It is now the proper time for the cross-eyed woman to fool with the
garden hose. I have faced death in almost every form, and I do not
know what fear is, but when a woman with one eye gazing into the
zodiac and the other peering into the middle of next week, and wearing
one of those floppy sunbonnets, picks up the nozzle of the garden hose
and turns on the full force of the institution, I fly wildly to the
Mountains of Hepsidam.

Water won't hurt any one, of course, if care is used not to forget and
drink any of it, but it is this horrible suspense and uncertainty
about facing the nozzle of a garden hose in the hands of a cross-eyed
woman that unnerves and paralyzes me.

Instantaneous death is nothing to me. I am as cool and collected
where leaden rain and iron hail are thickest as I would be in my own
office writing the obituary of the man who steals my jokes. But I
hate to be drowned slowly in my good clothes and on dry land, and have
my dying gaze rest on a woman whose ravishing beauty would drive a
narrow-gauge mule into convulsions and make him hate himself t'death.



_A Long-Lived Family_

A "dime museum" manager, having heard of a man 123 years of age,
journeyed to his home to try and secure him for exhibition purposes.

"Well, my friend," said the museum manager, "the proofs of your age
seem to be all right. Now, how would you like to come to my place,
just do nothing but sit on a platform and let people look at you, and