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S’POSE THE FISH DON’T BITE AT
FUST.
S’pose the fish don't bite at fust,
What be ye goin’ tur dew?
Chuck down yewr pole, throw out yewr bait,
An’ say yewr fishin’s threw?
Uv course yew hain’t; yew’re goin' tur fish
An’ fish an’ fish an’ wait
Until yew’ve ketched yewr basket full,
An’ used up all yewr bait..
S'pose success don’t come at fust,
What be yew goin’ tur dew?
Throw up the sponge an’ kick yewrself,
An’ go tur feelin’ blew?
Uv course yew hain’t; yewr goin’ tur fish
An’ bait an’ bait again;
Bimeby SUCCESS will bite yewr hook,
An' yew will pull him in.
THE DRUMMER SAW THE POINT.
We have fished and fished for a perfect pro
hibition bill, and Success is about to come our
way at last; The near-beer joints will soon
be forced to fold their tents like the Arabs and
slip away. Outraged decency has risen in her
might, and from now on the man who gets a
near-beer will have to drink it through a
mighty long straw. Prohibition will prohibit
if every man who claims to be an honorable
citizen will do his duty, and not try to mince
matters with those who cry it down.
A drummer was talking a few days ago in
quite a bragging way that he could buy a
drink of whiskey in any dry town, that prohi
bition would not prohibit. A gentleman stand
ing by said to him :
“My friend, you nor no other man can buy
whiskey from a bootlegger or blind tiger unless
the one who sells you the whiskey is convinced
that you will swear a lie rather than tell on
"The Limit of the Line.”
“Hold on. Brown, let me get in a word edge
wise. Well, I have a few hints in my mental
body of the metempsychosis. When I used to
walk the asphalt streets of a certain Southern
capital, I imagined that I was walking the
streets of Pompey, when not a pillar had been
buried under the ashes of Vesuvius. You may
recall that for what it is worth. There is an
other Pythagorean theory, however, to which
I more fully accord. Namely, that the sun is
the most perfect object in nature, and not only
the most perfect, but at this season of the year,
the most aggressive!”
Ford switched off the electric lights and al
lowed the lesser light that rules by night to
Hood the sanctum.
“I suffer with a Ugoline-like hunger, Brown,
to know what the sun really guards. Is it, in
deed, the magic portals, alive with rainbow
flames to the primal white, that watch and
guard the green pastures and still waters of our
Christian Elysian? The Holy City St. John
saw on Patmos? When I behold the great
light that rules by day, thoughts stir within
me, that must be forever voiceless. And though
I stand reverently on the mount of prayer, even
there, 1 may not view, as Moses from
Nebo’s lonely height, the vineyards and
pearl-wrought terraces of the promised land.
If. in that perfect circle of white flame, there
lies a land of pure delight, crowned by imme
morial Olivets, the eye of man is not psychic
enough to pierce the veil of sacred flame, nor
the ear of man fine enough to catch one whis
per of the crystal waves that break in rythmic
music on the banks of that Mediterranean
eternal.”
“Ford, you don't talk like the popular- con
ception of a captain of industry.”
“No; I am an Idealist, who has the power
to realize some of his ideals, and, therefore, I
PINEY WOODS SKETCHES
The Golden Age for July 29, 1909.
Dy Margaret Deberly Upshalv.
him; for no man can buy from these fellows
unless the man who is openly violating the
law believes that you will shield him, and to do
this you must become a perjurer.”
The drummer saw the point and quietly
walked away without further argument.
After the bill is passed the only resort open
to the reformed beer guzzlers will be the sec
tion in eastern Siberia where the peasants get
their drunks “dry” simply by eating bread.
The humidity is so great in that country that
there grows upon ears of corn a species of fun
gus. As a result of this, the bread made from
the corn gives all the results of an overdose of
alcohol.
Oh, but wouldn't it be a “treat’’ for one
• Sporty to offer another a chunk of bread in lieu
of a foaming glass of beer. Almost as funny
as the fellow who broke the treating habit off
in the ground. Two friends met at the barber
shop door. Two days’ Whiskers eyed newly
Shorn with a quizzical smile. “What’s the mat
ter?” he asked. “Did the barber try to scalp
you ?”
“It wasn’t the barber’s fault. I treated a
friend to a hair cut, and he insisted that I have
another with him. I couldn’t refuse.”
And it's all because the brewers played too
lightly with our trust. They promised to be
good, but before the last dose of “hickory oil”
had finished soaking in, they were right back
at the old game again, and now they are as
defenseless as “Jed Blake,” the big, hulking
negro who was arraigned for murder in a rural
Alabama court.
*
“HE AIN’T DONE IT YET.”
We have been pleading and praying for them
to give up the dirty business, but our efforts
have seemingly been as ineffectual as the pray
ers which little Ethel observed her youthful
am accused of neceromancy.”
