“Mike,” he whispered, leaning over to his companion, “this bates h—l.”
“Whist,” replied Mike, in a loud whisper, “sich is the intintion.”
Bishop Wilmer of Alabama, famous as a story-teller, told of one of his friends who had lost a dearly beloved wife and, in his sorrow, caused these words to be inscribed on her tombstone: “The light of mine eyes has gone out.” The bereaved married within a year. Shortly afterward the Bishop was walking through the graveyard with another gentleman. When they arrived at the tomb, the latter asked the Bishop what he would say of the present state of affairs, in view of the words on the tombstone. “I think,” said the Bishop, “the words ‘But I have struck another match’ should be added.”
A man of letters who visited Washington recently appeared at but one dinner-party during his stay. Then he sat next to the daughter of a noted naval officer. Her vocabulary is of a kind peculiar to very young girls, but she rattled away at the famous man without a moment’s respite. It was during a pause in the general conversation that she said to him: “I’m awfully stuck on Shakespeare. Don’t you think he’s terribly interesting?” Everybody listened to hear the great man’s brilliant reply, for as a Shakespearianscholar he has few peers. “Yes,” he said, solemnly, “I do think he is interesting. I think he is more than that. I think Shakespeare is just simply too cute for anything.”
A well-known Scotch professor was occasionally called up to Balmoral to attend the late Queen Victoria, and was extremely proud of the honor. One day a notice appeared in the university which stated that Professor —— could not attend his classes that day as he had been called up to Balmoral to see the Queen. A waggish student who saw the notice wrote underneath it, “God save the Queen.”
“The other day,” said a man passenger in a street-car, “I saw a woman in a street-car open a satchel and take out a purse, close the satchel and open the purse, take out a dime and close the purse, open the satchel and put in the purse. Then she gave the dime to the conductor and took a nickel in exchange. Then she opened the satchel and took out the purse, closed the satchel and opened the purse, put in the nickel and closed the purse, opened the satchel and put in the purse, closed the satchel and locked both ends. Then she felt to see if her back hair was all right, and it was all right, and she was all right. That was a woman.”
As a couple of callers were in the parlor of a friend who is a firm Christian Scientist, the voice of five-year-old Florence could be heard from an upper room,fretting. Upon their inquiries about her the mother replied simply she was suffering from a “belief” in a boil.
One of the visitors was a rather grim great-aunt of the family who possesses a most lively scorn of Mrs. Eddy’s so-called science as well as a deep-rooted affection for little Florence. She immediately demanded what had been applied for her relief and as naturally the answer was, “Nothing.” She assumed her most decided expression, drew off her gloves and started upstairs.
“Aunt Molly, what are you going to do? I must repeat it is only a belief in a boil,” expostulated the mother.
“Very well,” retorted Aunt Molly, continuing her march upstairs, “I am merely going to put on a dream of a poultice.”
And she did.
Mistress—“Did the fisherman who stopped here this morning have frog’s legs?”
Nora—“Sure, mum, I dinnaw. He wore pants.”
When the thermometer dropped below zero Mrs. Rogers was much disturbed by the thought that Huldah, the new kitchen maid, slept in an unheated room.
“Huldah,” she said, remembering the good old custom of her girlhood, “it’s going to be pretty cold to-night. I think you had better take a flatiron to bed with you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” assented Huldah without enthusiasm.
Mrs. Rogers, happy in the belief that her maid was comfortable, slept soundly. In the morning she visited the kitchen.
“Well, Huldah, how did you get along with the flatiron?”
Huldah breathed a deep sigh of recollection.
“Vell, ma’am, I got it ’most warm before morning.”
Many children are so crammed with everything that they really know nothing.
In proof of this, read these veritable specimens of definitions, written by public-school children:
“Stability is taking care of a stable.”
“A mosquito is the child of black and white parents.”
“Monastery is the place for monsters.”
“Tocsin is something to do with getting drunk.”
“Expostulation is to have the smallpox.”
“Cannibal is two brothers who killed each other in the Bible.”
