Newspapers / The Fool-Killer (Pores Knob, … / April 1, 1916, edition 1 / Page 1
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TlO r THIS PAPER, IN SPITE OF ITS NAME, DOES NOT BELIEVE IN KILLING PEOPLE. VOLUME 6 BOOMER, NORTH CAROLINA, APRIL 1916. NUMBER 12 A NEW SPRING SERMON REPUBLICAN PRAYER. Well, beloyed, I spoze it's gittin about time for me to oil tip my sermon mill and preach yoxi an other sermon on Spring. If you remember. I have been giving you one or more sermons on Spring in The Fool-Killer for the past six years. You have allers smacked your lips like they were good, and I dreamed last night you wanted another one. So here it am. Of course, judgin by the tem perature of the March wind as it plays tag with a feller's thread bare coat-tail, Spring ain't hardly gat here yet; but I can smell her comin over the hill just tuther side of next week. After going through the suffer ings and hardships of a rough winter, the timely arrival of gen tle Spring is like swapping castor oil for sour wood honey. It is like being waked up out of a bad dream by the kiss of an angel. It is like getting a divorce from cold feet and marrying the queen of comfort. The man who does not feel a two-hoss thrill of unutterable joy eaper through his frost-bitten soul at the coming of Spring has got something bad the matter with himself. He was either made, wrong, or put together wrong after he was made. "When young Spring takes old Winter by the slack of the pants and tosses him back into the .Val ley of Used-to-be, there is a gene ral jubilee of rejoicing through out the kingdom of Nature. All the young green things come out and take off their hats and bow to each other as politely as a young rooster presenting his pul let sweetheart with a new-found worm. Even the green young men and the green girls eatch the infection of Spring, and before the doctor can get there it hag developed into a hopeless case of puppy-love and they swear they don't want t get well. Spring is very modest, and also very uncertain, especially during the first stages of her coming. You can't always know just what to expect. Sometimes she will send a warm day ahead to advertise for her, and then she will fail to fill the appointment. Again she will drop in as unexpectedly as a man who has borrowed money from you and has eome toborrow more, f Woodpile says lie always ac cepts an invitation to a fight. He means, of course, that he likes to look on from a safe distance asd see somebody else fight. So did Nerd of Borne. Oh, thou almighty, all-toothy and all-specky Toothadore Specks velt; thou who kickest mountains out of thy way and swalloweth bears and lions even as a boy swal loweth watermelon seeds ; thou whose whisper soundeth like the escaping steam from a busted boil er, and whose frown withered thine enemies even as the August sun withereth a cabbage leaf. Behold, we come sneaking into thy terrible presence once more in the attitude of meekest humil- ty. Even as a nigger's foot flat- teneth itself in the mud, so flat ten we ourselves upon our bellies before thee. 0 thou great T. R. Eat-em-alive, thou rememberest the good old days when thou didst go in and out before us; yea, verily, when thou didst lead us to victory as easy as a purty gal jumpeth a branch. The mere mention of thy name scattered all opposition, even as the smell of itch-grease scattereth a Sunday School class Thou didst preside at the pie- counter" with gieat dignity, and we were always on hand at meal time. Thou didst raise thy finger at us, and we stood still to recieve thy commands. Thou didst command us to hol ler, and we hollored. Thou didst command us to vote, and we voted. Thou didst take snuff, and we sneezed. Thou didst eat onions, and our breath was strong. Sweet and pleasant to us, Great Toothadore, ia the memory of those happy days when thou and we were ome and inseparable. No thought of discord entered our minds, and the man who could have prophecied a break between us would have been laughed scorn. Time passed. It always does. And no man has yet been able to stop it. An then, great Prophet, there cam the evil days in Chicago, when the devil got into us and wc rolled the cruel Steam Roller over thy prostrate form. Then thou didst get up and shake thyself and organize the Bully Moosevelt ers. Also thou sworest a terrible swearment against us and declar ed that thou wouldst never pitch hoss-shoes in our baek yard any more. In our strange jfc'enzy, O Prophet of Punk, we rejoietd at thy undoing but beheld in the same hour we were undone also. And we are still undone. To-day we are seeking diligent ly for a leader who can pilot