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The So-Called Human Race

The So-Called Human Race

by Bert Leston Taylor

New York 1922 Alfred ? A ? Knopf

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

B. L. T.

Foreword

All these contributors, as well as many other persons who existed independently of the "Line," lived in the corrective fear of the "Cannery," that capacious receptacle which yawned for the trite word and the stereotyped phrase. Our language, to B. L. T., was an honest, living growth: deadwood, whether in thought or in the expression of thought, never got by, but was marked for the burning. The "Cannery," with its numbered shelves and jars, was a deterrent indeed, and anyone who ventured to relieve himself as "Vox Populi" or as a conventional versifier, did well to walk with care.

Over all these aids, would-be or actual, presided the Conductor himself, furnishing a steady framework by his own quips, jingles and philosophizings, and bringing each day's exhibit to an ordered unity. The Column was more than the sum of its contributors. It was the sum of units, original or contributed, that had been manipulated and brought to high effectiveness by a skilled hand and a nature wide in its sympathies and in its range of interests.

Taylor had the gift of opening new roads and of inviting a willing public to follow. Or, to put it another way, he had the faculty of making new moulds, into which his helpers were only too glad to pour their material. Some of these "leads" lasted for weeks; some for months; others persisted through the years. The lifted wand evoked, marshalled, vivified, and the daily miracle came to its regular accomplishment.

Taylor hewed his Line in precise accord with his own taste and fancy. All was on the basis of personal preference. His chiefs learned early that so rare an organism was best left alone to function in harmony with its own nature. The Column had not only its own philosophy and its own aesthetics, but its own politics: if it seemed to contravene other and more representative departments of the paper, never mind. Its conductor had such confidence in the validity of his personal predilections and in their identity with those of "the general," that he carried on things with the one rule of pleasing himself, certain that he should find no better rule for pleasing others. His success was complete.

His papers and clippings, found in a fairly forward state of preparation, gave in part the necessary indications for the completion of this volume. The results will perhaps lack somewhat the typographical effectiveness which is within the reach of a metropolitan daily when utilized by a "colyumist" who was also a practical printer, and they can only approximate that piquant employment of juxtaposition and contrast which made every issue of "A Line-o'-Type or Two" a work of art in its way. But no arrangement of items from that source could becloud the essential nature of its Conductor: though "The So-Called Human Race" sometimes plays rather tartly and impatiently with men's follies and shortcomings, it clearly and constantly exhibits a sunny, alert and airy spirit to whom all things human made their sharp appeal.

The So-Called Human Race

A LINE-O'-TYPE OR TWO

SIMPLE

My readers are a varied lot; Their tastes do not agree. A squib that tickles A is not At all the thing for B.

What's sense to J, is folderol To K, but pleases Q. So, when I come to fill the Col, I know just what to do.

It is refreshing to find in the society columns an account of a quiet wedding. The conventional screams of a groom are rather trying.

A man will sit around smoking all day and his wife will remark: "My dear, aren't you smoking too much?" The doctor cuts him down to three cigars a day, and his wife remarks: "My dear, aren't you smoking too much?" Finally he chops off to a single after-dinner smoke, and when he lights up his wife remarks: "John, you do nothing but smoke all day long." Women are singularly observant.

NO DOUBT THERE ARE OTHERS.

Sir: A gadder friend of mine has been on the road so long that he always speaks of the parlor in his house as the lobby. E. C. M.

With the possible exception of Trotzky, Mr. Hearst is the busiest person politically that one is able to wot of. Such boundless zeal! Such measureless energy! Such genius--an infinite capacity for giving pains!

Ancestor worship is not peculiar to any tribe or nation. We observed last evening, on North Clark street, a crowd shaking hands in turn with an organ-grinder's monkey.

"In fact," says an editorial on Uncongenial Clubs, "a man may go to a club to get away from congenial spirits." True. And is there any more uncongenial club than the Human Race? The service is bad, the membership is frightfully promiscuous, and about the only place to which one can escape is the library. It is always quiet there.