“Anatomy is the human body, which consists of three parts, the head, the chist, and the stummick. The head contains the eyes and brains, if any. The chist contains the lungs and a piece of the liver. The stummick is devoted to the bowels, of which there are five, a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes w and y.”
Little Polly, coming in from her walk one morning, informed her mother that she had seen a lion in the park. No amount of persuasion or reasoning could make her vary her statement one hairbreadth.That night, when she slipped down on her knees to say her prayers, her mother said, “Polly, ask God to forgive you for that fib.”
Polly hid her face for a moment. Then she looked straight into her mother’s eyes, her own eyes shining like stars, and said, “I did ask him, mama, dearest, and he said, ‘Don’t mention it, Miss Polly; that big yellow dog has often fooled me.’”
“Boohoo! Boohoo!” wailed little Johnny.
“Why, what’s the matter, dear?” his mother asked comfortingly.
“Boohoo—er—p-picture fell on papa’s toes.”
“Well, dear, that’s too bad, but you mustn’t cry about it, you know.”
“I d-d-didn’t. I l-laughed. Boohoo! Boohoo!”
Two candidates for office in Missouri were stumping the northern part of the State. In one town their appearance was almost simultaneous. The candidate last arriving stopped at a house for a drink of water. To the little girl who answered his knock at the door he said—when she had given him the desired drink and he had offered her some candy in recompense:
“Did the man ahead of me give you anything?”
“Oh, yes,” replied the girl. “He gave me candy.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the candidate. “Here’s five cents for you. I don’t suppose thathegave you any money?”
The youngster laughed. “Yes, he did, too! He gave me ten cents!”
Not to be outdone, the candidate gave the little one another nickel and picking her up in his arms, kissed her.
“Did he kiss you, too?” he asked genially.
“Yes, he did, sir,” responded the little girl, “and he kissed ma, too.”
The owner of a dry-goods store heard a new clerk say to a customer, “No, madam, we have not had any for a long time.”
With a fierce glance at the clerk the smart employer rushed up to the woman and said: “We have plenty of everything in reserve ma’am; plenty upstairs.”
The customer and the clerk looked dazed. Then the proprietor, seeing that something was wrong, said to the customer: “Excuse me, what did you ask for?”
The woman simply replied, “Why, I said to your clerk that we hadn’t had any rain lately.”
Senator W. A. Clark detests nothing more than to be interrupted when busy. One day he was in his office engaged in a business conversation when a petite woman, carrying a black bag, entered. With a compelling smile and an insinuating manner she approached the surly millionaire. Utterly insensible to his repellent mood and indifferent to his abrupt manner she drew from the depths of a bag a handsomely bound volume, the merits and beauty of which she began eloquently to descant upon.
Failing to embarrass her with arctic frigidity andimpatient at her persistency under rebuffs all but vulgar, he turned suddenly upon the chattering woman and asked:
“Madam, do you know what my time is worth?”
She confessed it was a conundrum.
“Well,” he said, petulantly, “it’s worth $30 an hour!”
He turned away with the air of one who had settled the matter definitely beyond any further controversy. But he didn’t know the woman.
“Oh, I’m so grateful to you, Mr. Clark,” she replied, with a tone of pathos in her voice. “Thirty dollars an hour, did you say?”
“Yes; that’s what I said, and it’s cheap at that,” and he smiled cynically.
“Oh, I know it’s dirt cheap,” she chirped with winsome blitheness. “I am so glad you told me”—rummaging in her reticule, from which she quickly flashed out a purse gorged with currency. Moving near to the astonished millionaire, who now regarded her movements with unfeigned curiosity, she counted two bills, a ten and a five, off the roll. These she pushed along the top of the sloping desk toward him and said: “Yes, I’m glad you told me, because I hadn’t expected to get it so cheap. There is $15. Now, I want a half hour of your uninterrupted attention while I talk to you about this book.”
Clark pushed the money back and subscribed and paid for two copies of the book.
The following bit from a letter of thanks is cherished by its recipient: “The beautiful clock you sentus came in perfect condition, and is now in the parlor on top of the book-shelves, where we hope to see you soon, and your husband, also, if he can make it convenient.”