us out of the swamp of defeat into the highway of victory. We have raked over the political remains of our party with a fine-tooth comb, and our search has been as fruit less as hunting for the rainbow's end. Therefore we again turn our longing eyes toward thee, O thou Shadow of Forlorn Hope. We humbly beseech thee to forget the past and stick thy ' number tens under our political table again. Let us give thee another joy-ride on the Elephant's back. j O great Toothadore, we are ashamed of ourselves for what we have done. We can now see that it was all a terrible mistake. We therefore gladly repent of it in hog-hair and ashes. If we had not fought against thee at Chicago four years ago we would not now be in such a sad plight, and our enemies, the Woodenrollercrats, would not be gloating over us as they are to-day. Therefore, 0 Babbler of Bunk, hear us! Give heed to our sup plication ! Take note of our dis tress signal ! And may all former ill feeling be melted away in the warmth of our appeal Bring thy crowd and come baek to us. Or else let us bring our name and eome over to thee. Anything, Master Toothadore, just so we get together. That's what it will take to beat the crats and get the pie. Even so be it. Amen. ' FOOL-KELLER STYLE. a BOOMING AT BOOMER. Some folks said it would kill The Fool-Kiler to move it. But if they could see the way the clubs are rolling in here at Boomer they would talk out of tuther side of their mouths. It has actually sur prised me the way the business has gone right on booming in spite of the faet that I got awfully be hind with the work and haven't eaught up yet. I naturally ex pected the moving to slow it down a little for a month or two, but it didn't. On the other hand, it seems like the folks have just fal len in love with Boomer. The name is so short and easy to re member that they just delight in addressing letters here. Keep it up, friends! Let's make BOOM ER the publishing center of the South. There is nothing to hinder The Fool-Killer from having million subscribers if you will all just keep your shoulders to the wheel. Hurrah, everybody! The average soldier has no conn try to lose, And therefore he has none to save: E3a real estate is all stuck to his shoes He doa't own enough for a grave. I dunno why, but somehow great many people throughout the country have sorter tooken a fancy to my home-made style of gab. I didn't know I was doing anything great, but if my forty five thousand subscribers are good judges it must be a fact that I have blazed a new trail through the editorial wilderness. Every day's mail bring dozens of letters just slopping over with praises ol the fool stuff I write for these colyums. And I have been trying to fig- ger it ail out ana discover me cause of The Fool-Killer's won- derful popularity, One conclu sion I have reached is this: -Plain honesty and sincerity of purpose, mixed with a little wholesome fun, must bo the key to the whole. thing. I have always tried to. impress my readers with the fact that I am terribly in earnest about what I say, even though I DO say it in a droll, home-made sort of manner. Some writers are funny, and others are serious, but I have managed to mix fun and serious ness a little more successfully than any other writer ever did. When I first started out to be a writer I made the same mistake that so many others do. I tried to out-do the Dictionary in the use of big, high-sounding, devil-choking words that hadn't been used enough to wear the paint off ol em. But a few years of expert enee cured me of that foolishness. I gradually, sot wise to the fact that a writer must keep his feet on the ground. Especially if he is writing for common folks to read, he must use the plain, every day language of the common folks. I never in my life dreamed of being a "funny writer," but just as soon as I dropped into the natural, easy, everyday dialect ol the masses, my readers began to laugh like they would split theii? fool sides open, and they have been laughing ever since. To save my gizzard I can't see what they are so tickled about, but I shore do love to hear 'em haw-haw, just the same. And I guess that's the way this here "Fool-Killer 3tyle" go started I scj lots of little editors over the country are trying to imitate it. I am the originator of 'Johndee, "Woodpile," "Tooth adore Specksvelt," and other; similar expressions now in com mon use. But if you want the sho nuff original, I 'jspest you better read The Fool-Killer.
The Fool-Killer (Pores Knob, N.C.)
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April 1, 1916, edition 1
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