More than two-thirds of America’s youth would fail to qualify for military service because of physical, behavioral or educational shortcomings, posing challenges to building the next generation of soldiers even as the U.S. draws down troops from conflict zones.
The military deems many youngsters ineligible due to obesity, lack of a high-school diploma, felony convictions and prescription-drug use for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. But others are now also running afoul of standards for appearance amid the growing popularity of large-scale tattoos and devices called ear gauges that create large holes in earlobes.
A few weeks ago, Brittany Crippen said she tried to enlist in the Army, only to learn that a tattoo of a fish on the back of her neck disqualified her. Determined to join, the 19-year-old college student visited a second recruiting center in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and was rejected again.
Apologetic recruiters encouraged her to return after removing the tattoo, a process she was told would take about year. “I was very upset,” Ms. Crippen said.
“The quality of people willing to serve has been declining rapidly,” said Gen. Batschelet.
Good canon fodder is become increasingly hard to find, better re-institute the draft.
His earlobes are probably pink because those aftermarket exhaust flange gaskets from China are probably not hypo-allergenic. Nor do they effectively contain exhaust gasses. Nor do they survive a dip in the pool… get the old iron ones, kid.
I’d hire him to gauge VCR replacement tyres.
No. He would frighten my other clowns.
But Daisy the 500 pound bearded lady thinks he’s the cat’s meow!
It is the future of soldiers — Those rebellious steampunk DARPA dogs had a proprietary, hidden, hardwired imbed deep within it’s positronic kernel; A silly directive to not to shoot one of their own…
{some say it was a silly comment left by a disgruntled programmer but that the ‘just kidding’ delineator got truncated because the Final Solution Grand Plan was on punchtape…}
There was a Readers Digest story way back when. The kid didn’t want to go to Vietnam and got some crazy tat. The Army marked the file Navy-approved. Watch out, Navy is digging latrines again.
The atomic bomb eliminated the need for more troops.
More maneuver results in less slaughter and I have less maneuverability than the illegals crawling all over the country. My conclusion is that slaughter is about to go up. Have pig roasts. Stomp grapes!
In Brilliant, one of Munson’s grapes, from Lindley crossed with
Delaware, we have a fine red grape in which the characters of the two
parents are so nearly equally combined that it cannot be said which it
most resembles. In cluster and size of berry, Brilliant resembles
Lindley; in color and quality of fruit it is about the same as
Delaware, differing from it chiefly in having more astringency in the
skin and therefore not quite equal to Delaware as a table grape. The
vine is strong and hardy; season about with Delaware. Brilliant does not
crack or shell and therefore ships well, and has very good keeping
qualities, especially on the vine, where it will often hang for weeks.
The defects which have kept it from becoming one of the standard
commercial sorts in New York are: Marked susceptibility to fungi but not
more susceptible than Delaware; variable in size of cluster; uneven in
ripening; and lack of productiveness. Brilliant is well known by amateur
grape-growers in New York and is grown somewhat for the market.
Thanks to the brilliant people in charge, the Interstate will be closed and gas prices are back to peak 08 levels. Stay put. The glorious amateurs in New York keep growing.
The Catawba,
too, has had the rare distinction of having a poet, Longfellow, sing its
praises:
“Very good in its way is the Verzenay
Or the Sillery, soft and creamy,
But Catawba wine has a taste more divine,
More dulcet, delicious and dreamy.
There grows no vine, by the haunted Rhine,
By the Danube or Guadalquiver,
Nor island or cape, that bears such a grape
As grows by the beautiful River.”
They don’t write like that anymore.
Is the answer “because the grapes got all the potatoes” ??
“From the dawn of history the grape has been regarded as the
king of fruits. When Moses sent spies into the promised land, ( x )*
as the most convincing evidence of its desirability, they
brought back a giant cluster of grapes from Eschol. When Ruth
gleaned in the field of Boa/, at noontide she was invited to dip
her morsel in the “vinegar,” a sweet marmalade made from the
grape, ( 2 ) and among other things Abigail brought raisins to David
to appease his wrath after his insult by Nabal.”
https://www.archive.org/stream/suitabilityofgra00braliala/suitabilityofgra00braliala_djvu.txt
New generation of spies. They brought back a giant cluster of NSA files. No grapes, rape is on the rise though. We wanted proof and all we got was vodka and a leaky roof.