Tourist (in French restaurant)—“This is awful! I’ve ordered three dishes from this menu and they are all potatoes!”
“Mistah Brown,” said the old colored woman, coming into the cross-roads store, “you ain’t got no spool-cotton number thirty, is you?”
“Why, aunt Sally, I didn’t say I didn’t have it, did I?”
“You go long, Mistah Brown. I didn’t ax you ’aint you got it?’ I axed you ‘is you’?—ain’t you?”
An old “befo-de-wah” darky was called upon to make a few remarks over the grave of a friend. He removed his hat and stepped reverently and sadly toward the open grave and in solemn funereal tones said: “Friday Vizer, you is gone. We hope you is gone whar we spects you ain’t!”
A New Yorker who does his bit of “globe trotting” tells of two odd entries that he saw in the visitors’ book of a fashionable resort on the Rhine.
A few years ago one of the Paris members of the Rothschild family had registered as follows:
“R. de Paris.”
It chanced that the next visitor to inscribe his name in the book was Baron Oppenheim, the banker of Cologne, and he wrote beneath Rothschild’s:
“O. de Cologne.”
The Stranger—“And who are the Murphys’ ancestors?”
Mr. M.—“Ancestors? What’s that?”
The Stranger—“I mean who do the Murphys spring from?”
Mr. M.—“The Murphys spring from no one. They springatthim!”
At a wedding-feast recently the bridegroom was called upon, as usual, to respond to the given toast, in spite of the fact that he had previously pleaded to be excused. Blushing to the roots of his hair, he rose to his feet. He intended to imply that he was unprepared for speechmaking, but he unfortunately placed his hand upon his bride’s shoulder, and looked down at her as he stammered out his opening and concluding words:
“This—er—thing has been forced upon me.”
Very much excited and out of breath, a young man who could not have been married very long rushed up to an attendant at one of the city hospitals and inquired after Mrs. Brown, explaining between breaths that it was his wife whom he felt anxious about.
The attendant looked at the register and replied that there was no Mrs. Brown in the hospital.
“My God! Don’t keep me waiting in this manner,” said the excited young man. “I must know how she is.”
“Well, she isn’t here,” again said the attendant.
“She must be,” broke in the visitor, “for here is a note I found on the kitchen-table when I came home from work.”
The note read:
“Dear Jack—Have gone to have my kimono cut out.Annie.”
While an Irishman was gazing in the window of a Washington bookstore the following sign caught his eye:
Dickens’ Worksall this week foronly $4.00.
Dickens’ Worksall this week foronly $4.00.
Dickens’ Works
all this week for
only $4.00.
“The divvle he does!” exclaimed Pat in disgust. “The dirty scab!”
A dear old New England spinster, the embodiment of the timid and shrinking, passed away at Carlsbad, where she had gone for her health. Her nearest kinsman, a nephew, ordered her body sent back to be buried—as was her last wish—in the quiet little country churchyard. His surprise can be imagined, when on opening the casket, he beheld, instead of the placid features of his aunt Mary, the majestic port of an English General in full regimentals, whom he remembered had chanced to die at the same time and place as his aunt.
At once he cabled to the General’s heirs explaining the situation and requesting instructions.
They came back as follows: “Give the General quiet funeral. Aunt Mary interred to-day with full military honors, six brass bands, saluting guns.”
Early in the morning session, when the pupils were feeling bright and happy, the teacher thought it a good plan to give them sentences to correct, both as to grammar and sense. She accordingly wrote on the blackboard: “The hen has four legs. He done it.” Thoughtful little Ignatius, at the foot of the class, pondered deeply, and at the end of the fifteen minutes’ time allowed for correction he wrote: “Hedidn’t done it: God done it.”
The late John Stetson, famous in his day as a theatrical manager, was having a yacht built, and a friend, meeting him on the street, asked him what he was going to name the boat. “I haven’t decided yet,” replied John, “but it will be some name commencing with S, probably either ‘Psyche’ or ‘Cinch.’”
