Martin Boots Junior High School - Sketch Yearbook (Marion, IN)

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44 THE SKETCH Jokes English Teacher: Now I want you to tell me which of those words are singular and which are plural. Tommy, you take the Hrst, 'trousers'. Tommy Collins fafter deliberationj: Singular at the top and plural lower down, sir. Edgar McMullen fbroke buvt resourcefulj: Joanne, do you know the dif- ference between riding in a tram car and in a taxi? Joanne McKevitt: I'm afraid I don't. Edgar: Then we may just as well take a tram car. Dorothy McCain: What is your favorite sport? Young Doctor: Sleighing. Dorothy McCain: No, I mean apart from businessf' A good book-- The Case of the Missing Ring, or Who Washed the Bath Tub? What is that a picture of? asked a small tot. That's the Goddess of Liberty, replied Big Brother. you can always tell her cause she's got an ice cream cone in her hand. The Scandinavian had just arrived in California, delighted at the way his new car had withstood the trials and tribulations of the trip. How were the roads, Hans Vel, dis guy Lincoln vas a great engineer. But dat Frenchman, De- Tour, he vas no road builder a-tall. Dv In what way are four countries affected when the Negro waiter drops a platter with a turkey on it? 1. The down fall of Turkey. 2. The overflow of Greece. 3. The destruction of China. 4. The humiliation of Africa. Teacher: junior, use 'oiiicious' in a sentence. Jucnior Gamble: When Mary and John fell in the lake he hollered, 'Oh fish us out'. Justine Roseberry: I understood that Senator Green wanted you to act as his private secretary. Simmons: He did, but I was unwilling to accept such a positiong I would have had to sign every document 'Green per Simmons'. Bonnie Vickrey: Was your old man in comfortable circumstances when he died? Mrs. Flanagan: No, he was halfway under a train. Smart Man: Say, sonny what would you wish if you had just one wish? Joe Brower: I'd wish a wish that every time I wished a wish I could have the wish I wished.

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THE SKETCH 43 Paul Kruger, President of the Transvaal, once decided a dispute between two brothers about an inheritance of land in South Africa thus- Let one brother divide the land and let the other have first choice. When Raphael called on a friend and found him out he left neither his name nor a card but instead drew a circle on a piece of paper. His friends knew that only Raphael could draw a perfect circle free hand. John Grimshaw Wilkinson, blind botanist, lost his sight when he was 23, but he learned to distinguish flowers by touching them with the tip of his tongue. He could name instantly each of 5,000 specimens. Wfilliam Hickling Prescott, American man of letters, had his tailor mark his clothes with the exact number of ounces each garment weighed. When he awoke each morning, he asked what the temperature was, and dressed accordingly. Napoleon felt comfortable only in clothes that were too big for him. Marie Antoinette made popular a headdress so towering that doorways had to be made higher and ladies could no longer sit in their carriages, but had to travel kneeling on the floor. William Wilke, the Scottish Homer, wore as many clothes as he could hang on his frame and slept with a dozen blankets on his bed. Mark Twain despised pajamas and always wore a long nightgown. Anita Lourise is left-handed in everything she does except write her name. Mrs. Mattie Payne Blank, widow of a California physician, has driven her car across the continent several times accompanied by a dummy she has named Colonel Pottersby. The Colonel, which she created out of a laundry bag, a Hallowe'en mask, a hat and suit, has proved to be a perfect protec- tion against hitchhikers and suspicious characters. In an Ohio town is a colored man whose last name is Washington. Wash- ington is blessed with 3 sons. When the first son arrived, the father named him George Washington. A second son naturally was called Booker Washington. The third son, if he lives, will go through life as Spokane Washington.

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THE SKETCH 45 Strange Facts 1. In a little American backwoods town is a clock with no machinery except a face, hands and a lever. The lever is connected with a geyser which shoots out an immense column of hot water every 38 seconds. Since the spouting never varies the tenth of a second, the clock keeps perfect time. 2. Fox hunts in England, during the hunting season, have the right of way over railroad trains. Not long ago, an inconsiderate fox led a pack of hounds across the path of a crack London express and delayed it for eight minutes. 3. The big Eye, the 200 inch telescope being built by the California Institute of Technology, is 640,000 times as farsighted as your own eyes. To appreciate its vision, imagine that you are standing in New York looking at a sign across the street. With the Big Eye you could see that same sign clear across the continent to San Francisco. Astronomers expect the telescope will reveal 100,000,000 new universes, most of them galaxies of suns, each as large as our own. 4. In 1876 the late Meville E. Stone, founder of the Associated Press, decided that Chicago should have a penny paper to compete with the nickel ones. The stumbling block was that there were no pennies in circulation there. So Stone, then 28, went to merchants to argue that in the average person's mind 99 cents was a much smaller sum than one dollar. He begged and pleaded and finally convinced them that odd prices would increase their business, and incidentally start pennies in circulation which would buy his paper. He sent to the Philadelphia mint for several barrels of pennies and became Chicago's first penny importer. The idea took hold, his Daily News was a success, and odd price bargains were born. 5. American Scientists have developed a substitute for wools from skimmed milk. 6. As much as two pounds of sludge, dirt, and foreign matter is re- moved by the oil filter of an automobile in 8,000 to 10,000 miles of driving. 7. Only 100 years ago there was not a public library in the United States, almost all furniture was imported from England, an old copper mine in Connecticut was used as a prison, Virginia contained a fifth of the popu- lation of the country, two stage coaches bore all the travel between New York and Boston, and a day laborer considered himself well paid with two shillings a day, the equivalent of S .50 American money. 8. Early North American Indians are known to have used more than 1,100 different kinds of plants for food. The lily family contributed ninety varieties, including eighteen species of onions. 9. One of the most unusual feats ever performed by any animal is the threading of a needle, which was accomplished recently by Chinee, a chim- panzee in the London zoo. 10. The saluki, a hunting dog that has been bred in Arabia, Persia and Egypt for more than 6,000 years, has the oldest pedigree in existence, some- times dating back for a thousand years. They are never sold, only presented as gifts, by their Arab owners. 11. One of the most highly scented flowers is an American cactus. -SELECTED