“In
Louisiana, only, was wine made profitably in quantities, and sever-
al large vineyards were established there, when the French,
fearing their competition, forbade further wine making in the
colony.” Nuttin like competition to spoil things. The French built trains that won’t fit into the train stations. All we’re growing now is nuts.
Mission Impossible
“Not far from Mobile, Alabama, at Gulfport, there are according
Variability of Behavior 31
to the reports of Mr. Russell, formerly of Nashville, Tennessee,
Mr. Starcher, State Entomologist of Alabama, and Mr. Morrell,
Agriculturist for the Southern Railroad Company, several small
plantings of. an unidentified grape of the Concord type, known
locally as the Indiana grape because of having been brought
from that state. It is thriving and yielding good crops regularly
without any special care in a region where it is considered im-
possible to grow such grapes.
These facts, together with many similar ones that could be
given, show the importance of experimental vineyards in many
places in the South. This is especially important because in the
past very little such work has been done, in any of the southern
states and, as a consequence, no. one knows with any degree of
certainty whether any given variety of grape may be set with
a reasonable expectation of giving profitable returns. From the
fact that it is expensive to set a vineyard and care for it for three
or four years until it comes to bearing, few people are willing to
take the chance unless they are reasonably sure of results. ”
Why grow anything when you can fish for suckers to flip houses to and engage in mortgage fraud or sell reconditioned cars from floods to idiots? It might not return a profit and with no competition you can also charge more for it. All the Mexicans can’t grow grapes? I don’t know how they grow in Mexico. They come here aren’t sure of the results. Grape growing should come naturally.
why would anyone exhault one word about grapes when we have muscodines? Oh yea, lawns.
I think you might be replying to a failed Google experiment in artificial intelligence.
But then again, I’m not sure who’s real on DU anymore.
Siriusly.
Failed?? I see they’ve made some progress with the overwhelming douche canoe snapin. All this sudden spread of seemingly extemporaneous information and plethora of cut’n’pasties… It makes me feel so… dirty.
http://dailytechwhip.com/france-pays-20-billion-trains-dont-fit-stations/
WE have fighter jets that catch fire before take-off! Concorde failed. You’ll always have war to fall back on. Defective products are killing more people than wars now. China is winning, sharing fruits of victory with Russia. Our only hope?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/37/PhilipKDick_TheZapGun.jpg
China sees selling High Speed Rail to UK as part of international …
Next Big Future-Jun 23, 2014
… Seikan tunnel and the tunnel that connects England to France. … They don’t have much land for long-haul high-speed rail projects with speeds of 350km/h or higher. … nuclear power station and to build and operate rail lines in Britain. … The cooperation between China and Britain on high speed rail fits …
This should be good…a high speed nuclear powered Chinese built train for Britain!….Then a group of us rode the service road on the railway line from … It was as though my brain was saying ‘I don’t know what is going on, but I don’t like it and I am now … and founder of the 3 400km Tour de France – reckoned that cyclists … of the R2R, meaning you carry all your own gear, might fit the bill…and the trains dont fit the station…plus theres riots all day…We came to a gas station with a small, attached bookshop. … The French Society of Chrysanthemists, for instance, created a two-volume set of … We don’t use them anymore because in book form they would be impossibly … than you can shake a dragon at—far more than would fit into a single volume. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/how-red-dragons-blood-180951822/?no-ist
There’s a plan. Sell books with the gas. Make the books expensive and the gas cheap. Bankrupt big oil instead of the writers.
RE: Good canon fodder is become increasingly hard to find, better re-institute the draft.
Are you sure re-instituting the draft is going to be necessary? I mean, haven’t you looked in any of America’s PRISONS!?
If we’re going to be headed back to Iraq then I say send them our prisoners! Who knows? They might even win!
And it’s not like these body art “clowns” don’t already have some idea about what it means to be violent. I bet half can even bring their own weapons.
Look out ISIS, we have even more dangerous, mentally insane people. Piss us off enough and we just might send you our other half who DON’T have Bibles.
… And here, I thought “Tattoo” was some weird, ignorant, easily over looked character on an old TV show.
Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America- not on the battlefields of Vietnam.
Marshall McLuhan (1911-80), Canadian communications theorist. Quoted in: Montreal Gazette (16 May 1975).
Actually the Marines won every battle in Vietnam. Washington figured out how to turn victory into defeat. All your space program funding went to Russia. Your job went to China and your money went to Iraq. Hey, we were supposed to get dirt cheap gas! Saddam turned defeat into victory so he had to go. Didn’t fit with the Washington way of doing stuff.
