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The Illiterate Digest

Chapter 3: FOOTNOTES:
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About This Book

The collection assembles short humorous essays and sketches in a homespun, conversational voice that blend satirical commentary on politics, society, and popular culture with personal anecdotes and practical jokes. Pieces take up etiquette, scandal, public life, and everyday concerns while reframing topical news into plainspoken observations. Interspersed are mock prospectuses, playful inventions, and occasional poems that display the author's timing and rhetorical flair. Overall the work reads as a compendium of observational humor and light social critique rather than a sustained narrative.

CONTENTS

  Page
Two Letters and a Dedication 5
Introduction 17
Breaking Into the Writing Game 27
Settling the Corset Problem of This Country 39
How to Tell a Butler, And Other Etiquette 47
Defending My Soup Plate Position 57
Helping the Girls With Their Income Taxes 69
The Greatest Document in American Literature 77
Prospectus for “The Remodeled Chewing Gum Corporation” 87
Inside Stuff on the Total Eclipse 99
It’s Time Somebody Said a Word for California 111
Promoting the Oceanless One-Piece Suit 121
Warning to Jokers: Lay Off the Prince 131
Spring Is Here, With Poems and Bath Tubs 141
My Ford and Other Political Self-Starters 151
Wilson Could Laugh at a Joke on Himself 159
A Job With the James Family 171
Let’s Treat Our Presidents Like Human Beings 181
What With Fruit Juice and Consomme, It Was a Wild Party 193
What We Need Is More Fred Stones 203
One Oil Lawyer Per Barrel 217
Another Confession in the Oil Scandal 227
The Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth 237
Well, Who Is Prunes? 249
Politics Getting Ready to Jell 261
Two Long-Lost Friends Found at Last 269
They Nominated Everybody But The Four Horsemen 279
In the Midst of a 7-Year Hitch 287
“Will Rogers, Jr.” Reports the Convention For His Father, Worn Out By Long Service 297
Roping a Critic 305
“The World Tomorrow,” After the Manner of Great Journalists[A] 313
Settling the Affairs of the World in My Own Way 323
A Skinny Dakota Kid Who Made Good 333
Taking the Cure, By the Shores of Cat Creek 345

FOOTNOTES:

[A] With apologies to Arthur Brisbane.