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About Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922 | View Entire Issue (April 28, 1912)
Omaha Sunday Bee Magazine Page Copyright, 1911 by Aaertoaa-ExamlnsT. Great Britain Rights Reserved. 05alCfc Noiwmre Pictures and Rhyme1 ByASolemR&llegefteideiit President David Starr Jordan, of Stanford University, the Latest Successorjto Lewis Carroll,? of "Alice in Wonderland' 9 Fame and Other Wise Men Who Relished A Little Nonsense Now and Then." mi. M US" i A Social Lobster. The Lobster's home is in the Sea; It U u humble as may be. But he has wandered far afield. And now his presence is revealed Within our best Society. This Lesson to us all is sent To lend us due Encouragement MX J Tit OvritM, WIS, PmI B4 Camcct. Mitgard, Serpent It was the Mitgard Serpient, He grabbed the Earth and away he went; (The Mitgard Serpent was a Cat. With a dozen legs, or about like that). He swallowed his tail with all his might, Then spit on his claws and held on tight; And so the world went round all right And 'twas sometimes day and sometimes night And 'twas always dark when it wasn't light . 11, raol Vim S Oobvu, The Gazelle. I never loved a fond Gazelle But it would jump and snort and yell. 1 i- ftWiM, 14 M Bate 4 Otawux, My Crocodile. My Crocodile is good to me He is as nice as he can be ; But when I go out for a ride I'd rather not come back inside. mmmMm WKil BWH. 11 Pnl SMar OmlHJ. Squidgecumsquees. The Cats catch Mice and the Goblins chase the Elves. But the Squidgecumsquees they swallow tnemseives. WIS, PmI SMar 4 Oamvui. The Giraffe. If the Giraffe were not so tall He'd be an Awful Cannibal, But just before he goes to bed He sits awhile upon his head. DR. DAVID BTARR JORDAN, the solemn and dignified president of Stanford University, nae written a book of nonienie rhymes called "Eric Book of Beat." He has alto drawn the pictures that so with the rhymes. 8ome of the moet amusing example! ot the college president's work are given on this page. "How very undignified of President Jordan to write book like that!" some aadeyed person may, say. Not at all. The more a man's brain Is burdened with solemn and difficult things, the more he needs humorous relaxation. Moreover, the more learned he Is, the moet perfect nonsense he can write. The ability ot a learned man to write perfect non enae in the best sense wss never better Illustrated than by the case of Lewi Carroll, who la generally conceded to be the most perfect writer of nonsense thst ever lived. Lewis Carroll, who was In njvate life the Rev. Charles Lutwldge Dodgson. was Ttutor at the Unlver ally of Oiford. a mathematician of great ability, a phll ologlst, a classical scholar and a man of remarkable at tainments in many branches ot iMmlnr He once undertook to prove by the rules of algebra and trigonometry that his work was perfect nonsense. He de fled anybody to find any sense In It. Ho proved his case brilliantly. As an example of the possibili ties of using scholarship to pro duce nonsense we may take the first stanza of Lewis Carroll'a most Immortal poem, "Jabber wocky." "Twas brllllg and the sUthy tovea 'Did gyre and glmble In the wabe. "All mlmsy were the bore goves, "And the moms rathe out grebe." Now every peculiar word In this stania is built up from Anglo-Saxon roots, and put together according to the rules of comparative philology, but every rule has been exactly re- OnvrltM, WIS, rl BUw a ftww. . I ittl r.hilrlrrii. ' fyttle children at their play, Happy, scrappy all the day. i OvrrlaM. ISU, Fnl Him 4 Coapu;. The 'Potamus. My little 'Potamus and I Walk hand in hand when roals are dry, But when the clouds begin to rain I creep into his mouth again. versed In Its application. It would have been Impos sible to write that wonderful stanza without devoting year to the study of Anglo-Saxon and comparative philology Lewi Carroll wa a master of both these subjects. . . Here Is another delightful little piece of nonsense by lwls Carroll, that Is remarkable for it metrical daintiness: "She has the bear's ethereal grace. "The bland hyena's laugh, "The footstep of the elephant, "The neck of the giraffe. "I love her still, believe me, "Though my heart It passion hides. "She Is all my fancy painted her, "But, oh, how much beside !" President Jordan, of Stanford Vnlverslty, i Ilk Lewi Carroll, a man of great attainment in many branches of learning. He Is the author of thirty scien tific work and of five hundred scientific papers and magaxlue articles. It may have been the learning, which he dlsplaya In his "Manual of Vertebrte." that enabled him to describe "The Mitgard Serpient" In the enter talnlng verse printed elsewhere on this page. Many other men have demon strated that you have to know a great deal before you can write interesting nonsense. Before the time of Lewis Carroll the most entertaining writer of nonsense rhymes was Edward Lear who was born In 1812 and died In 188a. He was the father of modern nonsense writer. Lear was a very brilliant naturalist and Illustrator of books upon natural history. The knowledge that he showed la his principal work, "Illustrations of the Family of the Psittmcldae." helped him to write bis "Book of Nonsense" for children and humorous books. , Only a scientist could Imagine the romance that might be built on the hopeless love of an lrregu lar polygon, for the absolute symmetry erf an isosceles triangle. The man who, understands the basis ot things is best able to turn them upside down. ft OberrtCM. WIS, Paul Km Ojwptes, A Hospitable Reptile. This Reptile is a hardened sinner, But when a friend drops in for dinner He greets him with an open smile, And makes him merry quite a while. O let us, like this reptile, be Renowned for Hospitality I OvrrlfM. 