A clergyman was on board a steamer which was caught in a severe gale. The rolling was constant and seemed to get worse as time went on. At last the good man got thoroughly frightened. He believed they were destined for a watery grave, so he went to the captain and asked if he might have prayers. The captain took him by the arm and led him to the forecastle,where the tars were singing and swearing. “There,” said he, “when you hear the men swearing you may know there is no danger.” The clergyman went back feeling better, but still the storm increased and his alarm also. Disconsolate, he managed to stagger to the forecastle again, where he heard the sailors swearing as hard as ever. “Mary,” he said to his sympathetic wife as he crawled back to his berth, “Mary, thank God, they’re swearing yet.”
“Hawaiian servants,” said a woman with some experience of them, “are the best in the world, but they are strangely unsophisticated, strangely naive. They insist on calling you by your first name. Ours were always saying to my husband, ‘Yes, John,’ or ‘all right, John,’ and to me ‘very well, Ann,’ or ‘Ann, I am going out.’ At last I got tired of this and to John, when we got a new cook, I said: Don’t ever call me by my first name in the cook’s presence. Then, perhaps, not knowing my name, he’ll have to say ‘Mrs.’ to me. So John was careful to address me as ‘dearie,’ or ‘sweetheart,’ the watchful chap gave me no title at all. One day we had some English officers to dine. I told them how I had overcome, in my new cook’s case, the native servants’ abuse of their employer’s Christian names, and I said, By this servant, at least, you won’t hear me called ‘Ann.’” Just then the new cook entered the room. He bowed to me respectfully and said:
“‘Sweetheart, dinner is served!’
“‘What?’ I stammered.
“‘Dinner is served, dearie!’ answered the cook.”
Early one morning, on the second day out, a terribly seasick passenger, pale and hollow-eyed, came out of his stateroom and ran into a lady, who was coming along the passageway, clad in the scantiest raiment. She screamed and started to run. “Don’t be alarmed,” groaned the man. “Don’t be alarmed, madam; I shall never live to tell it.”
Mike and Pat worked for a wealthy farmer. They planned to turn burglars and steal the money which the farmer had hid in one of the rooms of his house. They waited until midnight, then started to do the job.
In order to get the money they had to pass the farmer’s bedroom. Mike said, “I’ll go first, and if it’s all right you can follow and do just the same as I.”
Mike started to pass the room. Just as he got opposite the door the floor creaked. This awoke the farmer, who called out, “Who’s there?”
Mike answered with a “meaow!” (imitating a cat). The farmer’s wife being awake, too, said, “Oh, John, it’s the cat,” and all was quiet.
Now Pat started to pass the door, and as he got opposite it the floor creaked again. The farmer called out again, louder than before, “Who’s there?”
Pat answered, “Another cat.”
Softleigh—“Good evening, Mrs. Moran. I came to see if your daughter, Miss Mabel, would go for a walk with me.”
Miss Mabel—“How do you do, Mr. Softleigh? Ishall be delighted. Mama, do I look fit to go to a restaurant?”
They were on their honeymoon. He had bought a catboat and had taken her out to show her how well he could handle a boat, putting her to tend the sheet. A puff of wind came, and he shouted in no uncertain tones, “Let go the sheet.” No response. Then again, “Let go that sheet, quick.” Still no movement. A few minutes later, when both were clinging to the bottom of the overturned boat, he said:
“Why didn’t you let go that sheet when I told you to, dear?”
“I would have,” said the bride, “if you had not been so rough about it. You ought to speak more kindly to your wife.”
Madam—“Put plenty of nuts in the cake.”
Cook—“I’ll crack no more nuts to-day, me jaw hurts me already.”
Mother—“Alice, it is bedtime. All the little chickens have gone to bed.”
Alice—“Yes, mama, and so has the hen.”
Few men have ever been so ready and witty as Mark Twain in introducing others to public audiences. At Hartford, December 12, 1877, he presented Mr. Howells, and, after a word or two as to his literary work, said, “But I am not here to speak of his literaryreputation, but simply to (a long pause) back up his moral character.”
