The Johnson City comet. (Johnson City, Tenn.) 1916-1917, 1916-04-27
SOLDIERS
HOME
General News and Spicy Comment from the Mountain
Branch of Interest to Veterans and Friends.

NLA aug IA40 4 ASAiA
ELL >c~~~~~~.~~o~~~~~~-c-~s~S
SQUAD ROOM STORIES.
Il want to be a boy again!" said
Comrade Fisher, as many another vet
has said when youthful days were
gone. But the hero had notion,
which was pretty near bunch, that
boyhood would come back to him
some afternoon at lunch. He tried
most every medicine which druggists
could devise; he spoiled his stomach
taking pills, strange glasses queered
his eyes. His whiskers got little
gray, his hair was turning white,
and still he thought his callow youth
would come back over night. One
day he read an almanac which said,
just for a joke: II know SWIM
ming hole that's good for men about
to croak." So Fisher bought tick
ct and bid the vets good-by. He said,
I'm off for Hampton, where soldiers
never die; where undertakers live in
shacks and doctors beg for bread"
His messmates listened to his talk.
Hes full of mush," they said. Fish
er found the swimming hole; he took
q swim each noon. Although his
whiskers still were gray, he plum
forgot it soon. Then he opened up
an Office and sold swampy real es-
tate, he dressed in Palm Beach cloth
ing, and each night he had date.
So when Old Time sneaked up be-
hind, and felled him with blow, said
Fisher, I'm youngster, and l kind
of hate to go!"
Said the Regular about the sol
diers' friend: "A mule is a patient,
sympathetic, timid animal, and is
the best waiter in the whole realm
of animal philosophy He will take
beatings, slashes, kicks and slams
year. after year with what seems to-
be feeling of resignation and for
bearance. But it is not resignation,
it is patience, and when the driver
in an unguarded moment gets In a
good position that mule will kick him
into the middle of next week. And
having delivered the blow that he
has been waiting years to land there
is no look of exultation or indication
of excitement. On the contrary he
appears placid, serene and almost
sympathetic. You imagine him say,
I'm sorry, awfully sorry, but had
to do my duty A well-balanced
mule is not vicious or snarly. He
takes his punishment with resigna-
ton and fortitude, but when the OPP
portunity comes he lands the blow
that evens things up. 1t takes some
people a long while to get onto the
finer points of this noble animal.
Said the doe: "The dangerous and
dirty habit of careless splitting,
and sneezing is without
doubt the most costly carelessness
that our society indulge in. 1t has
been shown by careful scientific ex-
periments that in the act of cough
ing or sneezing, unless a handkerchief
or other object is held in front of the
nose and mouth, microscopic parti-
cles of saliva and nasal secretion are
into he air in which,
even in quiet ward, may be carried
a distance of from ten to fifty yards
from the place where they were ex-
PEELED. The germs of tuberculosis,
diphtheria and perhaps grip, colds,
pneumonia and scarlet fever are
through expectoration.
Many perfectly healthy people not
from the disease carry the
germs of pneumonia and diphtheria
and other contagious diseases in their
mouths and Threats. 1t becomes nee
essary that not only recognizably
sick people should desist from care
less splitting, but that the apparently
we'll, who may be germ carriers"
should also be careful in expectorat-
ing"
At a meeting of the Borrowed Time
Club the Oracle read a paper from
which the following is an excerpt:
The strongest strand in the chord
Of human hope that reaches out
rom the windows of the soul to the
'ar-off peaks of dreamland's misty
Illusions, is the delusive phrase, "a
little farther on" 1t is the dream of
a spur to boyhood, tonic |
o girlhood, an intoxicant to lovers,
he mothers soliloquy, the fathers
and the undropped an
,hor of old veterans. "A little farther
IN and all our wrongs will be right |
ID, our poverty banished, our love
satisfied, our hopes realized, our am.
'ition gratified and our lives rounded |
tut and completed.
Sometimes it is lost to view and a |
sreat mountain of dependency casts
is dark shadows across our path, and |
We feel like sitting down fat on the
lamp ground of despair and spending
he balance of life digging little idle
loles into the face of nature with our
'roken crutches, so to speak.
1t is the great universal Mecca to-
Yards which every hopeful face is
urned, the one light that never fades
While hope lives in the human heart,
he one stereotyped phase that never
rows old. and the last strand in the
hord of hope to part and leave us
tranded with our metal suspenders
Iown and our trouser pockets loaded
leavily with an all-gone feeling of
'usted despair. What fools these
nortals bel" When it is known that
a little farther on leads only to a
ix-foot hole in the ground, where a
'reat COB of opaqua oblivion will sit
m forgotten graves throughout the
ush of eternity.