Sign in the Black Hawk Hotel, Byron, Ill.: "If you think you are witty send your thoughts to B. L. T., care Chicago Tribune. Do not spring them on the help. It hurts efficiency."

AN OBSERVANT KANSAN.

The handsome clerk at the Harvey House makes this profound observation: Any girl will flirt as the train is pulling out.

"Are we all to shudder at the name of Rabelais and take to smelling salts?" queries an editorial colleague. "Are we to be a wholly lady-like nation?" Small danger, brother. Human nature changes imperceptibly, or not at all. The objection to most imitations of Rabelais is that they lack the unforced wit and humor of the original.

A picture of Dr. A. Ford Carr testing a baby provokes a frivolous reader to observe that when the babies cry the doctor probably gives them a rattle.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN "ALMOST"!

The man who writes a certain column in Chicago can always fill two-thirds of it with quotations and contributions. But that may be called success--when they bring the stuff to you and are almost willing to pay you for printing it.

WE'LL TELL THE PLEIADES SO.

Sir: "I'll say she is," "Don't take it so hard," "I'll tell the world." These, and other slangy explosives from our nursery, fell upon the sensitive auditory nerves of callers last evening. I am in a quandary, whether to complain to the missus or write a corrective letter to the children's school teachers, for on the square some guy ought to bawl the kids out for fair about this rough stuff--it gets my goat.

J. F. B.

Did you think "I'll say so" was new slang? Well, it isn't. You will find it in Sterne's "Sentimental Journey."

A number of suicides are attributed to the impending conjunction of the planets and the menace of world-end. You can interest anybody in astronomy if you can establish for him a connection between his personal affairs and the movements of the stars.

WHERE 'VANGIE LIES.

Where 'Vangie lies strown folios Like Vallambrosan leaves repose, The sad, the blithe, the quaint, the queer, The good, the punk are scattered here-- A pile of poof in verse and prose.

And none would guess, save him who strows, How much transcendent genius goes Unwept, unknown, into the smear Where 'Vangie lies.

With every opening mail it snows Till 'Vangie's covered to her nose. Forgetting that she is so near, I sometimes kick her in the ear. Then sundry piteous ba-a-a's disclose Where 'Vangie lies.

"This sale," advertises a candid clothier, "lasts only so long as the goods last, and that won't be very long."

THE SECOND POST.

Dear Sir: Your letter came. Glad you bought a team of horses. Hilda is sick. She has diphtheria and she will die I think. Clara died this eve. She had it, too. We are quarantined. Five of Fisher's family have got it. My wife is sick. She hain't got it. If this thing gets worse we may have to get a doctor. Them trees are budding good. Everything is O. K.

Just as we started to light a pipe preparatory to filling this column, we were reminded of Whistler's remark to a student who was smoking: "You should be very careful. You know you might get interested in your work and let your pipe go out."

It is odd, and not uninteresting to students of the so-called human race, that a steamfitter or a manufacturer of suspenders who may not know the difference between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution--who may not, indeed, know anything at all--is nevertheless a bubbly-fountain of political wisdom; whereas a writer for a newspaper is capable of emitting only drivel. This may be due to the greater opportunity for meditation enjoyed by suspender-makers and steamfitters.

Janesville's Grand Hotel just blew itself on its Thanksgiving dinner. The menu included "Cheese a la Fromage."

"It is with ideas we shall conquer the world," boasts Lenine. If he needs a few more he can get them at the Patent Office in Washington, which is packed with plans and specifications of perpetual motion machines and other contraptions as unworkable as bolshevism.

HEARD IN THE BANK.

A woman from the country made a deposit consisting of several items. After ascertaining the amount the receiving teller asked, "Did you foot it up?" "No, I rode in," said she.

H. A. N.

The fact that Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and other great departed whose names are taken in vain every day by small-bore politicians, do not return and whack these persons over the heads with a tambourine, is almost--as Anatole France remarked in an essay on Flaubert--is almost an argument against the immortality of the soul.

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