Sirius-based aliens invade Earth, and are determined to enslave its populace. The aliens’ first target is New Orleans, which is enshrouded in a “gray curtain of death.” Earth has a problem, given the deceptive nature of its arms race and the absence of functional weapons technology. Lilo immediately tries to kill Lars, despite the intentions of their blocs otherwise, but eventually they collaborate. Neither can design functional weapons, however.
We can make wine in New Orleans because we can’t make weapons that don’t self destruct in Washington!
Author: Rod Serling ISFDB Author Record # 1433
Legal Name: Serling, Edward Rodman
Birthplace: Syracuse, New York, USA
Birthdate: 25 December 1924
Deathdate: 28 June 1975
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?1433
Maple Street is full of playing children and adults talking, when a shadow passes over, accompanied by a roar and a flash of light. Several adults notice, but there is no alarm. However, the residents soon discover that their electricity has been cut off. They gather together in the street to discuss the matter. Pete Van Horn volunteers to walk out of the neighborhood to discover the extent of the problem and he goes to check the station. His neighbor Steve Brand wants to go into town but Tommy, a boy from the neighborhood, tells him not to leave the street. Tommy has read a story of an alien invasion causing similar phenomena, and he predicts Steve will probably not be allowed to leave. Furthermore, in the story, the aliens are living as a family that appears human. The power outage is meant to isolate and contain the neighborhood.
Meanwhile, another resident, Les Goodman, tries unsuccessfully to start his car. He gets out and begins to walk back towards the other residents when the car starts all by itself. The bizarre behavior of his car makes Les the object of immediate suspicion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monsters_Are_Due_on_Maple_Street
Now they have the car hooked up to Google and it drives with no need for old Les.
The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices – to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill…and suspicion can destroy…and a thoughtless frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own – for the children…and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is…that these things cannot be confined…to the Twilight Zone.
“A 2003 remake of the episode was created in the latest re-adaptation of The Twilight Zone, but it was renamed “The Monsters Are On Maple Street.” The difference between the two is that the remake is more about the fear of terrorism. When the power surge happens in the remake, it is caused, not by aliens, but instead by the government, specifically the United States Army, experimenting on how small towns react to the fear of terrorism. In the end, the neighborhood takes out its anger and frustration on a family who never left their house after the power surge occurred, thinking that they caused it since they still have power.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monsters_Are_Due_on_Maple_Street
They are hiring crisis actors to run security training drills because if you don’t expand your department budget Congress will cut funding, so you have to screw up the US to keep getting funding. A whole lot of schools are closing and Chicago is firing the teachers. Education is out and entertainment is in. Where’d you find these idiots?
They had a generator! That turned into a conspiracy.
We have all of the problems of the Cold War now and none of the surplus of the World War.
WOW,
higher standards then for our politicians..
http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/2782/bushtwilightzoneep0.jpg
Back to the future…or Iraq?
Send weapons, money and workers to Iraq…meanwhile back at the ranch… disarm, bankrupt and no income for the public. All the roads are falling apart and no paint for the bridges. Trillions of new debt to make sure everything defense does is made more difficult and benefits the Egyptians or Syrians. All the weapons we gave them in Syria are being used in Iraq? Gasoline headed for $6 a gallon. Water bills going up…if you even have water because those systems are like the crumbling roads and bridges. With all the schools closing in Chicago we won’t need water or roads. We can build new schools in Iraq. Send the F-15’s to Egypt because we have these new high tech F-35’s. Get contracts for fire suppression systems…
Cookies? https://data.whicdn.com/images/48541330/tumblr_l051q0rXo11qzxzwwo1_500_large.jpg
Everybody is do lots of selling and the house is like an oven. With the schools closed and no funding we can have convicts do all the baking. All the good fruit for pies and the safe water supplies are being utilized by the state to keep them fat happy and wet. Cities are falling apart. Detroit looks like Beirut. Chicago is going to look like Detroit. Fewer schools, more abandoned places. $4500 for junk cars and trucks. More auto recalls.
http://moodyeyeview.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/tran.jpg
Army for 11 year olds. There should be no age limit for joining. At 50 they don’t want you and at 15 they can’t get enough of you. Make the 15 year olds congressmen and send all the old coots to the middle east to shoot people. The nutcase old tea party southerners are shooting themselves. Send them to Iraq. It’s a sucide mission and only you can save Baghdad pops!
