Baking, broiling, brewing, frying,
Life would then be oh, so sunny
And complete;
And we wouldn’t fear to greet
Every grocer in the street
If we didn’t—­man and woman,
Every hungry, helpless human—­
Have to eat, eat, eat, eat, eat—­
We’d save money if we didn’t have to eat.

  All our worry would be over
    If we didn’t have to eat. 
      Would the butcher, baker, grocer
      Get our hard-earned dollars?  No, Sir! 
  We would then be right in clover
    Cool and sweet. 
    Want and hunger we could cheat,
    And we’d get there with both feet,
  If we didn’t—­poor or wealthy,
  Halt or nimble, sick or healthy—­
    Have to eat, eat, eat, eat, eat—­
    We could get there if we didn’t have to eat.

  —­Nixon Waterman.

ECONOMY

TOM—­“I’ve seen the girl I want to marry.  I stood behind her at the ticket window this morning and she took seven minutes to buy a five-cent elevated ticket.”

ALICE—­“Did that make you want to marry her?”

TOM—­“Yes, I figured out that she could never spend my income at that rate.”

BOOK AGENT—­“This book will teach you the way to economize.”

THE VICTIM—­“That’s no good to me.  What I need is a book to teach me how to live without economizing.”

  How oft economy grows gay
    And boasts of its efficient work,
  When it has merely stopped the pay
    Of some two-thousand-dollar clerk!

Little June’s father had just returned from the store and was opening up some sheets of sticky fly-paper and placing it about the room.  June watched a minute and then burst out with: 

“Oh, papa, down at the corner grocery you can get the paper with the flies already caught.  They have lots of it in the window.”

“Well, Albert, I’ve been acting on your advice.  I put a hundred dollars in the bank this month.”

“Fine!  It isn’t so hard, is it?”

“No; I simply tore up all the bills.”—­Life.

See also Domestic finance; Thrift.

EDITORS

“An editor is a man who puts things in the paper, isn’t he?”

“Oh, no, my son; an editor keeps things out of the paper.”

The editor of the newspaper in a certain small southern town was given an article to print, praising in very elegant language the life and works of a certain southern colonel.

The colonel and the editor were not the best of friends.

The article came out, but in spelling “scarred,” in that very important phrase “battle scarred veteran,” one “r” was omitted.

The colonel threatened violence but the editor promised to admit his error in the next issue.

In the following issue, in large type, appeared:  “The editor of this paper regrets very much an error in spelling in our last issue.  In describing our most worthy colonel, instead of ‘battle scared veteran’ it should read, ‘bottle scarred veteran.’”