American literature -- Humor; American wit and humor
Isobel clapped her hands. "Jimmy, love, you are simply great, when you
are not trying to be. And, after a while, we could print the lectures
and have our own text-books copyrighted. But don't you think we ought to
take in the young people, as well?--have a--a collegiate department for
beginners?"
"'Sh!" said Jimaboy, and he got up and closed the door with ostentatious
caution. "Suppose somebody--Lantermann, for instance--should hear you
say such things as that: 'take in the young people'! Shades of the
Rosicrucians! we wouldn't 'take in' anybody. The very life of these mail
things is the unshaken confidence of the people. But, as you suggest, we
really ought to include the frying size."
It was delicious fooling, and Isobel found a sketch-block and dipped her
pen.
"You do the letter-press for the 'collegiate' ad., and I'll make a
picture for it," she said. "Hurry, or I'll beat you."
Jimaboy laughed and squared himself at the desk, and the race began.
Isobel had a small gift and a large ambition: the gift was a
cartoonist's facility in line drawing, and the ambition was to be able,
in the dim and distant future, to illustrate Jimaboy's stories.
Lantermann, the _Times_ artist, whose rooms were just across the hall,
had given her a few lessons in caricature and some little gruff,
Teutonic encouragement.
"Time!" she called, tossing the sketch-block over to Jimaboy. It was a
happy thought. On a modern davenport sat two young people, far apart;
the youth twiddling his thumbs in an ecstasy of embarrassment; the
maiden making rabbit's ears with her handkerchief. Jimaboy's note of
appreciation was a guffaw.
"I couldn't rise to the expression on those faces in a hundred years!"
he lamented. "Hear me creak:"
DON'T MARRY
until you have taken the Preparatory Course in the Post-Graduate School
of W. B. Home-Study in the Science of Successful Heart-Throbs. Why earn
only ten kisses a week when one hour a day will qualify you for the
highest positions? Our Collegiate Department confers degree of B. B.;
Post-Graduate Department that of M. W. B. Members of Faculty all
certificated Post-Graduates.
A postal card brings Prospectus and application blank.
Address: The Post-Graduate School of W. B., 506 Hayward Avenue, Cleland,
Ohio.
Isobel applauded loyally. "Why, that doesn't creak a little bit! Try it
again; for the unhappy T. M.'s, this time. Ready? Play!"
Her picture was done while Jimaboy was still nibbling his pen and
scowling over the scratch-pad. It was a drawing-room interior, with the
wife in tears and the husband struggling into his overcoat. To them,
running, an animated United States mail-bag, extending a huge envelope
marked: "From the Post-Graduate School of W. B."
Jimaboy scratched out and rewrote, with the pen-drawing for an
inspiration:
HEARTS DIVIDED
BECOME
HEARTS UNITED
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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