Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1910-10-02
The Man Who Has Mended His Ways

dandy and sparkling life is until ysu
can that rum act of yours. You Just
think you need or want 1t, you know.
It's all imagination. You permit your
slave to your imaginatton. The re-
suit Is disease in a thousand forms
takes hold of you. your viii power Is
Slapped. you dredge into it deeper and
paints picture SO gruesome that you
feel like either weeping into your
zagon OF malt or taking him by the
slack OF the weskit and hurting him
through the swinging doors. according
as you are constituted.
Thus The Man Who Has Mended His
ways goes up and down the world
making a spectacular. wide-waled.
blown-in-the-bottl nuisance OF him
self
1t may be merely matter of eating
lemon neringue pie. He prongs you in
the lunchroom in the act Of easing a
chunk OF lemon meringue pie into your
mechanism. and he stakes you to that
sad-but-sweet gaze of depreciation.
Don't you KNOW" he asks you, that
that stun. pointing a gnarled finger OF
derogatfon at your paid-for hunk OF pas
try. lis the worst thing you could eat?
That stuff like that never was meant 70
be eaten by human beings at ail?"
You resent having food that you like.
that you've paid for, and that you've par
TALLY consumed. spoken about in that
Mended His Ways isn't bothered by the
resentment of folks upon whom he at
tempts to fasten his dicta.
You mean you say to him. that
lemon meringue pie doesn't agree with
you, and that therefore you feel impsiled
to navigate UP and down the globe en-
deavoring to make everybody else hate
and loathe and despise and vitupefaAs
lefnan meringue pie. Is that it?'
80
Lemon meringue pie doesn't agree With
ANYBODY" he replies. right out Of head.
just like that, being always an tmsgtna-
tionless person and therefore wholly Un-
fitted to perceive any part OF your point
of view. ct should be understood here
that lemon meringue pie Is here used
merely as q symbol: for The Man Who
Has Mended HIS Ways Ia Just ~ liable
to pick out lemon meringue pie a. q
fodder wherewith to exercise his prose
lytizing powers as he Is to choose beef
stew or spinach or stewed tripe or welsh
rabbit, or any other old wholesome thinsD
Lemon meringue pie. it is well known to
everybody who has the slightest know1-
edge even of the elements Of dietetics. is
an article that II II simply impossible
for human being to digest, You can
no more digest lemon merinsue pie than
you can raw rubber"
You inform him at this point that.
nevertheless and notwithstanding. you've
been digesting lemon meringue pie with
the greatest success In the world ever
since the old belt line horse cars used
to swing sleepily past the National Mu-
scum. and even longer. but he only shakes
his head and goes on telling you. while
you're attempting to enjoy the food that
you've already settled for at the desk,
that you're going straight to your I'M
marked grave through dyspepsia caused
by nothing else In the world but lemon
meringue pie, and he hounds and nags
and DULLES you about It until you feel
like hurting him through the window.
But he's there to pin you to the stick
as to matter that by no possible con-
struction can be construed into his busi-
ness or any part Of the same. and no
makes q whooping bore and nuisance OF
himself without the least need for Il, 20
that the next time you espy him coming
down the street you dart into . h4Dep.
dasher's and pretend that you want to
price the new styles OF gallusea In the
window, and all of his afflicted friends
wise up to him and hts bug and avoid
him. and
Oh, well, this isn't to say that all. Of
us aren't glad II not gladder. that The
Man Who Has Mended His Ways has
done SO and. that we don't hope he Will
continue to do SO: but II he'd only mend
'em and let II go At that and not try to
herd US up into a corner OF the corral
and attempt to bully US into nending our
poor. trifiing but quite satisfactory-to-
ourselves ways!
CLARENCE L. CULLEN.