A Lancashire vicar was asked by the choir to call upon old Betty, who was deaf, but who insisted in joining in the solo of the anthem, and to ask her only to sing in the hymns. He shouted into her ear: “Betty! I’ve been requested to speak to you about your singing.” At last she caught the word “singing,” and replied: “Not to me be the praise, sir; it’s a gift.”
The proprietor of a large drug store recently received this curt and haughty note written in an angular, feminine hand: “I do not want vasioline, but glisserine. Is that plain enough? I persoom you can spell.”
It was in a Maine Sunday-school that a teacher recently asked a Chinese pupil she was teaching to read if he understood the meaning of the words “an old cow.”
“Been cow a long time,” was the prompt answer.
Upon moving into a new neighborhood the small boy of the family was cautioned not to fight with his new acquaintances. One day Willie came home with a black eye and very much spattered with dirt.
“Why, Willie,” said mama, “I thought I told you to count a hundred before you fought!”
“I did, mama,” said Willie, “and look what Tommy Smith did while I was counting!”
“The rolling stone gathers no moss,” quoted the man who had never been outside his home county.
“True,” rejoined the globe-trotter, “but it acquires an enviable polish.”
Curate (who is going to describe his little holiday in Lucerne)—“My dear friends—I will not call you ladies and gentlemen, since I know you too well.”
Daniel Purcell, the famous punster, was desired to make a pun extempore.
“Upon what subject?” said Daniel.
“The king,” answered the other.
“Oh! sir,” said he “the king is no subject.”
Illustrative of “that troublesome Henglish haitch” an American traveler relates the following:
Once I dined with an English farmer. We had ham—very delicious baked ham. The farmer’s son soon finished his portion and passed his plate again.
“More ’am, father,” he said.
The farmer frowned.
“Don’t say ’am, son. Say’am.”
“I did say ’am,” the lad protested in an injured tone.
“You said’am,” cried the father fiercely. “’Am’s what it should be. ’Am, not’am.”
In the middle of the squabble the farmer’s wife turned to me and, with a deprecatory little laugh, explained:
“They both think they’re sayin’ ’am, sir.”
Passing along Princes Street, Edinburgh, one day a herculean Scots Grey stopped at the post-office and called on a street arab to polish his boots. The feet of the dragoon were in proportion to his height and, looking at the tremendous boots before him, the arab knelt down on the pavement and shouted out to his chum across the road, “Jamie, come ower an’ gie’s a hand, I’ve got an army contract.”
The younger man had been complaining that he could not get his wife to mend his clothes.
“I asked her to sew a button on this vest last night, and she hasn’t touched it,” he said. At this the older man assumed the air of a patriarch.
“Never ask a woman to mend anything,” he said. “You haven’t been married very long, and I think I can give you some serviceable suggestions. When I want a shirt mended I take it to my wife, flourish it around a little and say, ‘Where’s that rag-bag?’
“‘What do you want of the rag-bag?’ asks my wife. Her suspicions are roused at once.
“‘I want to throw this shirt away; it’s worn out,’ I say, with a few more flourishes.
“‘Let me see that shirt,’ my wife says then. ‘Now, John, hand it to me at once.’
“Of course, I pass it over, and she examines it.‘Why, John Taylor,’ she is sure to say, ‘I never knew such extravagance! This is a perfectly good shirt. All it needs is——’ And then she mends it.”
A browbeating counsel asked a witness how far he had been from a certain place. “Just four yards, two feet, and six inches,” was the reply. “How come you to be so exact, my friend?” “I expected some fool or other would ask me, so I measured it.”
“Now, see here, porter,” said the drummer briskly, “I want you to put me off at Syracuse. You know we get in there about six o’clock in the morning, and I may over-sleep myself. But it is important that I should get out. Here’s a five-dollar gold piece. Now, I may wake up hard. Don’t mind if I kick. Pay no attention if I’m ugly. I want you to put me off the train no matter how hard I fight. Understand?”
“Yes, sah,” answered the sturdy Nubian. “It shall be did, sah!”
The next morning the coin-giver was awakened by a stentorian voice calling: “Rochester!”
