superstitions to depart. Next day I stepped into the chief jewelers to set it by the exact time and the head of the establishment took it out of my hand and proceeded to set it for me. Then he said, She's four minutes slow. Regulator once pushing up. I tried to stop him, tried to make him understand that the watch kept perfect time. But no. All this human cabbage could see was that the watch was four minutes slow and the regulator must be pushed up a little. And so while I danced around him in anguish and implored him to let the watch alone, he calmly and cruelly did the shameful deed. My watch began to gain. It gained faster and faster day by day. Within the week it sickened to a raging fever and its pulse went up to 150 in the shade. At the end of two months it had left all the timepieces of the town far in the rear and was a fraction over 13 days ahead of the almanac. It was a way into November enjoying the snow while the October leaves were still turning. It hurried up house rent, bills payable and such things in such a ruinous way that I could not abide it. I took it to the watchmaker to be regulated. He asked me if I had ever had it repaired. I said no. It had never needed any repairing. He looked a look of vicious happiness and eagerly pried the watch open and then put a small dice-box into his eye and peered into its machinery. He said it wanted cleaning and oiling besides regulating. Come in a week. After being cleaned and oiled and regulated my watch slowed down to that degree that it ticked like a tolling bell. I began to be left by trains. I failed all appointments. I got to missing my dinner. My watch strung out three days grace to four and let me go to protest. I finally drifted back into yesterday, then day before, then into last week and by and by the comprehension came upon me that all solitary and alone I was lingering along in a week before last and the world was out of sight. I seemed to detect in myself a sort of sneaking fellow feeling for the mummy in the museum and a desire to swamp news with him. I went to a watchmaker again. He took the watch all to pieces while I waited and then said the barrel held. He said he could reduce it in three days. After this the watch averaged well but nothing more. For half a day it would go like the very mischief and keep up such a barking and wheezing and whooping and sneezing and snorting that I could not hear myself think for the disturbance. And as long as it held out there was not a watch in the land that stood any chance against it. But the rest of the day it would keep on slowing down and fooling along until the box it had left behind caught up again. So at last at the end of twenty-four hours it would trot up to the judges stand all right and just in time. It would show a fair and square average and no man could say it had done more or less than its duty. But a correct average is only a mild virtue in a watch and I took this instrument to another watchmaker. He said the king bolt was broken. I said I was glad it was nothing more serious. In plain truth I had no idea what the king bolt was but I did not choose to appear ignorant to a stranger. He repaired the king bolt but what the watch gained in one way it lost in another. It would run a while and then stop a while and then run a while again and so on using its own discretion about the intervals. And every time it went off it kicked back like a musket. I patted my breast for a few days but finally took the watch to he picked it all to pieces and turned the ruin over and over under his glass and then he said there appeared to be something the matter with the hair trigger. He fixed it and gave it a fresh start. It did well now except that always at ten minutes to ten the hands would shut together like a pair of scissors and from that time forth they would travel together. The oldest man in the world could not make head or tail of the time of day by such a watch and so I went again to have the thing repaired. This person said that the crystal had got bent and that the mainspring was not straight. He also remarked that part of the works needed half-soling. He made these things all right and then my timepiece performed unexceptionally except that now and then after working along quietly for nearly eight hours everything inside would let go all of a sudden and begin to buzz like a bee and the hands would straight away begin to spin round and round so fast that their individuality was lost completely and they simply seemed a delicate spider's web over the face of the watch. She would reel off the next twenty-four hours in six or seven minutes and then stop with a bang. I went with a heavy heart to one more watchmaker and looked on while he took her to pieces. Then I prepared to cross question him rigidly for this thing was getting serious. The watch had cost two hundred dollars originally and I seemed to have paid out two or three thousand for repairs. While I waited and looked on I presently recognized in this watchmaker an old acquaintance, a steamboat