“The twentieth century encounter between alphabetic and electronic faces of culture confers on the printed word a crucial role in staying the return to the Africa within…” – Marshall McLuhan – _The Gutenberg Galaxy_
The twenty first century encounter? Return to the Iraq within. What the world needed was another ruined country to harbor more terrorists. That’s going to create more need for soldiers. Close but no cigar? Cuba is even more screwed up than us. The new US prison colony. Hey, that’s generating contracts and jobs for US suppliers. Close more schools and fund more new terrorist detention centers. New Mexicans arriving daily. Sign them up for the military. All the racketeers stole the Haiti aid money!
Whole baby boom went bust. They are sending bad checks to cover the bad pensions and have the market rigged. Naturally we can afford a bigger military with $20 trillion in debt. We can afford to go back to Iraq too. It is new vacation destination. 700 days and 700 nights at sunni Baghdad Resort. Only $400M/night. Bring the kids and AR-15 and enjoy Six Flags over Baghdad. Dogs eat FREE.
I don’t know, I liked the cut of your jib till your last two lines. Leave the kiddies out…well at least ours. And for goodness sake don’t bring your cats or canine companions. The regions higher power has a HATRED for, OUR furry companions and partner in work and other human service.
I like your sarcasm
In the weird but could be true department I saw a show on the overuse of antibiotics that made the point that they may have an unintended consequence of killing off some of the beneficial unknown bacteria in our bodies that have co evolved with us to provide the biological dynamic we used to be. Hmmm…. that needs to be edited, but time is short: I initially disagree, but what do I know when they said that obesity might be one such result, allergies and other sensitivities…sure. But we really don’t know the entire role of bacteria in our bodies….so … maybe.
That all goes to the physically unfit–the bulk of the potential grunts. That seems easy to me. Just put them thru an extended basic training to get them into shape. I don’t see the problem really.
In my own case…. I actually gained weight during basic. Ha, ha. Yes, thats how SKINNY I was. Man…. youth sure is wasted on the young.
Your heading pic is a guy who is living in his own subculture. A very tiny minority. Misleading in the way DU so often is. Raising the issue but missing the point.
When we DENY what we do know (AGW for instance, the evil of income disparity for another), no good reason to talk about what we don’t know.
Yea verily.
But, you started a whole new dope-smoking meme — We call it rolling a bobbo {little ‘b’ because the kids}…
http://youtube.com/watch?v=x9orD-iW120
Reader: knock the shit off.
I enjoy spicy food but too much of anything is by definition: over powering.
You demonstrate no judgment at all.
Do better.
Lewis J. Bookman, age sixtyish. Occupation: pitchman. Formerly a fixture of the summer, formerly a rather minor component to a hot July. But, throughout his life, a man beloved by the children, and therefore, a most important man. Couldn’t happen, you say? Probably not in most places – but it did happen in the Twilight Zone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_for_the_Angels
You make Norman look good, and Timmy a saint. Pedro doesn’t respond to you.
You got the trifecta.
“But are they contented? Do they show any gratitude? Not at all.
Scarcely a day passes that I don’t hear of some fresh soldiering. And,
what is worse, they have stirred up some of my own people–the
carpenters, stone-cutters, gang bosses and so on. Every now and then my
inspectors find some rotten libel cut on a stone–something to the
effect that I am overworking them, and knocking them about, and holding
them against their will, and generally mistreating them. I haven’t the
slightest doubt that some of these inscriptions have actually gone into
the pyramid: it’s impossible to watch every stone. Well, in the years to
come, they will be dug out and read by strangers, and I will get a black
eye. People will think of Cheops as a heartless old rapscallion–_me_,
mind you! Can you beat it?”
neolithic
adjective [not gradable]
belonging to the period when humans used tools and weapons made of stone and had just developed farming
This area has been used as a burial ground since neolithic times.
The Neolithic Period is sometimes called the New Stone Age.
We are in the Neoliberal Period. Defined by eveything made with and paid for by plastic and delivered by people who used to own farms and horses and have awoken to discover cars and frozen foods.
I read H.L. Mencken, once. It didn’t really get me laid…
“Anyhow, there are plenty of uglier things in Egypt. Look at some of
those fifth-rate pyramids up the river. When it comes to shape they are
pretty much the same as this one, and when it comes to size, they look
like warts beside it. And look at the Sphinx. There is something that
cost four millions if it cost a copper–and what is it now? A burlesque!
