Jasper County Democrat, Volume 18, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 July 1915 — RECORD OF SCHOOLBOY HUMOR. [ARTICLE]

RECORD OF SCHOOLBOY HUMOR.

Duly Classified and Illuminated— Some of It Mighty Timely. “The source of food supply in England is in ships” Here is a “schoolboy howler” which turns out to be an important fact—-and one which has been well illuminated by recent .events. It is timely information, too, that “to germinate is to become a naturalized German.” From the same source—the class in civil government—we receive the reminder that, “the President takes the yoke of office. 1 ’ The joke, is on us. For, to quote a schoolboy, “The press today is the mouth-organ of the people.” Which in phraseology, suggests another boy’s description of how the cavalry swept over “the eyebrow of the hill.’’ V . ’-

The reader is earnestly requested not to apply the Salic law to this compilation: '-The Salic law is that you must take everything with a grain of salt.” Many of thes.e “howleis” are taken, from the notebook of the writer, who had experience as a high school teacher. It should be added for the sake of the boys that some of the howlers were written by girls. ‘ Now let us begin with the class in civil government. ' - “I don’t know anything about the constitution, as I was born in Kansas.” “The minority is composed of the minors.” ‘•The spoils system: The place where spoiled things and waste are kept. The board of health has largely taken the place of tfhis.”. “An ex post facto law is one that gives officers a right to go to foreign countries and get criminals, dead or alive, and take them back to the place where the crime was committed. It is a law, where the crimes of the father descend to his children; they are punished for him.” “Benjamin Franklin is the founder of electricity.” ■■■

“George Washington was a land savory.” ; '‘Lord Raleigh was the first man to see the invisible Armada.” (English.) “Tenneyson wrote ‘ln Memorandum.’ ” “Tennyson also wrote a poem called ‘Grave’s Energy.’ ” “Louis XVI. was gelatined durin,, the French revolution.” “Ben Johnson is one of the three highest mountains in Scotland.” “George Eliot left a wife and children to mourn his genii.” “Henry I. died of eating Palfreys.” “Caesar was a king and went high up on a mountain.”

“Lincoln had a woman make him a suit of homespun from rails which he had split. They were hickory rails, hence hickory shirts.” “Franklin produced electricity by rubbing cats backwards.” “Where poisoning by acids is caused the blood should be immediately drawn from the bruises to send back the acid.” “If the schoolroom is without ventilation how are the pupils to study with the fowl air pressed down upon them; it makes them oftentimes sick and inclined to laziness.’’ “The blood vessels are the veins, arteries and artilleries.”

You might think from these quotations that the brain really is “a soft bunch covered with wifnkles.” Or perhaps your conclusion would agree with this: “The bones of the blood are the cerebrum, the cerebellum and other small bones.” “Reflex action ih when anything is turning one direction and it turns in the other.” The man who eats too fast or too well may be interested to know that “the heart is located in the left part of the stomach in a loose membrane sack.” “A deacon is the lowest kind of Christian.” “May day commemorates the landing of the Mayflower.” “The Boxers were Corbett, Fitzsimmons and Bill Johnson.” (“Were” is correct.) “A renegade is a man who kills a King.” "In India a man out of cask may not marry a woman out of another cask.” “The Pharisees were people who liked to show off their goodness by

praying in synonyms.” “Modern conveniences: Incubatorsand fireless telgraphy.” “A lie is an aversion to tho truth.” (Ah, an epigram!) “The German Emperor has been called the Geyser.” (Worse than that.) And now, gentle reader, school is dismissed for the day.