Ford’s blue-steel eyes grew tender as a poet’s
who hears some forlorn, long-felt, magic whis
per of the springs that drain the crests of Heli
con.
“I will hold the thought, as scientists say,
and, in away only known to scientists, until
I build here on earth, in marble and mortar,
my ideal city. I have promised my cousin,
Ethel Ford, that she shall name the city for
me, and I wish it to be, all in all, stately—but
lovely as a dream. I know the deep sadness in
building cities; for the wierd ghosts of Thebes
and her hundred gates ; Carthage, and her tem
ples ; ancient Rome and its Forum; Athens, the
ancient and its Parthenon, and the two pillars
that mark the site of Sardis, rise before me,
warning my ambitious soul, that nothing
formed by the puny hands of puny man, can
outlast the destructive forces of nature. The
hanging gardens of Babylon blossom alone to
greet the white aura of a holy seer's vision,
who pierces the gray and black mantle of the
majestic past, seeking for the God who is ever
the Invisible. To digress a little, Brown, Car
lyle said, as I quoted awhile ago, ‘That we
march from the Invisible to the Invisible,’ and
while we march, my friend, in spite of all our
temples and our tears . . . we worship the
INVISIBLE.”
“But, Ford, the sense of right and wrong
would not be so like the tolling of an endless
Angelus in our inner ears, if we did not have
to answer, face to face, that awful and august
Invisible. You, yourself, may model after
your Creator, and not be conscious that your
mental attitude is divine. You believe that
the Invisible is absolute in His power, and
that part of the visible expression of himself,
in the beyond, will be a city. The wonders
and the glories of that city we can not con
ceive of, and yet we reason that they must
cousins make.
Ethel, aged three, had been to visit her cous
ins, two fun loving and romping boys. She
had climbed upon her father’s knee and was
telling him of her visit. “Papa, every night
John and George say their prayers they ask
God to make them good boys,” said she.
“That is nice,” said papa.
Then, thinking soberly for a few minutes,
she said, “He ain’t done it yet.”
The only thing to do with them now is to
treat their business like the cat treated the
canary.
“Bessie,” said the teacher of the class which
taught all about birds—in the school prospec
tus it was called the “ornithological division”—■
''give me the name of one bird which is now
extinct.”
Bessie wrinkled her brows.
“What’s extinct, please?” she asked.
“No longer existent,” explained the teacher.
“Can you name one?”
“Yes,” piped Bessie, readily, “Dick."
“Dick—Dick?” repeated the teacher. “And
what kind of a bird is a ‘Dick,’ please?”
“Our canary,” answered Bessie. “The cat
extincted him.”
*
BOBBY’S VIEW.
Bobby: “Please, miss, are you the trained
nurse mamma said was coming?”
Nurse: “Yes, my child.”
Bobby (elated) : “Then would you mind
showing me some of your tricks?”—R. Roch
ester.
It is only three months old and yet a second
edition is brought of Dr. Broughton’s “Religion
and Health.” Order from the Tabernacle
book stall, care Baptist Tabernacle, Atlanta,
Ga.
exist, from the incessant call of our greater
selves after an absolute and satisfying sym
bol of perfect beauty. Do you realize that
the longing, in the heart of man, after a splen
did and stately environment, raised by the ma
sons of classic architecture, adorned by the
Orient roses of the Persian, the plumosa
palms of the Pacific coast, made melodious by
the sonatas of Schubert and Beethoven, filled
with the pictures of Titan, the sculptures of
Angelo, is but a shadow of the mansions that
lie in the city Invisible?'’
“Ah, but man!” Ford blazed out suddenly;
“it is Herod who lives in the palace, here,
and John the Baptist who inhabits the desert.
And, pardon me, if John the Baptist reaches
the blue and purple throne room, it is with
his head on a charger.”
“I hope, Ford, that you can alter the situa
tion a little in your model city. I hope that
John the Baptist may dwell, for a season, at
least, in the palace of Herod, with his head on
his shoulders.”
“Yes, lam figuring on that. I have a street
in mind which is to be devoted to the service
of the men of God. 1 can reward virtue a lit
tle myself. I wish to lease to the brethren
homes, say, $25,000 mansions, at a nominal
rental of SI.OO a year for ten years. I believe
that my other boxes will pay me enough to do
this, and I am quite sure that the kind of men
that I hope to select will devote the residue of
their escaped-rent, or at least a conscientious
part, to beneficent and civic purposes. Now,
don’t understand me as advocating that envir
onment makes the sermon, but it helps! The
priests, Brown, I believe, should dwell in a
perfect environment, since they, if any class
of men know, the answer to the dominant- the
most profound question in life:
“ ‘lf a man die shall be live again?’ ”
(To be Continued)
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