“You grudge me the money for a hundred-foot automobile highway from New York to San Francisco?” says Jones. “Why, consider your wasteful steam-engines, with their ridiculous loss of ninety-seven per cent. of the latent coal energy!” “Double the efficiency of your steam-engines, and you have enough for a dozen automobile highways.” You see, that is all that stands in the way, Harold, a mere trifle like doubling the efficiency of the steam-engine. “I want $5,000,000 to build a monument twelve hundred feet high to Captain John Smith and Pocahontas,” says Robinson. “You can’t spare the money? Sir, take the revolving storm-doors in New York City alone, which now represent so much wasted human energy, and harness these doors to a series of storage batteries, and you will have your $5,000,000 back in the course of a year.” Will some one kindly run out and electrify all the revolving doors in New York City? I have a confession to make. My heart goes out to the shiftless American farmer. He is responsible for almost as many good causes dying of lack of nutrition as is the habitual smoker. If the American farmer would plow deep instead of merely scratching the soil, we could blow Japan out of the water. If he would study the chemistry of soils, we could give free railroad rides to every man and woman in the United States between the ages of thirty and forty-five. If we would build decent roads, we could pay off the national debt. In other words, if the American farmer could be persuaded to make his land produce, say, only ten times its present yield, the millennium would be here in a jump. I sometimes think that to the truly social-minded person the most immoral spectacle in life is an unscientific American farmer smoking a five-cent cigar in a buggy mired up to the axle on a country road. Yours, _Simeon Strunsky_. [Illustration: IN LIGHTER VEIN] OLD DADDY DO-FUNNY’S WISDOM JINGLES BY RUTH MC ENERY STUART THE MOSQUITO Wid so much Christian blood in ’is veins, You’d think Brer ’Skitty would take some pains To love ’is neighbor an’ show good-will, But he’s p’izenin’ an’ backbitin’ still. An’ he ain’t by ’isself in dat, in dat-- No, he ain’t by ’isself in dat. THE RAT Brer Rat in de corn-bin overfed An’ underworked, an’ now he’s dead; He craved to live lak a bloated chief, An’ now he ain’t nothin’ but a ol’ dead thief. An’ he ain’t by ’isself in dat, in dat-- An’ he ain’t by ’isself in dat. [Illustration: Drawn by Oliver Herford] MAY, FROM MY WINDOW BY FRANCES ROSE BENÉT A sparkling morning after weeks of rain; All fresh and fragrant glows my world, new-made. Bluebirds sing ballads; sparrows chirp refrain; Old Mother Spider, peering from the shade, With gastronomic joy surveys a fly, Her table-cloth hung on a bush to dry.