A caricature! An architectural cripple! So long as it was _new_, good
enough! It was a showy piece of work. People came all the way from
Sicyonia and Tyre to gape at it. Everybody said it was one of the sights
no one could afford to miss. But by and by a piece began to peel off
here and another piece there, and then the nose cracked, and then an ear
dropped off, and then one of the eyes began to get mushy and watery
looking, and finally it was a mere smudge, a false-face, a scarecrow. My
father spent a lot of money trying to fix it up, but what good did it
do? By the time he had the nose cobbled the ears were loose again, and
so on. In the end he gave it up as a bad job.”
Iraq is going to be the second most expensive public works project after the Egyptian project. Fix it up fix it up. Got a loose ear again. Screw it and glue it.
Ohh, fucking here:
“”…Tell that its’ sculpter well those passions read which yet survived; Stamped on these lifeless things…
Ozymandias
http://youtube.com/watch?v=T3dpghfRBHE
2686-2181 BC
Background/Historical Information:
King Menes united Upper and Lower Egypt in 2686 BC, establishing the new
capitol in Memphis, from where the Pharaoh would rule with the support of a strong central government. The political basis of Egypt was a kingship in which the throne was passed on to the oldest son of the pharaoh. To maintain royalty, the pharaohs intermarried. The success of this government depended upon the loyalty and diligence of the governors. This was a complex and effective system. A vizier was the main power under the king, with the princes, courtiers, and provincial governors being on the next level, doorkeepers, soldiers and quarrymen succeeding them, followed by peasants and slaves.
The function of the government was threefold.
* One function was to locate and collect resources for the support of the court and its projects.
* The second was to issue laws and variations of laws with detailed codes and punishments. This Egyptian basis for laws is known as Ma’at; their concept of justice and truth that went beyond present existence to include the ideal state of the universe.
* The third function of the Egyptian government was to maintain subordinate position of the people. They could be forced into work for the government or service in the military.
Want those days again? I dont want involved with them. They are corrupt and in debt.
Govt healthcare… Cure for Lesions of the Skin:
After the scab has fallen off put on it: Scribe’s excrement. Mix in fresh milk and apply as a poultice.
Cure for Cataracts:
Mix brain-of-tortoise with honey. Place on the eye and say: There is a shouting in the southern sky in darkness, There is an uproar in the northern sky, The Hall of Pillars falls into the waters. The crew of the sun god bent their oars so that the heads at his side fall into the water, Who leads hither what he finds? I lead forth what I find. I lead forth your heads. I lift up your necks. I fasten what has been cut from you in its place. I lead you forth to drive away the god of Fevers and all possible deadly arts.
To regulate urination:
A measuring glass filled with water from the bird pond with elderberry, fibers of the asit plant, fresh milk, beer swill, flowers of the cucumber, and green dates – make into one, strain and take for four days.
The scene is the brow of the Hungerberg at Innsbruck. It is the half
hour before sunset, and the whole lovely valley of the Inn_–still wie
die Nacht, tief wie das Meer–_begins to glow with mauves and apple
greens, apricots and silvery blues. Along the peaks of the great snowy
mountains which shut it in, as if from the folly and misery of the
world, there are touches of piercing primary colours–red, yellow,
violet. Far below, hugging the winding river, lies little Innsbruck,
with its checkerboard parks and Christmas garden villas. A battalion of
Austrian soldiers, drilling in the Exerzierplatz, appears as an army of
grey ants, now barely visible. Somewhere to the left, beyond the broad
flank of the Hungerberg, the night train for Venice labours toward the
town.
It is a superbly beautiful scene, perhaps the most beautiful in all
Europe. It has colour, dignity, repose. The Alps here come down a bit
and so increase their spell. They are not the harsh precipices of
Switzerland, nor the too charming stage mountains of the Trentino, but
rotting billows of clouds and snow, the high flung waves of some titanic
but stricken ocean. Now and then comes a faint clank of metal from the
funicular railway, but the tracks themselves are hidden among the trees
of the lower slopes. The tinkle of an angelus bell (or maybe it is only
a sheep bell) is heard from afar. A great bird, an eagle or a falcon,
sweeps across the crystal spaces. A Book of Burlesques.txt
Waterford is done for and all the funding is for military services and war debts. Luxury goods are out and fraud is in. War is hell and hell is no luxury. Ring the sheep bell. We have an army of gray ants here. They seem to be hard at work, which would put an army of bureaucrats to shame.