engineer of other days and not a good engineer either. He examined all the parts carefully just as the other watchmakers had done and then he delivered his verdict with the same confidence of manner. He said, She makes too much steam. You want to hang the monkey wrench on the safety valve. I brained him on the spot and had him buried at my own expense. My uncle William now deceased alas used to say that a good horse was a good horse until it had run away once and that a good watch was a good watch until the repairers got a chance at it. And he used to wonder what became of all the unsuccessful tinkers and gunsmiths and shoemakers and engineers and blacksmiths but nobody could ever tell him. End of My Watch An Instructive Little Tale by Mark Twain The New Advertising by P.G. Wattaz Recorded for LibriVox Coffee Break Collection Volume 1 This is a LibriVox recording or LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Secrets In Denmark said the man of ideas coming into the smoking room I see that they have original ideas on the subject of advertising According to the usually well-informed daily liar all bombastic advertising is punished with a fine. The advertiser is expected to describe his words in restrained or modest language. In case this idea should be introduced into England I have drawn up a few specimen advertisements which in my opinion combine attractiveness with a shrinking modesty at which no censor could prevail. And in spite of our protests he began to read us his first effort, descriptive of a patent medicine. It runs like this, he said. Timpson's tonic for distracted deadbeats has been known to cure. We hate to seem to boast but many who have tried it are still alive. Take a dose or two in your spare time it's not bad stuff. Read what an outside stroke broker says Sir, after three months steady absorption of your tonic I was no worse. We do not wish to thrust ourselves forward in any way if you prefer other medicines by all means take them. Only we just thought we'd mention it casually as it were that Timpson's is pretty good. How's that? inquired the man of ideas. Attractive I fancy without being bombastic. Now, one about a new novel. Ready? Mr. Lucien's log roller latest. The dyspepsia of the soul. The dyspepsia of the soul. The dyspepsia of the soul. Don't buy it if you don't want to but just listen to a few of the criticisms. The dyspepsia of the soul. Rather rubbish spectator. We advise all insomniacs to read Mr. Log Roller's sporific pages. Outlook wrought pelican the dyspepsia of the soul. Already in its first edition. What do you think of that? Ask the man of ideas. We told him. End of recording. End of the new advertising. Noting an increase in bigamy from Love Conquers All by Robert Benchley. Recorded for LibriVox Coffee Break Collection volume 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the description below. Please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Rosie. Noting an increase in bigamy from Love Conquers All by Robert Benchley. Either more men are marrying more wives than ever before or they are getting more careless about it. During the past week bigamy has crowded baseball out of the papers and while this may be due in part to the fact that it was a cold rainy week and little baseball could be played at the end of the week, we will continue on into the next paragraph. There is, of course, nothing new in bigamy. Anyone who goes forward with the idea of originating a new fad which shall be known by his name like the daguerreotype or Potatoes O'Brien will have to reckon with the priority claims of several hundred generations of historical characters, most of them wearing brown beards. Just why beards and bigamy seem to have gone hand in hand through the ages is a matter for the professional humanists we certainly haven't got time to do it here. But the multiple marriages unearthed during the past week have a certain homey flavor lacking in some of those which have gone before. For instance, the man in New Jersey who had two wives living right with him all of the time in the same apartment no need for subterfuge here no deceiving one about the other it was just a matter of walking back and forth between the dining room and the study this is, of course, bigamy under ideal conditions. But in tracing the tendency like this, we must not deal so much with concrete cases as with drifts and curves. A couple of statistics are also necessary, especially if it is an alarming tendency that is being traced. The statistics follow in alphabetical order. In the United States during the years 1918 to 1919 there were 4,956,673 weddings. 2,485,845 of these were church weddings strongly against the wishes of the bride groom's concerned. In these weddings, 10,489,392 silver olive forks were received as gifts. Starting with these figures as a basis we turn to the report of the Pennsylvania State Committee on Outdoor Gymnastics for the year beginning January 4th, 1920 and ending the year later. This report being pretty fairly uninteresting, we leave it and turn to another report which covers the manufacture and sale of rugs. This has a picture of a rug in it and a darn good likeness it is too. In this rug report we find that it takes a Navajo Indian only 11 days to weave a rug 12 by 5 with a swastika design in the middle. 