* * * * * *

Name in order the three best newspapers in Texas. 
            ADVERTISER.

Well, the Galveston News runs about second, and the San Antonio Express third.  Let us hear from you again.

* * * * * *

Has a married woman any rights in Texas? 
            PROSPECTOR.

Hush, Mr. Prospector.  Not quite so loud, if you please.  Come up to the office some afternoon, and if everything seems quiet, come inside, and look at our eye, and our suspenders hanging on to one button, and feel the lump on the top of our head.  Yes, she has some rights of her own, and everybody else’s she can scoop in.

* * * * * *

Who was the author of the sayings, “A public office is a public trust,” and “I would rather be right than President”?

Eli Perkins.

* * * * * *

Is the Lakeside Improvement Company making anything out of their own town tract on the lake? 
            INQUISITIVE.

Yes, lots.

POEMS

[This and the other poems that follow have been found in files of The Rolling Stone, in the Houston Post’s Postscripts and in manuscript.  There are many others, but these few have been selected rather arbitrarily, to round out this collection.]

THE PEWEE

In the hush of the drowsy afternoon,
When the very wind on the breast of June
Lies settled, and hot white tracery
Of the shattered sunlight filters free
Through the unstinted leaves to the pied cool sward;
On a dead tree branch sings the saddest bard
Of the birds that be;
’Tis the lone Pewee. 
Its note is a sob, and its note is pitched
In a single key, like a soul bewitched
To a mournful minstrelsy.

“Pewee, Pewee,” doth it ever cry;
A sad, sweet minor threnody
That threads the aisles of the dim hot grove
Like a tale of a wrong or a vanished love;
And the fancy comes that the wee dun bird
Perchance was a maid, and her heart was stirred
By some lover’s rhyme
In a golden time,
And broke when the world turned false and cold;
And her dreams grew dark and her faith grew cold
In some fairy far-off clime.

And her soul crept into the Pewee’s breast;
And forever she cries with a strange unrest
For something lost, in the afternoon;
For something missed from the lavish June;
For the heart that died in the long ago;
For the livelong pain that pierceth so: 
Thus the Pewee cries,
While the evening lies
Steeped in the languorous still sunshine,
Rapt, to the leaf and the bough and the vine
Of some hopeless paradise.

NOTHING TO SAY

“You can tell your paper,” the great man said,
“I refused an interview. 
I have nothing to say on the question, sir;
Nothing to say to you.”