FLATTERY

Electronic Applause

 The Pacific Organ Studios on Clement Street is selling something that might lessen man’s insecurity. It’s an organ called the Chamberlain Music Master, which includes a button that delivers, via tape, a round of applause “of concert-hall size.” You play “Chop-sticks,” press the applause button and bask in the distant patter of 2000 paws. Think what this does for the ego.

—San Francisco Chronicle

“You’re Beautiful”

 The telephone company in an English city is planning a service known as MOR (for Morale). When Dad goes off to work in a huff or forgets a birthday or yells at the kids, Mom can run to the phone, dial MOR and hear a soothing male voice coo: “You’re quite, quite beautiful, you know.”

—Alton, III., Telegraph

Gardenia And Feel Important

 Eternity magazine once told of a sidewalk flower vendor who was doing very little business. Suddenly a happy thought struck him, and he put up this sign: “Buy a gardenia; it will make you feel important all day long!” Almost immediately his sales began to increase. People love to feel inflated, for their innermost nature thrives on any attention that caters to their pride.

Capitalizing On John Smiths

 John Smith is still the most common name in this country. It was for that reason that Mark Twain dedicated his story of The Celebrated Jumping Frog to John Smith, “who I have known in diverse and sundry places and whose many and manifold virtues did always command my esteem.”

 Twain figured that anyone to whom a book is dedicated would be sure to buy at least one copy, and since there were thousands of John Smiths, his book would be assured of at least a modest sale.

—Bits & Pieces

A Black Heart?

 Sam Jones, the great white evangelist, on one occasion preached a sermon to an immense concourse of colored people. After he had finished a stout, old colored woman waddled up to him, seized his hand, and pumped it up and down vigorously. “Gawd bless you Brudder Jones! You is everybody’s preacher, black as well as white! You may have a white skin, Brudder, but you sho got a black heart!”

—Selected

Pastor Watches Own Funeral

 Fort Lauderdale, Florida (AP)—The Rev. Ivory W. Mizell commemorated his 64th birthday by watching his own funeral. “I think it was good. It was much better than I expected,” he said after Wednesday night’s service at the First Baptist Church of Piney Grove.

 On the programs printed up for the service were these words: “This, my funeral service, is being held because I have no pleasure in words I cannot hear, flowers I cannot smell and friends I cannot see.”

Showing Friendship Now In Funeral

 A man of 69 in a small town in Fukuoka Prefecture in Japan invited about 20 business friends to his home and held his “funeral.” Ritually, it was a full-dress funeral, complete with funeral sutrachanting by two Buddhist priests. He even held the customary rites for the seventh day after his “death.”

 What was his idea? Marutaka Kogane, director of the local soft drink dealers’ association, explained: “If my friends have enough friendship for me to attend my funeral when I die, I should rather they showed their friendship now.” After the obsequies, there was an evening of revelry with gay entertainment. The “mourners” ate, drank, and made merry. Said the “deceased” in satisfaction: “From now on I’ll forget myself and work for the trade and for the world.”

—Japan Times

Epigram On Flattery

•     I can live for two months on a good compliment.

—Mark Twain

•     Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.

—Samuel Johnson

•     Robert Montgomery’s advice concerning applause: “Enjoy it, but never quite believe it.”

—Good News

•     The chances are about 10 to 1 that when a man slaps you on the back, he wants you to cough up something.

—The Bible Friend

•     Sigmund Freud once refused to attend a festival in his honor, remarking, “When someone abuses me I can defend myself; against praise I am defenseless.”

•     The same man cannot be both friend and flatterer.

—Benjamin Franklin

•     According to Hindu law, lying is justified in only two cases: in saving a person’s life and in paying a compliment to a lady.

•     Never praise a woman too highly. If you stop, she’ll think you don’t love her any more; if you keep it up, she’ll think she’s too good for you.

—Chinese Proverb

•            Imitation is the sincerest flattery. A girl would wear a beautiful dress, and few days later, many would be seen wearing the same dress. [1]

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