11 days. It seems incredible. Why? It takes only 365 days to make a year. Now having that there are 73,000 men and women in this country today who can neither read nor write and that of these only 4% or a little over half are colored what are we to conclude? What is to be the effect on our national morale? Who is to pay this gigantic bill for naval armament? Before answering these questions any further than this, let us quote from an authority on the subject, a man who has given the best years or at any rate some very good years of research in the field and who now takes exactly the stand which we have been outlining in this article. I would not, he says in a speech delivered before the Girls Friendly Society of Laurel Hill, I would not for one minute detract from the glory of those who have brought this country to its present state of financial prominence among the nations of the world and yet as I think back on those dark days I am impelled to voice the protest of millions of American citizens yet unborn. Well, it certainly is funny how many cases of bigamy you hear about nowadays either more men are marrying more wives than ever before or they are getting more careless about it. That sounds very, very familiar. It is barely possible that it is the sentence with which this article opens. We say so many things in the course of one article that repetitions are quite likely to creep into our minds and say that it is the sentence with which this article opens. But repetitions are quite likely to creep in. At any rate, the tendency seems to be toward an increase in bigamy. End of Noting an increase in bigamy from Love Conquers All by Robert Binchley Recording by Rosie Oat to My Clothes by William Schweig-Gilbert Recorded for LibriVox Coffee Break Collection Volume 1 This is a LibriVox recording or LibriVox recordings around a public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Julifa Mulligan Oat to My Clothes by William Schweig-Gilbert Oh! Isn't it hot? Oh! Isn't it hot? And all is soft and clammy and damp No need to moisten your postage is damp. The very stones have lost their tones and don't reyacko the policemen's drum. And oh! Isn't it hot? I puff and blow and tatter and trickle. I feel like nothing so much as a pickle. A strong, hot, India pickle. It's a hot, aesthetic vinegar pickles me. Everything that touches me tickles me. And oh! If you knew how I hate my clothes, vases and mothers of half my oes. But in broiling June I'm out of tune and I swear too readily, then, I fear. If you gave me a thousand pounds a year, I declare at you, stare at you, heartily swear at you for making a wealthy man of me, with his thermometer ninety-three. And oh! How I hate my hat! That box of roasted air with a hard, hot rim that presses its rim with all its main right into my brain and it leaves its red trails there. And how I hate my bledded boots of pedal-acanese droods saucers of throes and pangs and shoots and socks with aggravating holes socks that wreck all under the soles. And then my colour Peruvian roller a convenient rhyme in thy blessed time you wore no trousers, joker, collar, brazier sleeve, but went about indoors and out in what young ladies call square bodies, I believe. Trousers waistcoat and coat you cost me a ten-pound note but back back to your pegs had body and legs through you I have grown yes, now learns that I intend to spend June and July prone in a six-foot icy bath it is so hot may I be shot if I can find a rhyme to bath and of O to my clothes On University Slabs by William Make-Beast Thackeray recorded for LibriVox Coffee Break Collection, Volume 1 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Neelu Ayur On University Snaps by William Make-Beast Thackeray from the Book of Snaps I should like to fill several volumes with accounts of various University Snaps so fond are my reminiscences of them and so numerous are they I should like to speak above all of the wives and daughters of some of the Professors Snaps, their amusements, habits, jealousies, their innocent artifices to entrap young men, their picnics, concerts and evening parties I wonder what has become of Emily Blades, daughter of Blades the Professor of Mandingo Language I remember her shoulders to this day as she sat in the midst of a crowd of about 70 young gentlemen from Corpus and Catherine Hall entertaining them with Ogles and French songs on the guitar Are you married fair Emily of the shoulders What beautiful ringlets those were that used to dribble over them What a waste, what a killing sea green shot silk gown What a cameo the size of a muffin There are 36 young men of the university in love at one time with Emily Blades and no words are sufficient to describe the pity, the