The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1909-01-03
PET YOUR DIGESTION
AND YOU WILL LOSE 1T
BY IRWIN S. COBB.

ut certainly is an age of Improvement
and progress and everything like that
remarked the Hotel Clerk.
Jaw. don't know" said the House
Detective. Bout the only thing I've
took notice Of lately is fewer teddy bears
and more of them fat-lookin' Billkins
And l wouldn't like to say off-hand
whether that's a sign of progress or
delicate compliment TO our next Presi-
dent"
oh but yes. insisted the Hotel Clerk
In the past year or so the spirits of
progress, which sometimes acts like they
were the spirits of something else, have
been doing things to nearly all the cher
ished institution that we've got left
Just look at what's been happening to our
common language. First off they started
in to popuarize the fonetic or cob-tailed
system of spelling. President Roosevelt
very strong for it, He wrote a speci-
men letter full of words that looked like
they'd been operated on by one of those
talented parties that hangs around a
livery stable, next door to a riding acad-
envy, and shortens up bull terrier pups
to their ears and tails when there's
nothing doing in the way of docking sad
die horses for people who believe in Civ
ing fly an even break with a horse.
Well, it didn't seem to 60 A few col
lege professors and lovers of the late
Chauser-who was a fair writer Larry,
but a rotten bad speller emerged from
their respective burrows and said it was
a fine thing, but on every hand plain
business men could be heard remarking
that any time they felt the desire to
leave most of the important consonants
and vowels out of their correspondence
they could get magnificent cooperation
from the young lady typewriters that the
business colleges turned out.
$50 they dropped that scheme and be-
gan monkeying with the pronunciation.
Only it's not being done as it was in the
old days when he attended the little red
school house and We're taught about the
long mark under the eye and the sound
of 20" as in "ouch," the same as
scrap between two chorus girls. Nearly
every day or two somebody hobs up with
plan for pronouncing some reliable
household word like you We're trying TO
brush your teeth at the same time. When
you strike party who slides a word off
the back porch of his palate and gargles
his throat with it before he let's you have
IL you can take it from me that your
lifeline has been crossed by a member of
the new laryngitis school of pronuncia-
ton. That's the sort of people that COM
monty violate the spirit of the Monroe
Doctrine by referring to Venezuela as
'Venswalla." which is cruel insult, not
only to a sister republic, but also to the
fair cities of Venice It.. and Walla Wala,
Wash, that've done nothing to deserve
such treatment at the hands of a friend
ly nation. And only the other day L
heard man that wasn't drinking and
didn't have any other excuse, speaking
of the Europeans as 'U-rope-Anns with
.efn Nifn.r 10 If1lY h1t
blow he was dealing at the dialect poets
of Indiana and Park Row, whove been
earning a good living ever since the year
of the Black Hawk war turning out pa
triotic poems that wound up something
like this.
80 81, I'm mighty glad that we'uns
Amt nothin like them Europeans"
ut seems to me there ought TO be a law
to prevent people from taking away a
poor dialect poets means of livelihood
that way. But there doesn't seem to be
any way of stopping it. Those that don't
treat the English language like it was a
nasal douche and go around inhaling 1t
are becoming enamoured of the new
tongue called Esperanto. Have you been
up against the Esperanto thing yet. Lar
ry? Well, you ought to try it. When
two more adopts are conversing in
Esperanto simultaneously it sounds like
heated DtlWtti the ulIeu
help in a Chinese laundry and the more
there are using 1t at the same time the
better results you get. 1t ought to be
handy language for suffragettes to car
ry on their deliberations with l think
If ii ever gets real popular, I'll learn the
deaf and dumb alphabet and make signs
my fingers
yut taking it all in all, the greatest
progress has been along the line of food
stuffs for the human interior. 1t seems
to me that people are paying more atten-
ZION to their digestion and have less of 1t
Ian ever before in the worlds history.
That's one thing sure about digestion
II you begin to pet it. you lose it, and
those that are doing the most for theirs
haven't any at all. AS well as l can fig
ure out. a digestive apparatus is some
thing like a dollar watch. You're apt to
get along with it all right until you be-
gin to pry into its works, trying to find
out what makes it tick
1T didn't used to be this way Larry.
In the days of Charles Dickens and those
old boys, their heroes were always eat
ing something solid and nourishing like
plum buildings and apples roasted before
an open fire place. and Yorkshire dump
lings, and getting away with 1t. l be-
lieve it, too, all but the roasted apple
part 1 tried roasting one myself once
and I know. When 1 got through with
1t I had something that I'll bet 1 could
pass off on any hospital in town as
typical case of cirrhosis of the liver.
But I believe all the rest of it. just
as I was telling you. I never read any
where in Charles Dickens or William
Makepeace Thackeray that a grown per-
son ever started day on coach top
with a satisfying breakfast of shredded
varnish brushes and protoid coal clinkers.
or that any one after dining of of NUT
ton pie and jam tarts felt 1t necessary to
give an imitation of shot tower hurting
pepsin pellets down It's fues. Yet they
managed to die of many things besides
dyspepsia in those days. Even in a COM
pa-atively recent period like my own
frir sun kissed youth distinctly remem-
rer that the only vegetarians were live
stock and people that had lost their
teeth He didn't know anything about
tie joys of peanut butter. freshly
ctlurned from the rich output of Sookie
PEANUT and Bessie Goober, when was