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The Illiterate Digest

Chapter 4: ILLUSTRATIONS
By Will Rogers
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American LiteratureEssays, Letters & SpeechesHumour

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.

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Illiterate Digest Office Frontispiece
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You Are Going to Get the Low-Down on Some of Those Birds Who Are Sending Home the Radish-Seed 26
They Are Carpeting All the Halls of the Senate So in Case of a Fall There Will Be No Serious Loss 31
As I Opened the Door to Let Her in 2 of Our Dogs and 4 Cats Came In 46
Birds That Never Can Tell the Servants from the Guests 53
I Would Invent a Triangle Shape Slide That Could Be Pushed Under the Plate 56
Song Writers Should Be Segregated and Made to Sing Their Songs to Each Other 76
Why Can’t I Do Something With Second-Hand Gum? 86
The More Glasses You Used the More Eclipse You Could See 98
I Just Happened to Remember That No One Had Said a Word for California 110
I Want to Do Something for the Home Town Girl So She Can Stay at Home and Show How and What She Is Made Of 120
So I Got Me Some of Those Long-Handled Wooden Hammers and Started in at Polo 130
The Family Wash-Tub Was Dragged Up By the Fire 140
Finally a Warden Knocked at My Dressing Room and Said: “You Die in 5 More Minutes for Kidding Your Country” 158
I Could Just Sorter Nonchalantly Step on the Bride’s Train 170
If Mr. Ford Had Been Elected We Would Have Been the Mouthpiece of the Administration 192
He Started at Four or Five Years of Age and Has Worked on New Stunts Every Day of His Life 202
If a Rider Hit on His Head, It Was Me 211
It’s a Bigger Thing for Washington Than the Shriners’ Convention 216
They Not Only Have to Be Lawyers, But Political Lawyers 219
They Are from Tulsa. I Will Be Right Out 226
I Object to the Senator from Massachusetts’ Slurring Remarks 236
“There’s a Bellboy at My Hotel and He Just Got It From the Chauffeur of a Prominent Oil-Man” 248
They Rehearsed Their Old Act Here Yesterday 268
“You Wasn’t Here and You Know Them as Well as I Do” 278
Well, I Guess You Heard About My Presidential Boom 286
The Deaths from Old Age Among the Delegates Is About Offset by the Birthrate 291
“If They Haven’t Got Enough Water in There to Fill the Harbor, We Will Have to Ask the Neighbors to Drain Their Corn Liquor” 322
“If You Don’t Get Well and Throw Away Your Crutches I Get Nothing Out of It” 344