For Americanos_
From scented hotel soap, and from the Boy Scouts; from home cooking, and
from pianos with mandolin attachments; from prohibition, and from Odd
Fellows’ funerals; from Key West cigars, and from cold dinner plates;
from transcendentalism, and from the New Freedom; from fat women in
straight-front corsets, and from Philadelphia cream cheese; from _The
Star-Spangled Banner_, and from the International Sunday-school Lessons;
from rubber heels, and from the college spirit; from sulphate of
quinine, and from Boston baked beans; from chivalry, and from
laparotomy; from the dithyrambs of Herbert Kaufman, and from sport in
all its hideous forms; from women with pointed fingernails, and from men
with messianic delusions; from the retailers of smutty anecdotes about
the Jews, and from the Lake Mohonk Conference; from Congressmen, vice
crusaders, and the heresies of Henry Van Dyke; from jokes in the
_Ladies’ Home Journal_, and from the Revised Statutes of the United
States; from Colonial Dames, and from men who boast that they take cold
shower-baths every morning; from the Drama League, and from malicious
animal magnetism; from ham and eggs, and from the _Weltanschauung_ of
Kansas; from the theory that a dark cigar is always a strong one, and
from the theory that a horse-hair put into a bottle of water will turn
into a snake; from campaigns against profanity, and from the Pentateuch;
from anti-vivisection, and from women who do not smoke; from
wine-openers, and from Methodists; from Armageddon, and from the belief
that a bloodhound never makes a mistake; from sarcerdotal
moving-pictures, and from virtuous chorus girls; from bungalows, and
from cornets in B flat; from canned soups, and from women who leave
everything to one’s honor; from detachable cuffs, and from _Lohengrin_;
from unwilling motherhood, and from canary birds–good Lord, deliver us! A Book of Burlesques.txt
Cloak and dagger stories became part of the popular culture of the Cold War in both East and West, with innumerable novels and movies that showed how polarized and dangerous the world was.[1] Soviet audiences thrilled at spy stories showing how their KGB agents protected the motherland by foiling dirty work by America’s nefarious CIA, Britain’s devious MI-6, and Israel’s devilish Mossad. After 1963, Hollywood increasingly depicted the CIA as clowns (as in the comedy TV series “Get Smart”) or villains (as in Oliver Stone’s “JFK” (1992). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_during_the_Cold_War
“It was the autumn of the year 1950”; and from stories
embodying quotations from Omar Khayyam, and full of a mellow pessimism;
and from stories in which the gay nocturnal life of the Latin Quarter is
described by an author living in Dubuque, Iowa; and from stories of
thought transference, mental healing and haunted houses; and from
newspaper stories in which a cub reporter solves the mystery of the
Snodgrass murder and is promoted to dramatic critic on the field, or in
which a city editor who smokes a corn-cob pipe falls in love with a
sob-sister; and from stories about trained nurses, young dramatists,
baseball players, heroic locomotive engineers, settlement workers,
clergymen, yeggmen, cowboys, Italians, employés of the Hudson Bay
Company and great detectives; and from stories in which the dissolute
son of a department store owner tries to seduce a working girl in his
father’s employ and then goes on the water wagon and marries her as a
tribute to her virtue; and from stories in which the members of a
yachting party are wrecked on a desert island in the South Pacific, and
the niece of the owner of the yacht falls in love with the bo’sun; and
from manuscripts accompanied by documents certifying that the incidents
and people described are real, though cleverly disguised; and from
authors who send in saucy notes when their offerings are returned with
insincere thanks; and from lady authors who appear with satirical
letters of introduction from the low, raffish rogues who edit rival
magazines–good Lord, deliver us!
Snowden is selling magazines for selling out the country.
I.–The Rewards of Science_
Once upon a time there was a surgeon who spent seven years perfecting an
extraordinarily delicate and laborious operation for the cure of a rare
and deadly disease. In the process he wore out $400 worth of knives and
saws and used up $6,000 worth of ether, splints, guinea pigs, homeless
dogs and bichloride of mercury. His board and lodging during the seven
years came to $2,875. Finally he got a patient and performed the
operation. It took eight hours and cost him $17 more than his fee of
$20….
One day, two months after the patient was discharged as cured, the
surgeon stopped in his rambles to observe a street parade. It was the
annual turnout of Good Hope Lodge, No. 72, of the Patriotic Order of
American Rosicrucians. The cured patient, marching as Supreme Worthy
Archon, wore a lavender baldric, a pea-green sash, an aluminum helmet
and scarlet gauntlets, and carried an ormolu sword and the blue
polka-dot flag of a rear-admiral….
With a low cry the surgeon jumped down a sewer and was seen no more.