“Rochester!” he exclaimed, sitting up. “Where’s that porter?”
Hastily slipping on his trousers, he went in search of the negro, and found him in the porter’s closet, huddled up, with his head in a bandage, his clothes torn, and his arm in a sling.
“Well,” said the drummer, “you are a sight. Why didn’t you put me off at Syracuse?”
“Wha-at!” gasped the porter, jumping up, as hiseyes bulged from his head. “Was you de gemman dat give me a five-dollah gold piece?”
“Of course I was, you idiot!”
“Well, den, befoah de Lawd, who was dat gemman I put off at Syracuse?”
A right reverend prelate, himself a man of extreme good-nature, was frequently much vexed in spirit by the proud, froward, perverse, and untractable temper of his next vicar. The latter, after an absence much longer than usual, one day paid a visit to the bishop, who kindly inquired the cause of his absence, and was answered by the vicar that he had been confined to his house for some time past by an obstinate stiffness in his knee. “I am glad of that,” replied the prelate; “’tis a good symptom that the disorder has changed place, for I had a long time thought it immovably settled in your neck.”
Bride—“George, dear, when we reach our destination let us try to avoid giving the impression that we are newly married.”
George—“All right, Maud; you can carry the suitcase and umbrellas.”
Francis Wilson was speaking at the Players Club of New York City, not long ago, of the all too prevalent ignorance of dramatic literature in the country to-day.
“Why,” said Mr. Wilson, “a company was playing‘She Stoops to Conquer’ in a small Western town last winter when a man without any money, wishing to see the show, stepped up to the box office and said:
“‘Pass me in, please.’
“The box office man gave a loud, harsh laugh.
“‘Pass you in? What for?’ he asked.
“The applicant drew himself up and answered, haughtily: ‘What for? Why, because I am Oliver Goldsmith, author of the play.’
“‘Oh, I beg your pardon, sir,’ replied the other in a meek voice, as he hurriedly wrote an order for a box.”
Lady Bountiful—“All I can say is, Jenkins, that if these people insist on building these horrid little villas near my gates, I shall leave the place.”
Jenkins—“Exactly what I told them at the meeting, your ladyship. I said, ‘Do you want to drive away the goose that lays the golden eggs?’”
Old Lady (to conductor—her first drive on an electric tram).—“Would it be dangerous, conductor, if I was to put my foot on the rail?”
Conductor (an Edison manqué).—“No, mum, not unless you was to put the other one on the overhead wire!”
After a few weeks at boarding-school Alice wrote home as follows:
“Dear Father—Though I was homesick at first, now that I am getting acquainted, I like the school very much. Last evening Grayce and Kathryn (my roommates)and I had a nice little chafing-dish party, and we invited three other girls, Mayme and Carrye Miller and Edyth Kent. I hope you are all well at home. I can’t write any more now for I have a lot of studying to do. With lots of love to all.
“Your affectionate daughter,“Alyss.”
To this she received the following reply:
“My dear Daughter Alyss—I was glad to receive your letter and to know that you are enjoying yourself. Uncle Jaymes came the other day, bringing Charls and Albyrt with him. Your brother Henrie was delighted, for he has been lonely without you. I have bought a new gray horse whose name is Byllye. He matches nicely with old Fredde. With much love from us all, I am,
“Your affectionate father,“Wyllyam Jones.”
The next letter from the absent daughter was signed “Alice.”
While Chauncey M. Depew was at the Omaha Exposition, he and President Callaway of the New York Central chanced to go into a booth on the Midway Plaisance.
It was a tame entertainment and there was only a meager attendance when Mr. Depew and Mr. Callaway entered. Their stay would have been very brief except for the fact that they had scarcely taken their seats before there began a steady inpouring of people, which continued until the small auditorium was crowded.
Taking this extraordinary increase of spectators as an indication that something of an interesting nature was about to be disclosed, the two New Yorkers concluded to sit it out. Half an hour’s waiting failed to reward their patient expectancy, however, and Mr. Callaway suggested that they move on.
