The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1913-09-17
ON TIE SPUR
or THE AOMENT

By ROY K. MOULTON.

1 have heered of many economical
people, but L think that woman that
borrows her neighbours rat is goin' it
a little too strong.
/ hate post mortem conversation
alist, one of them fellers that comes
around after you are married and asks
You right in front of your wife If you
don't remember this and that which
happened to you ten years before.
A 81 mewl kin kick just a hard
as ST. one, although he may not
be so beauteous or fair to see. have
also seen a Teller with SO suit that
had more money in the bank than the
Teller that paid $50, for his n. So you
can't always tell
The hippopotamus is one of the
most graceful of the animile kingdom
and has got a smile that kin take in
a burro and couple of mustang
ponies. He has an important mission
in this world and that is to be shot.
He amt no good before he is shot and
he hain't no good after he is shot ex-
ceptin' to make rubber boots out'n.
Nature surely played an awful joke
on the hippopotamus.
The Diary of Bonehead.
My neighbor is one of those motor
boat experts who do not know the
difference between the eccentric and
the ashpan. He knows more about
motorboats than that Oscar Under
wood knows about agate and zinc,
when he is conversing with you in the
safety and privacy of your own house,
far from the more or less raging MAN.
Once in the boat he becomes the
rankest tyro that motorboatdom ever
knew and motorboatdom has known
a few.
out of my neighbor all spring and
early summer. The things he told me
about gasoline engines, horsepower
and wind resistance was sufficient to
have entitled him to the Nobel peace
prize for motorboatcraft if there is
any such prize. 1 heard motorboat
over the back fence while we were
hoeing our gardens and motorboat
moving our lawns. Yesterday he got
me into the boat. Something told me
to stay at home and weed the onions.
Perhaps it was the subconscious
mind or the sixth sense or the fourth
dimension. Anyhow it gave me the
best bunch have had in nine years.
Everything that could have hap
pened to motorboat In five years
happened to that one before we had
proceeded more than two miles out
in the lake. According to my neigh
boris stories, nothing had ever hap
pened to it before, but the most ar
dent pessimist could not have hoped
for more to happen this time.
My neighbor, with his head some
where under the engine and his feet
hanging over the side of the boat and
when there was swell, used Ian
guage that Uncle Noah Webster could
not have put into his book and got it
through the mails.
I think that the only thing that
didn't go wrong about the boat was
the flagstaff. 1t seemed to work
beautifully all the time that we were
out. The differential crashed through
the windshield, the carburetor blew
up and smashed the eccentric, the diff
ferential got foul of the oiling system
and the bobandfetchit caught on the
geewhilliker and twisted the drive
shaft off from the propeller. Doubt
less other things happened, but these
were the things which would linger
in the memory of an amateur like my
self. This was at 10 o'clock in the
morning. At 10 O'Clock at night we
were picked up by a fisherman after
we had drifted out in the lake until
the city lights twinkled like distant
stars.
A man with five children, a fireless
cooker and a photograph depending
upon him for support should keep out
of motorboats and not attempt to
tamper with any sort of machinery
more complicated than lawn mower.