You raise a Crop, they fine you for it!
TEACHERS
FATHER (meaningly)--"Who is the laziest member of your cla.s.s, Tommy?"
TOMMY--"I don"t know, pa."
FATHER--"I should think you should know. When all the others are industriously studying or writing their lessons, who is it sits idly in his seat and watches the rest, instead of working himself?"
TOMMY--"The teacher."
The Literary Digest offers each week a prize of fifty dollars for the best argument in compact form for better salaries for teachers. The editor of The Reporter humbly submits to the editor of The Digest this bit of pathos:
"What shape, madam, was the pocketbook you lost?"
"Flat. I"m a teacher."
The kindergarten had been studying the wind all week--its power, effects, etc.--until the subject had been pretty well exhausted. To stimulate interest, the kindergartner said, in her most enthusiastic manner: "Children, as I came to school today in the trolley-car, the door opened and something came softly in and kissed me on the cheek.
What do you think it was?"
And the children joyfully answered, "The conductor!"--_Harper"s_.
"We have just learned of a teacher who started poor twenty years ago and has retired with the comfortable fortune of fifty thousand dollars. This was acquired through industry, economy, conscientious effort, indomitable perseverance, and the death of an uncle who left her an estate valued at $49,999.50."
"Pa," inquired a seven-year-old seeker after the truth, "is it true that school-teachers get paid?"
"Certainly it is," said the father.
"Well, then," said the youth indignantly, "that ain"t right. Why should the teachers get paid when us kids do all the work?"
While the school teacher was away at the annual meeting of the state a.s.sociation she sent all of her little pupils a postcard greeting.
Little Edgar replied in kind and on his card wrote: "I hope you are enjoying our vacation."
_See also_ Fords.
TEACHING
About the most hopeful element in any human being"s character I should reckon to be teachableness.
Wherever you meet a man who knows--and knows he knows--and wards off any proof of reasoning of yours with the impenetrable shield of a superior smile or the dull hostility of a determined eye, you feel that between you and him there can be no real dealings.
The wisest minds I find are the most teachable. The wider one"s experience, the more thorough his study, the braver his heart, and the stronger his intelligence, the more willing he is to hear what you or any man may have to offer.
Stubbornness is usually the instinctive self-defense of conscious weakness. When one can do nothing else to show his strength he imitates the mule--the most despised of animals.
Spinoza"s maxim was that the two great banes of humanity are self-conceit and the laziness coming from self-conceit.--_Dr. Frank Crane_.
TEARS
_See_ Woman.
TELEGRAPH
"Why did you strike the telegraph operator?" asked the magistrate of the man who was summoned for a.s.sault.
"Well, sir, I gives him a telegram to send to my gal, and he starts readin" it. So, of course, I ups and gives him one."
"Pap," said the colored youth, "Ah"d like you to expatiate on de way dat de telegraph works."
"Dat"s easy "nuf, Rastus," said the old man. "Hit am like dis. Ef dere was a dawg big "nuf so his head could be in Bosting an" his tail in New Yo"k, den ef you tromp on his tail in New Yo"k he"d bark in Bosting. Understan", Rastus?"
"Yes, pap! But how am de wireless telegraph?"
For a moment the old man was stumped. Then he answered easily: "Jess prezactly de same, Rastus, wid de exception dat de dawg am "maginary."
An Irishman and a Scot were arguing as to the merits of their respective countries.
"Ah, weel," said Sandy, "they tore down an auld castle in Scotland and found many wires under it, which shows that the telegraph was knoon there hoondreds o" years ago."
"Well," said Pat, "they tore down an ould castle in Oireland, and there was no wires found undher it, which shows that they knew all about wireless telegraphy in Oireland hundreds av years ago."
Soon after the instalment of the telegraph in Fredericksburg, Virginia, a little darky, the son of my father"s mammy, saw a piece of newspaper that had blown up on one of the telegraph wires and caught there. Running to my grandmother in a great state of excitement, he cried, "Miss Liza, come quick! Dem wires done buss and done let all the news out!"