TOMMY—­“The teacher.”

The Literary Digest offers each week a prize of fifty dollars for the best argument in compact form for better salaries for teachers.  The editor of The Reporter humbly submits to the editor of The Digest this bit of pathos: 

“What shape, madam, was the pocketbook you lost?”

“Flat.  I’m a teacher.”

The kindergarten had been studying the wind all week—­its power, effects, etc.—­until the subject had been pretty well exhausted.  To stimulate interest, the kindergartner said, in her most enthusiastic manner:  “Children, as I came to school today in the trolley-car, the door opened and something came softly in and kissed me on the cheek.  What do you think it was?”

And the children joyfully answered, “The conductor!”—­Harper’s.

“We have just learned of a teacher who started poor twenty years ago and has retired with the comfortable fortune of fifty thousand dollars.  This was acquired through industry, economy, conscientious effort, indomitable perseverance, and the death of an uncle who left her an estate valued at $49,999.50.”

“Pa,” inquired a seven-year-old seeker after the truth, “is it true that school-teachers get paid?”

“Certainly it is,” said the father.

“Well, then,” said the youth indignantly, “that ain’t right.  Why should the teachers get paid when us kids do all the work?”

While the school teacher was away at the annual meeting of the state association she sent all of her little pupils a postcard greeting.  Little Edgar replied in kind and on his card wrote:  “I hope you are enjoying our vacation.”

See also Fords.

TEACHING

About the most hopeful element in any human being’s character I should reckon to be teachableness.

Wherever you meet a man who knows—­and knows he knows—­and wards off any proof of reasoning of yours with the impenetrable shield of a superior smile or the dull hostility of a determined eye, you feel that between you and him there can be no real dealings.

The wisest minds I find are the most teachable.  The wider one’s experience, the more thorough his study, the braver his heart, and the stronger his intelligence, the more willing he is to hear what you or any man may have to offer.

Stubbornness is usually the instinctive self-defense of conscious weakness.  When one can do nothing else to show his strength he imitates the mule—­the most despised of animals.

Spinoza’s maxim was that the two great banes of humanity are self-conceit and the laziness coming from self-conceit.—­Dr. Frank Crane.

TEARS

See Woman.

TELEGRAPH

“Why did you strike the telegraph operator?” asked the magistrate of the man who was summoned for assault.