Silly Newspaper Queries
Those who are blessed with a keen sense of humor will appreciate the playful ridicule in a specimen letter published in the New York Evening Post:
“To the Editor:
Having for a long time been a reader of your valuable paper, I write to ask if you will have the kindness to inform me through the columns of the same who is the author of the following pathetic poem:
“‘Hard was he up;
And in the hardness of his upness
Stole a ham.
“‘Down on him swooped,
And swooping, up him scooped,
The minions of the law.’ Neptune.”
Commenting upon this thrust at silly queries, the editor remarks: “It shows what a newspaper has practised upon it daily in one form or another; yet the writers of communications quite as absurd as the foregoing wear very solemn faces, and enter long complaints against the editors for declining to print queries which would merely make the public laugh, or may be answered by consulting the nearest dictionary, or are of no possible interest to anybody save the querist himself. A bit of satire like ‘Neptune’s’ is a word to the wise; we almost despair, however, of its producing any effect upon the foolish.”