Forest City press. (Forest City, Potter County, D.T. [S.D.]) 1883-19??, 1912-03-14
HOT TALK.

"One of the gags of the professional
funnyists and the ground and lofty
Jokesmiths for the past forty years or
so has appertained to the man who in
quires on a hot day, is it hot enough
for you"" observed the man with the
protruding chin and the deep, hoarse
voice.
well. 1 want that gag Cancelled,
away, Topped and sent to the boneyard
along with the Observation-Disclosures
at-the-picnic joke, the yo~ung-fellow-
w~ho-stays-late screech and sew-a-but-
ton-on-my-shirt thing and a whole lot
OF other passe and decrepit ones that
ought to have been wiped away long
before Artemus Ward and Josh Billings
cashed in.
What's the matter with the man
who asks if it is hot enough for you.
anyhow? What's wrong abou his ques-
tion? Why shouldn't he ask if it's hot
enough for you? Why should he be a
target for all these gaggists who pick a
little thing like that up and masticate
ON it for IL hundred years OF so. till
everybody who reads just the first line
knows he old thing by heart, no mat
ter i'm what different kind of way it's
twisted?
.If the day is hot. why shouldn't a
man say so?
when the days cold we bleat about
it and discuss it and on it and
compare thermometers and brag about
how cold 1T is ON our second-story porch
and make a whole peck of conversation
i'm general about it, don't we?
IF We're staked to a big heap of
snow we gnaw the blanket about that.
too. don't we, and tell each other how
high it is in drifts and on the level,
and how our suburban a butted
through the tallest drift of all. and o
we had to shovel a path out the kitchen
way, n how we like to've lost our
lives trying to get home. and all that
sort of Il snow polixity, don't we,
hey?
If the rain comes down pretty steady
and powerful, We're there with right
hefty stories, aren't we, about how we
couldn't see our hands before us for 1t
out our way. and after while we drift
back to the times when the heavy rains
and melting snow in the mountains
made the floods during which skiffs
were seen on Pennsylvania avenue. and
We're Observation-Disclosures
with all kinds n manners of spells on
the a question, aren't we, I ask
again?
IF there's a nifty hail storm, we
prattle no end, don't we, about the size
of the hailstones in front of u house,
and about what narrow escape our FOX
terrier mutt had from being killed by
being hit by one OF them when he fool
ishly scampered out into the yard to get
Il bone. and nov the rattle of the stones
or the roof sounded like the volleying
of rifles-we're there. are we not, with
an endless chain of Conversations junk
about that hail storm, are we not?
And when we're blanketed by an I'M
usual fog, don't we get out on to the
gabfest firing line. and stake each other
to more or less fanciful stories about
the thickness of it out in u vicinage,
and how n of our young ones came
near getting lost trying to get home
from the grocery, to which he'd been
sent to get a bar of soap through that
fog. and how when we struck a match
it didn't light up a quarter of an inch
sputter. anyway-we converse largely
and expansively through out chapeaus
about the big fog. don't we?
''Uh-huh. All right.
"Then what's the matter with a man
asking If it's hot enough for you? Heat
is weather, isn't it? It's part of the
climatic game, l suppose? Then why
should it be barred in the betting? Why
should the gaggists have been all these
years with the pleasant-spoken and
good-natured chap who. just as a sort
of greeting that comes natural to him,
asks you If it's hot enough for you?
You don't want him to say. when he
meets you on a sizzling day. that you're
wearing u bum hat. or that your feet
are not mates. or hat your trousers
need pressing. or that he hears that you
were soused the limit last night. or that
he wishes your wife 'ud stop practtcing
on the piano for the rest of the sum-
mer-dO you?
We'll, he doesn't do any of these
things. He Just up and asks you, to be
civil and to pass the time of day. If it's
hot enough for you, and if you're not a
crouch and If you nave n thinking
power of your w and if O don't per-
nit yourself to be swayed and bullied
by these ~gaggists that I'm talking
about, you'll just make a reply as to
whether it's hot enough for you. k
YOU would reply to n other question,
and let it go at that.
"All OF the fellows that / know who
ask me II it's hot enough for me are
bully decent chaps. people that l like.
and nothing at all like the asinine pulp
nuts portrayed by the is-it-hot-enough-
for-you iokesmiths. They're all right.
I hope that they'll be asking that ques-
ton as long as they live, II that af-
ter they die they'l-er-well, no, l don't
wish that, Of ~cOurse-but. say. on the
level now, and all Of this ~extraneous
matter aside. IL It hot enough for yoI?"
Perfectly Safe.
From the New York Weekly.
Observation-Disclosures q lump OF self
ishness! The house was full OF strange
noises last night. and I didn't dare close