The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1881-02-04
Men Who slIp.

NOTHING so quickly divests man Of
dignity as a long, SPRAYING fall on q
snpPery pavement. He clutches fran
ucaEy at the sky. He half RECEIVERS his
equilibrium, and then suddenly lurches
the other way. Every limb starts of
on its own hook. He gyrates. He
gesticulates.- He expostulates. He ro-
Sates. His right foot strikes out for
heaven, his left for the far West, while
ms hat gambols gayly over the curb
s1one. With resolution, emphasis and
resonance, he sits down hastily on q
sharp piece of ice-to reflect, the last
Veshge OF dignity and piety gone. And
yet this thing goes on from day to day,
and will to the last syllable of recorded
ume. Ordinances to enforce the clean.
ing OF pavements are dead letters. They
prove, like many other laws, that stat
utes IN advance of public sentiment
amount to nothing. They are silently
ignored by common consent. Mer-
chants, who would seem directly inter-
ested in making payements safe and
pleasant before their own doors, quietly
allow their customers to slip and slide
along to the peril of life and limb, and
all for the want of an hours labor and a
bucketful of ashes or sawdust. There
is reason for this deep down in the
American heart 1t is found in our ir-
repressible love of the ridiculous. ANY
American tradesman in the land
would rather lose the sale of a
bill OF goods than miss seeing his
best customer make an involuntary
spread-eagle of himself on an icy pave
ment. There is something in it that
pays him better, and he holds his sides
and gasps in ecstacy of mirth behind the
door at the recollection of Jones trying
to execute double somersault, without
q handspring, on the crowded pavement
OF frosty morning. He tries to tell you
where Jones's hat went, and how he
appeared at that awful moment when he
looked around to see who witnessed his
astonishing exploits, but he suffocates
and goes off uttering sounds diabolic.
He sympathizes with the boy that roared
in glee at JOnes's discontinue, and he
could hug the unfeeling brute over the
way who is laughing stentoriously yet.
Let Smiths new silk hat be blown off
his head by the winds and see how the
tween the hat and its disguised owner.
Nobody stops the hat, yet everybody
cheers Smith with whoop and yell and
words of encouragement. Now he has
it, now away it goes again, through mud
and slush as Smith tears madly after.
The crowd is evidently betting on the
hat, though it never fails to whoop up
Smith. Nobody is in snch a hurry as
not to be able to stop and see that race
out, and contribute to the general joy
with uproariOus shouts and peals of
laughter. There is general disap-
pointment when the battered hat is cap
tured and the fun is over. It's mean,
but We do 1.-THE politest and the rudest.
II we hold in until Smith, utterly de-
moralized, has retreated up stairway,
we explode Immediately afterward per-
fidiously and 60 cachinnating home in
commissions to tell the story to delighted
auditors.
On that slippery day in New York
when "one-sixth of the people were in
the act of constantly falling down or
picking themselves up,' the other FIVE
siNths "might have been seen" bend
ing too and fro in agonies of merriment
and laughter. What pandemonium of
noise went up from hundreds of miles of
streets. one-sixth groans and curses,
tive-sixths yells of derision and peals of
joy! Then and there was exhibited a
marked trait of our national character
We laugh and grow lean.
We really feel very sorry for Brown,
who has nearly ruined his spinal column
by his sudden determination to sit down
on q slick, fiat rock, but we have no
idea of restraining our Joy at the pictur-
esque and bizarre attitude he assumes.
A man slipped up recently in Canaan
daigua and unjointed his spinal column.
The accident elected shouts of laughter
from the street, and then everybody
wanted to help carry him home before
he died. There is no malice or mischief
in the American sense of the ludicrous,
which EFFORTS tittering from the girls
and whoops from the boys, old and
young, but an irrepressible desire to en-
Joy the too few opportunities to shoot
folly as it flies and laugh when we may.
Hence our pavements are seldom
cleaned. Hence our city ordinances are
dead letters. Hence we slip and slide
and laugh away, willing to take our
chances in the hope that our pudgy
neighbor, not we, may be induced to
perform acrobatic feats, with a tin
bucket on his arm and a bottle in his
pocket, the next time he goes down
town. "The man who laughs" is an
Observation-Disclosures Journal.
Fer0cious Courage OF the Afghan.