--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 10 number: 3 published: 1907-01 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations, "In Lighter Mood," *Improvement Era* 10, no. 3 (January 1907): 236.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1003unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera1003unse start_page: 236 end_page: 236 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1907-01) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1003unse publication_year: 1907 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1907, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # In Lighter Mood IN LIGHTER MOOD. "Ah understan' dat Deacon Jones has bin charged wid chicken-stealin' —an' he wuz a pillah ob de chu'ch, wuzn't he?" "No; he wuzn't a pillah; he turned out to be what dey call de nave." Judge. A Brooklyn public school teacher says that she once required a pupil to com- pose a sentence with the word "dogma" as the subject. The pupil, a lad of ten, after some deliberation, submitted his effort. It read as follows: "The dog-ma has five pups." "My wife sent two dolhrs in answer of an advertisement of a sure method of getting rid of superfluous fat." "And did she get the information she wanted?" "Sure; she got a reply telling her to sell it to the soap man." Mystic, Conn., Times. A country newspaper man who is very fond of honey visited a neighboring city recently, and at one of the hotels he was served with some delicious honey. He enjoyed it so much that he told his wife a 11 about it when he returned home. On his next trip to the city she accompanied him. They visited the same hotel, and when the noon meal was being served he said to his wife that he hoped they had some more of that honey. It did not appear, however, and the news- paper man, therefore, beckoned to a waiter and said: "Say, Sambo, where is my honey?" He was almost paralyzed when that worthy grinned and replied: "She doan work here no more, boss. She done got a job at the silk mill." The wife received a handsome new dress before they returned home, after making a solemn promise not to tell the story. —LippincoWs. At a dinner-party in Washington the new Chinese ambassador discoursed on American fashions satirically. "Now, in China," he said, "our fashions never change. I wear the same sort of hat, the same sort of coat, the same sort of shoes, that a man in my po- sition wore a thousand years ago. And it is the same with the Chinese women Their fashions also have not changed in I know not how ninny dynasties. Long ago, in China, we found the costumes that seemed to us the most graceful and the most comfortable, and we cling to those costumes. We love them. "But you—here in America—how often is it—every week, every fortnight? —that you change your fashions? Only the other day I met on the street an American naval officer of whom I am fond. He had a parcel under his arm. I stopped my carriage. " 'Come,' I said, 'let us have a little chat—a comfortable little chat.' "But the naval officer shook his head. He said, hurriedly, 'No, I cannot. In this parcel there is a bonnet for my wife. Were I to stop and talk, the fashion in bonnets might change before I reached home. '