The Wrangell sentinel., 1922-01-19

patriarch. "Peo- pie are always sensitive about the mistakes due to inexperience. It is foolish to be so, but we can't help it. If man makes a break through his own chuckleheadedness, he can laugh over it and pretend he enjoys it; but if he makes mistake simply because he doesn't know any better, he is full of modification from the roof of his hat down. It seems to jar his vanity.
 About the most humiliating expert ence man can have is to get stung in a horse trade. The average man doesn't know anything about horse He can see if it has four legs and a tail and pair of eyes, but he is ob- livious to all the things that make a horse a good one or a poor one. If he gets the worst end of a trade he should be philosopher, and say that while he isn't a success at swapping plugs, he can wind up a photograph or stoke furnace better than any man in the country. But he gets mad, and the fact that he was stuck in such trade leaves a sore place that never heals.
 T can remember a break my first wife made when we were newly mar ried. She invited some folks to dinner, and, after much deliberation, decided to have a roast duck as the chief dish, and told the hired girl to go ahead and prepare the bird. Now, duck is mighty fine eating, what there is of it. but there is mighty little substance to it. A duck is mere shell. It doesn't run to meat at all. A good hungry man could eat three ducks at a sit ting and look around for more.
 My wife, who had lived at hotels and boarding houses all her life, sup posed a duck was a solid chunk of meat, and thought there would be enough of the bird left, after the din her, to keep us in cold meat for a week. Well, there were eight people at that dinner party, and each one had a piece of duck about the size of one-cent stamp.
 Everybody but my wife thought the mistake was funny, but the most su- perficial observer could see at a glance that her heart was broken. She tried her blamedest to smile, but right in the middle of the effort she broke off with a yell, and left the room to weep few stanzas and she never did recover from that humiliation. I tried time and again to convince her that there was nothing to be ashamed of in such misadventure, but she thought the finger of scorn would be leyeled at her as long as she lived.
 T can't sit here and moralize in this strain all day, but I feel just as sick as anybody when I make a break. When the mayor was buried three years ago there was big procession in his honor. A lot of mounted men led the parade. and if you were look ing you doubtless saw me. I was riding a big black horse, when the big black horse wasn't riding me never supposed there was any trick in riding horse, so when they asked me to sit on a foaming charger I didn't hesitate minute. I got seasick be- fore I was on the nag two minutes, and I let go the lines and hung to its mane and the fool horse cavorted all over the street, so that I looked like the idiot who tries to ride a trick mule at the circus.
 My evOlutions simply broke up that funeral parade and turned it into a joy ride. really wasn't to blame in any way, but whenever think of the episode cold sweat breaks out OF me, and I feel like offering myself to the first conner for seventeen cents.