As he watched the old man sow the seed in his field the man from the city called out facetiously: 

“Well done, old chap.  You sow; I reap the fruits.”

Whereupon the farmer grinned and replied: 

“Maybe you will.  I am sowing hemp.”

See also Failures.

FASHION

“Isn’t your wife dogmatic?”

“She was when Pomeranian pups were the style, but now she’s auto-matic.”

The fashion wears out more apparel than the man.—­Shakespeare.

“Women have queer ways.”

“How now?”

“The styles call for mannish hats.  So my wife bought a mannish hat for eighteen dollars.”

“Well?”

“She could have bought a man’s hat for four dollars.”

Women’s fashions seem to be working around to the point where the voice with the smile will have to be listed among the latest spring styles.

The intrepid general was rallying her wavering female troops.

“Women,” she cried, “will you give way to mannish fears?”

A muffled murmur of indecision ran through the ranks.

“Shall it be said we are clothed in male armor?” shrieked the general.

The murmur became a mumble.

“Will you,” fiercely demanded the general, “show the white feather in a season when feathers are not worn?”

The effect was electrical.

“Never!” roared the soldiers.  And, forming into battle array, they once more hurled themselves upon the enemy.

“You criticize us,” said the Chinese visitor, “yet I see all your women have their feet bandaged.”

“That is an epidemic,” it was explained to him, gently, “which broke out in 1914.  Those are called spats.”

Little Tommy at the “movies” saw a tribe of Indians painting their faces, and asked his mother the significance of this.

“Indians,” his mother answered, “always paint their faces before going on the war-path—­before scalping and tomahawking and murdering.”

The next evening after dinner, as the mother entertained in the parlor her daughter’s young man, Tommy rushed downstairs, wide-eyed with fright.

“Come on, mother!” he cried.  “Let’s get out of this quick!  Sister is going on the war-path!”

Mrs. Will Irwin said at a Washington Square tea: 

“The more immodest fashions would disappear if men would resolutely oppose them.

“I know a woman whose dressmaker sent home the other day a skirt that was, really, too short altogether.  The woman put it on.  It was becoming enough, dear knows, but it made her feel ashamed.  She entered the library, and her husband looked up from his work with a dark frown.

“‘I wonder,’ she said, with an embarrassed laugh, ’if these ultra-short skirts will ever go out?’

“‘They’ll never go out with me,’ he answered in decided tones.”