MONEY

  If you save all you earn, you're a miser.   If you spend all you earn, you're a fool.   If you lose it, you're out.   If you find it, you're in.   If you owe it, they're always after you.   If you lend it, you're always after them.   It's the cause of evil.   It's the cause of good.   It's the cause of happiness.   It's the cause of sorrow.   If the government makes it, it's all right.   If you make it, it's all wrong.   As a rule it's hard to get.   But it's pretty soft when you get it.   It talks!   To some it says, "I've come to stay."   To others it whispers, "Good-bye."   Some people get it at a bank.   Others go to jail for it.   The Mint makes it first.   It's up to you to make it last.

  --_Ben S. Kearns_.

GIBES--"A man's best friend, they say, is a full pocketbook."

DIBBS--"An empty one is his most constant friend, because while others may grow cold, he will find no change in his purse."

"I gave that beggar a penny, and he didn't thank me."

"No. You can't get anything for a penny now."

TODAY--"What do we care for prices? We've got the money!"

TOMORROW--"What do we care for prices? We haven't any money!"

"You know," Biggs, the confirmed alarmist, declared impressively, "it's getting so that it is positively dangerous for a man to carry around a good-sized roll of money."

"Difficult, rather than dangerous, I find," Diggs sighed.

"'S funny."

"Shoot!"

"Bills are rectangular, and yet they come rolling in!"

             _The Old Silver Dollar_

  How dear to my heart is the mem'ry that lingers     Of the days that, alas! we shall never see more,   When clutching a large silver coin in my fingers,     I hurried along to the grocery store,

  And there purchased flour and bacon and coffee.     And prunes in a package, and apricots canned,   Two gallons of coal-oil, a half pound of toffee,     And still held some change, when I left, in my hand.

            The big iron dollar             The good, honest dollar,             The hundred-cent dollar             I clutched in my hand.

  But now, though accustomed to buying far closer,     Whenever in markets or stores I appear   To lay in provisions, the butcher or grocer     Will glance at my dollar and quietly sneer.

  At the tail of a line of more affluent buyers     Awaiting my turn I must patiently stand,   For no one, as far as I gather, desires     The pitiful dollar I hold in my hand.

            The poor little dollar,             The cheap, little dollar,             The fifty-cent dollar,             I hold in my hand!

"The amount of money a fellow's father has doesn't seem to cut much figure here."

"No, it's the amount of the father's money the son has."

"They say money talks."

"Well?"

"I wonder how that idea originated?"

"Have you never noticed the lady on the dollar?"

A medical paper advances the theory that "man is slightly taller in the morning than he is in the evening." We have never tested this, but we have certainly noticed a tendency to become "short" toward the end of the month.

_See also_ Domestic finance.

MONEY LENDER

A teacher of English in one of our colleges describes a money-lender as follows:

"He serves you in the present tense, lends in the conditional mood, keeps you in the subjective, and ruins you in the future."

MORAL EDUCATION

The kindergarten teacher recited to her pupils the story of the wolf and the lamb. As she completed it she said:

"Now, children, you see that the lamb would not have been eaten by the wolf if he had been good and sensible."

One little boy raised his hand.

"Well, John," asked the teacher, "what is it?"

"If the lamb had been good and sensible," said the little boy, gravely, "we should have had him to eat, wouldn't we?"

MOSQUITOES

"You told me you hadn't any mosquitoes," said the summer boarder, reproachfully.

"I hadn't," replied Farmer Corntossel. "Them you see floatin' around come from Si Perkins's place. They ain't mine."

Two Irishmen, on a sultry night, took refuge under the bedclothes from a party of mosquitoes. At last one of them, gasping from heat, ventured to peep beyond the bulwarks, and espied a fire-fly which had strayed into the room. Arousing his companion with a punch, he said: "Furgus! Furgus! it's no use; you might as well come out; here's one of the craythers searching for us wid a lantern."

MOTHERS

Answers to the question "what is Mother?" given by supposedly feeble-minded school children of New York:

She's what you chop wood for.

She's what feeds you.

She's what put clothes and shoes on you.

She keeps care of you.

She's who's good to you.

She's your creator.

She's what's dead on to me.

Best composite portrait of a mother ever painted.

             _Mother_

  She loves me in spite of my faults;   She overlooks my mistakes;   She rejoices at my success;   She weeps over my failure;   She urges me on to higher endeavor,   And her confidence in my ability   Brings out the best that is in me.   Her love has been the crowning blessing of my life;         Here's to MOTHER.

  --_Hathaway_.--

  The mother, in her office, holds the key   Of the soul; and she it is who stamps the coin   Of character, and makes the being who would be a savage,   But for her gentle cares, a Christian man,   Then crown her Queen o' the world.

"An ounce of mother," says the Spanish proverb, "is worth a pound of clergy."--_T. W. Higginson_.

Mother is the name of God in the lips and hearts of little children.--_Thackeray_.

MOTHERS' DAY

These "days" for doing things that you ought to do any day are getting so numerous as to lead to curious ethical conflicts. A boy in Sabetha, Kansas, was taken to task for missing Sunday school one Sunday. "I wanted to come," he said, "but Sunday was Mothers' Day and mother wanted me to go fishing with her, so I went."