Just then ex-Secretary of Agriculture J. Sterling Morton pushed his way through the crowd, and, extending his hand to Mr. Depew, exclaimed:
“Well, Doctor Depew, so you are really here! I thought that ‘barker’ was lying.”
“What do you mean?” inquired Mr. Depew.
“Why, the ‘barker’ for this show is standing outside and inviting the crowd to ‘step up lively’ and pay ten cents for the privilege of seeing the ‘great and only Chauncey M. Depew.’”
That the royal road to learning is full of strange pitfalls is shown by some of the definitions and statements given by school-children—some of whom are well along the way. The following arebona fidesamples coming under the knowledge of one teacher:
“About this time Columbus was cursing around among the West Indies.”
“Jackson’s campaign in the Valley was the greatest piece of millinery-work ever known.”
“The Valkyrie were the Choosers of the Slain, and the Valhalla the Haulers of the Slain.”
“The eldest son of the King of France is called The Dolphin.”
“The Duke of Clarence, according to his usual custom, was killed in battle.”
“Heathen are paragons (pagans) that wash up idle things.”
“The Indians call their women squabs.”
A certain curate in the course of conversation at a dinner party some time ago remarked to a friend, “I had a curious dream last night, but as it was about my vicar I hardly like to tell it.” On being pressed, however, he began: “I dreamt I was dead and was on my way to Heaven, which was reached by a very long ladder. At the foot I was met by an angel, who pressed a piece of chalk into my hand and said, ‘If you climb long enough you will reach Heaven, but for every sin you are conscious of having committed you must mark a rung of the ladder with the chalk as you go up.’ I took the chalk and started. I had climbed up very, very far and was feeling very tired when I suddenly met my vicar coming down. ‘Hullo!’ I said, ‘what are you going down for?’ ‘More chalk.’”
Mrs. McKinley used to tell of a colored widow whose children she had helped educate. The widow, rather late in life, married.
“How are you getting on?” Mrs. McKinley asked her a few months after her marriage.
“Fine, thank yo’, ma’am,” the bride answered.
“And is your husband a good provider?”
“’Deed he am a good providah, ma’am,” was the enthusiastic reply. “Why, jes’ dis las’ week he got me five new places to wash at.”
A certain curate was of a painfully nervous temperament, and in consequence was constantly making awkward remarks—intended as compliments—to the bishop and others. Having distinguished himself in an unusual degree during a gathering of clergy to an afternoon tea at the bishop’s palace, he was taken to task for his failings by a senior curate, who was one of his companions on the way home.
“Look here, Bruce,” said the senior decidedly, “you are a donkey! Why can not you keep quiet, instead of making your asinine remarks? I am speaking to you now as a brother——”
Loud laughter interrupted him at this point, and for the moment he wondered why.
An earnest clergyman one Sunday morning was exhorting those who had anxious and troubled consciences to be sure and call on their pastor for guidance and prayer.
“To show you, my brethren, the blessed results of these visits with your pastor,” said he, “I will state to you that only yesterday a gentleman of wealth called upon me for counsel and instruction; and now to-day, my friends—to-day he sits among us, not only a Christian, but a happy husband and father.”
A young lady in the audience whispered to a matron: “Wasn’t that pretty quick work?”
A good story is told of the late George Augustus Sala in his early and impecunious days. At some festive gathering where Mr. Sala was present, Mr.Attemborough, the famous pawnbroker, was also a guest. They recognized each other, and shook hands.
“How do you do, Mr. Attemborough,” said the journalist. “We have met often before, but I think this is the first time I have ever seen your legs.”
A clergyman in the West Country had two curates, one a comparatively old man, the other very young. With the former he had not been able to work agreeably; and on being invited to another living, he accepted it, and took the young curate with him. Naturally, there was a farewell sermon; and we can imagine the feelings of the curate who was to be left behind when he heard the text given out, “Abide ye here with the ass, and I and the lad will go yonder and worship.”
A bishop was staying with a friend in a country house. On Sunday morning as he passed through the library he found a small boy curled up in a big chair, deeply interested in a book.
“Are you going to church, Tom?” he asked.