sorrow the deep deep commiseration the rage, fury and uncharitableness in other words with which the Miss Trumps, daughter of Trumps the Professor of Phlebotomy regarded her because she didn't squint and because she wasn't marked with the smallpox As for the young university snobs I'm getting too old now to speak of such very familiarly My recollections of them lie in the far far past almost as far back as Pelham's time We then used to consider snobs raw looking lads who never missed chapel who wore high lows and no straps who walked two hours on the Trumplington Road every day of their lives who carried off the college scholarships and who overrated themselves in hall We were premature in pronouncing our verdict of youthful snobbishness The man without straps fulfilled his destiny and duty He eased his old governor the curate in Westmoreland or helped his sisters to set up the ladies school He wrote a dictionary or a treatise on conic sections As his nature and genius prompted He got a fellowship and then took to himself a wife and a living He presides over a parish now and thinks it rather a dashing thing to belong to the Oxford and Cambridge club And his parishness loved him and snore under his sermons No, no He is not a snob It is not straps that make the gentleman or high lows that un-make him be they ever so thick My son, it is you who are the snob if you likely despise a man for doing his duty and refuse to shake an honest man's hand because it wears a Berlin glove We then used to consider it not the least vulgar for a parcel of lads who had been whipped three months previous and were not allowed more than three glasses of port at home to sit down to pineapples and ices at each other's rooms and fiddle themselves with champagne and claret One looks back to what was called a wine party with a sort of wonder 30 lads round a table covered with bad sweetmeats, drinking bad wines, telling bad stories singing bad songs over and over again Milk punch, smoking ghastly headache frightful spectacle of desert table next morning and smell of tobacco Your guardian, the clergyman dropping in, in the midst of this expecting to find you deep in algebra and discovering the ship administering soda water There were young men who despised the lads who indulged in the course hospitalities of wine parties who prided themselves in giving a hirsche little French dinners Both wine party givers and dinner givers were snobs There were what used to be called dressy snobs Jimmy, who might be seen at 5 o'clock elaborately rigged out with a chameleon in his buttonhole glazed boots and fresh kid gloves twice a day Jessame, who was conspicuous for his jewellery a young donkey glittering all over with chains, rings and shirt studs Jackie, who wrote every day solemnly on the Blenheim Road in pumps and white silk stockings with his hair curled all three of whom flattered themselves they gave laws to the university about dress all three most odious varieties of snobs Sporting snobs, of course, they were and are always those happy beings in whom nature has implanted in love of slang who loitered about the housekeeper's tables and drove the London coaches a stage in and out and might be seen swaggering through the courts in pink of early mornings and indulged in dice and blind hooky at nights and never missed a race or a boxing match and rode flat races and kept bull terriers were snobs even than these were poor miserable wretches who did not like hunting at all and could not afford it and were in mortal fear at a two foot ditch but who hunted because Glendivat and Sinkbars hunted the billiard snob and the boating snob were varieties of these and are to be found elsewhere than in universities then there were philosophical snobs who used to ape statesmen at the spouting clubs and who believed as a fact that government always had an eye on the university for the selection of orators for the house of commons there were odacious young free thinkers who adored nobody or nothing except perhaps Robbins Peary and the Quran and panted for the day when the pale name of priest should shrink and dwindle away before the indignation of an enlightened world but the worst of all university snobs are those unfortunates who go to rack and ruin from their desire to ape their betters Smith becomes acquainted with great people at college and is ashamed of his father the tradesmen Jones has fine acquaintances and lives after their fashion like a gay free hearted fellow as he is and ruins his father and robs his sister's portion and cripples his younger brother's outset in life for the pleasure of entertaining my lord and riding by the side of Sir John and though it may be very good fun for Robinson to fiddle himself at home as he does at college and to be brought home by the policemen he has just been trying to knock down think what fun it is for the poor old soul his mother the half bay captain's widow is making herself all her life long in order that the jolly young fellow might have a university education