pipe-cleaners, usefulness of
pins to schoolboys, both when bent for fishing and when filed to
an extra point for use on the boy in the seat in front (honouring
him in the breech, as Hamlet would have said) and their curious
habits of turning up in unexpected places, undoubtedly caught by
pins in their long association with the lovelier sex. But of
these useful hyphens of raiment we will merely conclude by saying
that those interested in the pin industry will probably emigrate
to England, for we learn from the Encyclopaedia Britannica that in
that happy island pins are cleaned by being boiled in weak beer.
Let it not be forgotten, however, that of all kinds, the safety
is the King Pin.

CONFESSIONS OF A "COLYUMIST"

[Illustration]

I can not imagine any pleasant job so full of pangs, or any painful job
so full of pleasures, as the task of conducting a newspaper column.

The colyumist, when he begins his job, is disheartened because nobody
notices it. He soon outgrows this, and is disheartened because too many
people notice it, and he imagines that all see the paltriness of it as
plainly as he does. There is nothing so amazing to him as to find that
any one really enjoys his "stuff." Poor soul, he remembers how he
groaned over it at his desk. He remembers the hours he sat with
lack-lustre eye and addled brain, brooding at the sluttish typewriter.
He remembers the flush of shame that tingled him as he walked sadly
homeward, thinking of some atrocious inanity he had sent upstairs to the
composing-room. It is a job that engenders a healthy humility.

I had always wanted to have a try at writing a column. Heaven help me, I
think I had an idea that I was born for the job. I may as well be
candid. There was a time when I seriously thought of inserting the
following ad in a Philadelphia newspaper. I find a memorandum of it in
my scrap-book:

HUMORIST: Young and untamed, lineal descendent of Eugene Field,
Frank Stockton, and Francois Rabelais, desires to run a column in
a Philadelphia newspaper. A guaranteed circulation-getter.

Said Humorist can also supply excellent veins of philosophy,
poetry, satire, uplift, glad material and indiscriminate musings.
Remarkable opportunity for any newspaper desiring a really
unusual editorial feature. Address HUMORIST, etc.

So besotted was I, I would have paid to have this printed if I had not
been counselled by an older and wiser head.