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About Will Maupin's weekly. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1911-1912 | View Entire Issue (March 17, 1911)
JUST INCIDENTAL AND ACCIDENTAL Being Merely Little Quips and Jests About People You Know. Mostly Sent in over the Phone But a Few Evolved from Dreams and Visions An Acceptable Date. Col. Thomas McShane, one of Lincoln's veteran letter carriers, is happy. Having occasion to step into the Central National Bank the other day he was accosted by President Hall who asked: ; "Have yo,u bought your ticqket to the Bryan banquet yet?" .,. "No, I have not,"' replied McShane. "When is it?" "Next Monday night," replied President Hall. "Glory be ! I'll take one," said McShane. "It's the first banquet I've had a chance to attend on a date when I could eat meat." The Point of View. "I am a bit puzzled," remarked A. H. Armstrong recently. "I have built up a business I am proud of right here in Lincoln, yet there are those who intimate that I am going to sacrifice the profitable busi ness in order to play favorites with the gas company if I should happen to be elected mayor. What puzzles me is the idea some people have of business. It reminds me of a story. " 'See that fine looking gentleman across the street there?" asked a citizen of a stranger whom he was entertaining. ' "Yes, I see him.' " 'Well, sir, he landed in this town twen ty years ago without a dollar or a friend, and he started in business peddling peanuts and popcorn from a basket, and he had to go in debt for the basket. Today he is one of our foremost citizeYis.' " 'And I presume,' remarked the stronger, 'that he is now worth several hundred thou sand dollars.' " 'O, no ; he never even paid for that basket.' "The point is," continued Mr. Armstrong, "that some people have a peculiar idea of what constitutes good business." The Provincials. William Gold has but recently returned from New York City, where he combined business with the pleasure of visiting rela tives and friends who imagine that Ne braska is full of Indians and buffalo, and that Lincoln streets are filled with roister ing cowboys and "bad men." "I am sure," remarked Mr. Gold in speak ing of his visit, "that some of the people whom I met for the first time were astonish ed to see that I did not pick my teeth at the table with a bowieknife, and that I actually knew the use of a fingerbowl. " 'Tell me, Mr. Gold,' twittered a young lady who was a member of a dinner party I attended, 'what you western people do for amusements ?' "O, we attend an occasional Indian war dance, and when we want to be the real things in the revelry line we clean the things out of some neighbor's kitchen and have a dance on the dirt floor. " 'How delightfully primitive !' she ex claimed. " 'I'm afraid, however, that my attempt at sarcasm was lost on the young lady.' The Volume of Business. ( "I notice some people who are neither employers or producers have quite a bit to say about the volume of business," remark ed Col. "Bob" Joyce the other day. "It re minds me of the story of the old colored man who was applying for a divorce. "On what grounds are you seeking this divorce?" queried the judge. "You' honah," replied the old colored man, "dat woman she's all de time askin' me fo' money. She done ask me fo' a dol lah, den she ask me fo' two dollahs, an' den she asks me fo' a quartah w'y she's askin' me all de time fo' money, dat woman is." "What does she do with all the money?" asked the judge. "I don't know, youah honah. I ain't nevah give her none yet.' "Of course the moral of this little story is the application of it," concluded Col. Joyce. The Only Danger. "Will it shock me to put my foot on thei rail ?" asked a nervous old lady of Ben Cob- lentz as the she stood near the track at Twelfth and O. "Not unless you put your other foot onj the trolley wire," replied the urbane Mr. Coblentz. Why Is It? "I believe Will Maupin's Weekly can fur nish me with the inforamtion I am seeking' said Judge England recently. "Surest thing you know," replied the editor. "Then tell me," said the judge, "why it is that people who have to have a bell tell them when it is time to go to church can always get to the theatre before the curtain goes up without having any old bell jangled for them." But the editor confessed that his informa tion stopped just short of that point. The Truth in a Jest "Can you give me a job as office boy?" . "I might. How are you on spelling and arithmetic?" "We didn't pay much attention to those studies at our school. But I can model in clay and do worsted work." Louisville Courier-Journal. The longer you study that little jest the more you'll see in it of real, genuine truth. As we write we have before us a letter one of a hundred or more applying for a position as stenographer and typewriter. The writer was graduated from a Nebraska high school. Of the 157 words therein thir teen are misspelled ; there are a dozen errors of punctuation, and the gramatical construc tion enough to make old Lindley Murray turn over in his grave. Yet we doubt not that the writer of the letter could tell all about the stamens and pistils and opllens of flowers, and discuss geological subjects from the silurian to the palezoic ages. Doubtless, too, she could decline the Latin "amo" without understanging what she was" doing,, and practice the word itself to a per fection quite startling. Instead of fitting our boys and girts for the strenuous battle'of life, the high schools are developing a race of snobs and sissies who yearn to live without hard work. They are spoiling needed blacksmiths and farmers in an effort to make useless doctors and lawyers. Modeling in clay is all right, but it would better be in the shape of bricks. As a mat ter of fact our public schools are stuffing the craniums of pupils with about every thing save commonsense and morality. Students and Others The law disfranchising the greater portion of the college and university men, now at tending school in this state, seems to us a very unfair one. These men are in every way good citizens, why should they be dis franchised? It may be that we are unduly suspicious, but we can't help thinking that this is a plot hatched up by king booze. As a class, students are temperance men, and it would be a very fine move to deprive them of their votes. Why, we ask, are not the bums and thugs, and loungers, deprived of their votes. The whole thing is a disgrace to the present legislature. Aurora Sun. . Will Maupin's Weekly is not in favor of disfranchising the students, but it is in favor of enfranchising a number of men who are as much entitled to a vote as the university students. Traveling men, railroad men, and many other men, often find themselves com pelled to be far away from home on election day. Why should they be deprived of their votes while the university students, also ' away from their homes, are allowed to vote ? Why not adopt a law permitting the mail ing of a ballot under proper safeguards? To let a callow youth attending the uni versity to vote, and depriving an experi enced citizen of his vote simply because he is compelled by necessity to be absent from home on election day, is, in the humble opin ion of this newspaper unfair.-. Also unwise. Be Fair, Gentlemen! The municipal election ' date was shoved forward from April to May in order to de prive a lot of Russo-American voters of an opportunity to vote. These Russo-Ameri-cans, industrious, frugal, honest and trust worthy, leave for the beetfields of the west about the middle of the April. Because of their environment in their native land they, are usually "wet." By shrewd tactics that may be all right in practical politics, but which comport ill with the pretences of the gentlemen managing the "dry" campaign, these Russo-American voters are practically disfranchised. - Carried to its logical conclusion, the re publican majority in Lancaster county could with equal fairness and justice dis franchise the democratic minority, and the democratic majority in Douglas might dis franchise the republican minority. Repre sentative Eager's amendment to the Lincoln charter providing for a return to the April date should be adopted. We personally know of several members of the "Commit tee of Fifty" who seize every occasion to throw a political fit over the way democrats treat the negroes of the south in matters political, who defend the disfranchising of several hundred Russo-Americans in Lin coln by .a method that would appeal to the highest type of southern bourbon. ;