11. Paoi Dm CvatpHS. The Caravan, i Van I Vant Caravan! Who is the camel and which is the man? Whv You Ought to Kiss Only a Clean -Shaven Man J .. Viab- firmly and closely for two minutes, ceeded. When the kissing hd been allowed the Invisible flora that hung thoroughly sterilised be culture, germs of typhoid? 5.0 V... TTwrlment- . Z.lW ., . .... ., L ...... . w f th.m trt Hm Intft A Petri dUih de- mli.m'. ii.. tfwAnsA- elgned to bold microbe. Then be Pari. April is. SHOULD a girl kiss a clean shaven or a whiskered man, it any? Tbl very delicate yet vitally Im portant question bes been answered scientifically and definitely by a distinguished Professor of the Pari Academy ot Medicine. His experiment prove that it 1 Jnst one hundred times as danger ous from pathological point of slew to kiss a mustached or whis kered man as a clean-shaven one. Professor Durand decided that this question, which has been much discussed in a loose way, ought to be settled scientifically. He secured the service of a young and healthy woman, who was willing to submit to the experiment for the sake ot science, and a couple of doctors ot of hi Utt. The young woman waa first thor oughly sterilized. All the billions and billion of germs tbat lurked in her lips, eyes, balr and other external parts of ber organism were completely destroyed. She was then locked op U a germ proof room, in the professor's laboratory, used In The professor held bis stop-watch to see that tne period was not ex eomoleted. the nrofessor brushed off the young culture-medium' lip and orate precautions were " guard the feminine culturemedlura against contamination during abnenqe ot the professor. Of the two doctors one wa Clean shaven, while the other wgre the round, fuzzy beard and mustache, which have become tradition' among French medical men. The professor took his two assistants out for a walk among the microbe and bacteria of Pari. He took them for a walk along the grand boulevards, the resort of the gayest Parisian butterflies of both sexes. He led them through a great department store near the Louvre, which was filled with wom en representing every class of Par isian society. Then he took them through the Louvre Itaelf. which happened to contain at the moment tine assortment of artists. He steered them through Halle Centrales, the markets which feed practically the whole of Paris. He allowed them to Jostle a crowd of factory girls coming out for lunch. Finally he led them back, microbe laden, to his laboratory. First he grLdkra.'Sum But Thi, Is the Only Safe Way to Kiss After All-Through One i ; SSS ' of the New Antiseptic Screens. nmiiums lips. now it was the tnrn'of tig "a1 kered .doctor. He was orderedi to go In and kiss the sterilized subject in the same manner for the sime period a the other man. Once more the professor brushed off the culture medium's lips and collected the bac terial harvest in a second Petri dish. Then the professor made a careful study of the two dishes. He estimat ed that the space kissed amoante1 to two square inches. From the dish used to collect toe offspring of the clean-shaven man' kiss, he counted SO.000 microbes, which Is practically nothing, when we consider the enormous prevalence of microbes In our common surroundings. The few dangerous microbes among them were present in such small quanti ties that they would hardly have hurt any one. Next he examined the crop col. lerted after the whiskered man kiss. In this he found npwwrds of 80.000.000 microbes of all kinds, or about one hundred times as much as the clean-shaven man's kiss yielded. Among them were about IO.C00.040 germs of tnberculosi. 10,000.000 germ of typhoid. 5,000.000 germ o diphtheria, 1.000,000 germs ot whoop lgn cough. 1.000,000 germs of meas les and 500,000 germa ot scarlet fever. , It is well recognized tbat a heavy load ot bacterial Infection 1 usually needed to convey a disease. The In fection of the whiskered man's dis ease wss dangerous to a point that under predisposing conditions would be likely to result faulty. Toe clean-shaven man's kiss, on the ether band, waa so lightly cnarged with infection that it was practically innocuous. The bacterial crop from the whis kered man kiss, after it had been allowed to grow for four days In a highly nutritions culture-medium, had increatvd to a mass of deadly germs, which if let loose might have destroyed the entire population of Paris. The result of cultivating the bac terial crop from the clean-shaven man's kiss was very different From the starting point the harmless mi crobes predominated so greatly over the harmful ones that during the process of Intensive cultivation they entireiv crowded the deadly one out of existence.