LEA--"I wonder if Professor Kidder meant anything by it?"
PERKINS--"By what?"
LEA--"He advertised a lecture on 'Fools,' and when I bought a ticket
it was marked 'Admit one.'"
FORDS
"So you bought one of those automobiles they tell so many funny
stories about?"
"Yes," replied Mr. Chuggins. "And it is saving me a lot of trouble and
wear and tear. When your friends tell you jokes about your car they
don't expect you to ask them to ride in it."
_If--With Apologies to Kipling_
If you can keep your Ford when those about you are selling theirs
and buying Cadillacs; if you can just be tickled all to pieces when
notified to pay your license-tax; if you can feel a quiet sense of
pleasure when driving on a rough and hilly road, and never move a
muscle of your visage when underneath you hear a tire explode; if you
can plan a pleasant week-end journey and tinker at your car a day or
so, then thrill with joy on that eventful morning to find no skill of
yours can make it go; if you can gather up your wife and children, put
on your glad rags, and start off for church, then have to wade around
in greasy gearings and spoil the best of all your stock of shirts,
yet through it all maintain that sweet composure, that gentle calm
befitting such events; if you can sound a bugle-note of triumph when
steering straight against a picket-fence; if you can keep your temper,
tongue, and balance when on your back beneath your car you pose, and,
struggling there to fix a balky cog-wheel, you drop a monkey-wrench
across your nose; if you can smile as gasoline goes higher, and sing
a song because your motor faints--your place is not with common erring
mortals; your home is over there among the saints!--_J.
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