“No, sir,” he replied.
“Why, I am,” said the Bishop.
“Huh,” said the boy, “you’ve got to go. It’s your job.”
A celebrated continental specialist to whom time was literally money and who was possessed of a fiery temper made it a rule that all patients should undress before entering his consulting room so as not to wasteany of his valuable time. One day a meek-looking little man entered with all his clothes on. “What do you mean by coming in like that?” said the doctor in a rage. “Go and strip at once!” “But I—” faltered the man. “I tell you I’ve no time to waste,” yelled the doctor, and the poor man left the room in haste. When his turn came he reentered the room. “Now then,” said the doctor, “that’s better. What can I do for you?” “I called to collect your subscription for the benevolent society.”
A tall man, impatiently pacing the platform of a wayside station, accosted a red-haired boy of about twelve.
“S-s-say,” he said, “d-d-do y-you know ha-ha-how late this train is?”
The boy grinned but made no reply. The man stuttered out something about red-headed kids in general and passed into the station.
A stranger, overhearing the one-sided conversation, asked the boy why he hadn’t answered the big man.
“D-d-d’ye wanter see me g-g-get me fa-fa-face punched?” stammered the boy. “D-d-dat big g-g-guy’d tink I was mo-mo-mocking him.”
“Mother,” said a college student who had brought his chum home for the holidays, “permit me to present my friend, Mr. Specknoodle.”
His mother, who was a little hard of hearing, placed her hand to her ear.
“I’m sorry, George, but I didn’t quite catch yourfriend’s name. You’ll have to speak a little louder, I’m afraid.”
“I say, mother,” shouted George, “I want to present my friend Mr.Specknoodle.”
“I’m sorry, George, but Mr. —— What was the name again?”
“Mr. Specknoodle!” George fairly yelled.
The old lady shook her head sadly.
“I’m sorry, George, but I’m afraid it’s no use. It sounds just like Specknoodle to me.”
A young American lady on a visit to London was being shown some of the sights by a boastful Englishman. “This is a cannon captured at Bunker Hill,” said the Englishman. “How interesting,” exclaimed the lady. “I must explain,” said the gentleman tauntingly, “that this cannon was captured from the Americans by the English.” The lady quietly retorted, “Well, you have the cannon; we have the hill.”
Former Congressman Fred Landis of Indiana has made a reputation for himself as an orator. A year or so ago Landis, speaking at the unveiling of a monument to President Lincoln, uttered the phrase, “Abraham Lincoln—that mystic mingling of star and clod.” This was loudly applauded. After the speech a friend of Landis approached him, and, repeating the phrase, said: “Fred, what in the name of heaven does that mean?” Putting his arm around his friend’s shoulder, Landis replied: “I don’t know, really, but it gets ’em every time.”
Captain Foretopp tells a story of a certain noted divine who was on his steamer when a great gale overtook them off the Oregon coast. “It looks pretty bad,” said the Bishop to the Captain. “Couldn’t be much worse, Bishop,” replied Foretopp.
Half an hour later the steamer was diving under the waves as if she were a submarine and leaking like an old door. “Looks worse, I think, Captain,” said the Bishop. “We must trust in Providence now, Bishop,” answered Foretopp.
“Oh, I hope it has not come to that,” gasped the Bishop.
A couple of New Yorkers were playing golf on a New Jersey course on Election Day when they saw a fine-appearing old gentleman looking at them wistfully. They asked him to join the game, which he did with alacrity. He was mild in speech and manner and played well. But once when he had made a foozle he ejaculated vehemently the word: “Croton!” A few minutes later when he made another bad play, he repeated: “Croton!” The third time he said it, one of his new-made friends said: “I don’t want to be inquisitive, but will you tell me why you say ‘Croton’ so often?” “Well,” said the old gentleman, “isn’t that the biggest dam near New York?” He was a Presbyterian clergyman from Brooklyn.
Willie, aged five, was taken by his father to his first football game. The feature that caught his chief approval, however, did not become evident until hesaid his prayers that night. To the horror of his parents Willie prayed with true football snap: