Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 103, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 March 1917 — EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS [ARTICLE]

EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS

We are Americans. It is a good flag. Up with it! Keep it there! If you can’t be patriotic, at least be silent. - Winter has made its last “drive” and is, now in full retreat. “Food Brices Take a Tumble,” says a headline. Another fake. But, then, we don’t know what’s happening to the man in the moon. No, Julia, we have never known a trust yet that could be trusted. Any one can “hang out the flag’’ of course. But how many will follow it? The Lord loves a cheerful giver and we love a prompt payer. Step up and pay up. Bean is healthy and very appetizing, provided you can afford a whole bean. Wise men never waste time extoling their wisdom to others. Only fools do that. * The world do move. First we. had a Judas, then a Benedict Arnold, and now the filibusterer. We might discuss the high cost of living were it not for the fact that it is too high for comment. Spade up the back yard, but save the worms. They may be in demand before the summer is over. While preparing for -war on a larger scale, let’s not forget to swat the fly. He’s little, but he’s loud. As an effective method of national preparedness we suggest the prompt planting of spuds—more spuds. “Mexicans » submitting to the bath,’’ says a Southern dispatch. Impossible—don’t . believe a word of it! • x Between providing luxuries for the inner man and the outer woman, this life is just one long wail of bills. Ask any well-read man to define the term “international joke’’ and he will unhesitatingly say “Carranza.” “Eggs shaved two cents,” says an exchange. Gosh! We always thought those storage companies kept them until they grew beards, and now we have the proof.

* If we have to raise a great army there will be one grand rush to enlist, for soldiers are fed on spuds and beans. When a bashful fellow pops the question and she promptly snaps him up, tie begins to wonder what in thunder he ought to do next. An exchange says a man should have a good ’ excuse ready before committing a mean act. The average man has. He’s the excuse. Congress' proposes to dam the Mississippi at a cost pf $4f1,000,000. Many will agree to damn it and congress both for half the sum. When you. want to know what kind of a man a fellow is, just get his wife’s estimate of men in general and you will Call his number. • , Senor (general Don Victoriano Carranza has been duly and pompously elected president of Mexico, but darned if we know which one of ’em he claims. Even if nothing worse transpires, some traitors in this country are /likely to be taught the value of respect for the flag under which they get their bread and butter.

The twenty-seven greatest liars of the covered. They are seniors in Princeton university and profess never to have been kissed by a girl. About the only thing that will protect the potato planter from indictment tfjis year for destroying currency is. the fact ithat spuds do not as yet bear the government stamp. Health authorities predict that the habit of riding in automobiles will make Americans a legless race. We have noticed a tendency in that direction, especially as it relates to pedestrians. Some sensitive people are beginning to wonder if a man will feel any better in the next world after being blown up by a mine, than he would have felt had he been sunk by a submarine. The war, after all, might have been worse. Only 5,000,000 men have been killed thus far, with 10,000,000 or so minus legs, arms, eyes and other portions of their anatomy. Yes, it might be worse! How we long for a sight of a freckle-faced, bare-footed boy with a stone bruise and" a genuine case of old-fashioned belly-ache. It would assure us that nature after all has not ceased to be kind to her children.

,'We aan’t blame you, Willie, for being somewhat ashamed of your old dad, and we sympathize deeply /with you in having him wished upon you. He deserves your harshest censure for his many shortcomings, principal of which was his rank failure in raising a son. The man who owns a vacant lot adjoining the one on which he lives and allows that lot to run to weeds is literally burning up money. If he is so eternally averse to gardening, he could easily keep a hundred or two laying hens thereon, and within a year or two retire with a million. But, then, only a cross-eyed man can see the end of his nose. No, Gladys, the Dodo is not the only bird that is extinct. There is also the old-fashioned housewife who used to do the family washing on Monday, patch and darn on Tuesday, iron on Wednesday, clean house on Thursday, bake on Friday, catch up with odds and ends of work on Saturday, and convoy the old man and children to church on Sunday. Some of ,us have memories of her, but even memory is becoming dim.