But Pluto was different. He stood around till the estate was all closed
up, and it looked as though he had got left. Just then the administrator
says: “Why, here's Pluto. He is going to come out of the little end of
the horn. He will have to hustle for himself,” Pluto resented this and
clinched with the administrator. They fought till each had a watch pocket
on the brow and an Irish sunset symphony in green under the eye, while
Jupiter and Neptune stood by and encouraged the fight. Jupiter rather
took sides with his brother, and Neptune stood in with the administrator.
In the midst of the confusion Jupiter speaks up and says: “Swat him under
the ear, Pluto.” Whereupon Neptune says to the administrator. “Give
him--hail.” The administrator paused and said that was a good suggestion.
He would do so. And so he forgave Pluto and gave him--sheol.
The Expensive Word.
Much that is annoying in this life is occasioned by the use of a high
priced word where a cheaper one would do. In these days of failure,
shortage at both ends and financial stringency generally, I often wonder
that some people should go on, day after day, using just as extravagant
language as they did during the flush times. When I get hard up the first
thing I do is to economize in my expressions in every day conversation. If
there is a marked stringency in business, I lay aside first, my French,
then my Latin, and finally my German. Should the times become greatly
depressed and failures and assignments become frequent, I begin to lop off
the large words in my own language, beginning with “incomprehensibility,”
“unconstitutionally,” etc., etc.
Julius Caesar's motto used to be, “Avoid an unusual word as you would a
rock at sea,” and Jule was right about it, too. Large and unusual words,
especially in the mouths of ignorant people, are worse than “Rough on
Rats” in a boarding-house pie.
Years ago there used to be a pompous cuss in southern Wisconsin, who was a
self-made man. Extremely so. Those who used to hear him assert again and
again that he was a self-made man always felt renewed confidence in the
Creator.
He rose one evening in a political meeting, and swelling out his bosom, as
his eagle eye rested on the chairman, he said:
“Mr. Cheerman! I move you that the cheer do appoint a committee of three
to attend to the matter under discussion, and that sayed committee be
clothed by the cheer with ominiscient and omnipotent powers.”
The motion was duly seconded and the cheerman said he guessed that it
wouldn't be necessary to put it to a vote.
“I guess it will be all right, Mr. Pinkham. I guess there'll be no
declivity to that.”
And so the committee was appointed and clothed with omniscient and
omnipotent powers, there being no declivity to it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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