“Dear lady, whosoe’er thou art,Turn this poor page with trembling care;But hush, oh, hush, thy beating heart,The one thou lov’st best will be there.”
“Dear lady, whosoe’er thou art,Turn this poor page with trembling care;But hush, oh, hush, thy beating heart,The one thou lov’st best will be there.”
“Dear lady, whosoe’er thou art,
Turn this poor page with trembling care;
But hush, oh, hush, thy beating heart,
The one thou lov’st best will be there.”
When the page was turned the one-dollar bill was revealed, and on the second page he wrote this verse:
“Fair lady, lift thine eyes and tellIf this is not a truthful letter;This is the ‘one’ thou lovest well,And naught (0) would make thee love it better.”
“Fair lady, lift thine eyes and tellIf this is not a truthful letter;This is the ‘one’ thou lovest well,And naught (0) would make thee love it better.”
“Fair lady, lift thine eyes and tell
If this is not a truthful letter;
This is the ‘one’ thou lovest well,
And naught (0) would make thee love it better.”
As several travelers got into the station ’bus one of the men (who was quite a portly fellow) noticed that a certain young woman had a grip exactly like his, but that it was placed with the rest of the luggage, on top. Thinking there might be some mistake made he kept his inside and placed it at his feet. He was soon engrossed in his paper, and did not notice the young woman reach over and draw the grip close to herside. Being of a humorous turn of mind he waited until she was occupied with a book and then pulled the grip to its former position, the rest of the travelers looking on with amused expressions.
In turning over a leaf she looked down and suddenly became aware of the removal of the grip. She was quite indignant, and with some force in her voice and manner said, “That ismine!” and jerked it back close to her feet.
Touching his hat politely the owner said, with a merry twinkle in his eye: “All right, madam; but may I please get my pipe and nightshirt out? You are welcome to the rest of the things!”
President Eliot, of Harvard, is not a believer in spelling reform. Not long ago there was a student who was a candidate for the degree of doctor of philosophy. This student had adopted spelling reform as his particular line of work, and as commencement day drew near he went to President Eliot with a request. “You know, Mr. President,” he said “that you are proposing to make me a Ph.D. Now I have made a specialty of spelling reform and I always spell philosophy with an ‘f.’ I therefore called to ask you if you could not make my degree F. D., instead of Ph.D.”
“Certainly,” replied the President. “In fact, if you insist, we shall make it a D. F.”
The following letter was received by the Post-office Department. It came from a Western postmasterat a small office and read: “In accordance with the rules of the department, I write you to inform you that on next Saturday I will close the post-office for one day, as I am going on a bear hunt. I am not asking your permission to close up and don’t give a damn if you discharge me; but I will advise now, that I am the only man in the county who can read and write.”
A young lady at a summer hotel asked an artist friend, who was spending his vacation there, if he would mind doing a small favor for her.
“Certainly not,” he said eagerly; “what is it?”
“Thank you so much,” she exclaimed gratefully. “I wish you would stop at Mrs. Gannon’s little shop and get three large bone buttons, the kind with two small holes in them. They’re for my new bathing suit, you know. Just tell her who I am and it will be all right. You needn’t pay for them.”
Now the artist was a bachelor, and had never bought anything but collar buttons before. So on the way to the store he kept repeating the instructions that he had received. Eager to relieve his mind he rushed up to Mrs. Gannon and reeled off this surprising speech: “I want three bone buttons for a small bathing suit with two large holes in it. Just tell me who I am and it will be all right.”
There was not even standing room in the six-o’clock crowded car, but one more passenger, a young woman, wedged her way along just inside the doorway.Each time the car took a sudden lurch forward she fell helplessly back, and three times she landed in the arms of a large, comfortable man on the back platform. The third time it happened he said quietly: “Hadn’t you better stay here now?”
The principal of one of Washington’s high schools relates an incident in connection with the last commencement day. A clever girl had taken one of the principal prizes. At the close of the exercises her friends crowded about her to offer congratulations.
“Weren’t you awfully afraid you wouldn’t get it, Hattie?” asked one, “when there were so many contestants?”
“Oh, no!” cheerily exclaimed Hattie. “Because I knew when it came to English composition I had ’em all skinned.”
The Guards’ Band was playing on the terrace at Windsor Castle during luncheon, and the Queen was so pleased with a lively march that she sent a maid of honor to inquire what it was. The maid of honor blushed deeply as she answered on her return: “‘Come where the Booze is Cheaper,’ your Majesty.”
Mark Twain once wrote to Andrew Carnegie as follows:
“My dear Mr. Carnegie:I see by the papers that you are very prosperous. I want to get a hymn-book. It costs two dollars. I will bless you, God will blessyou, and it will do a great deal of good. Yours truly, Mark Twain.”
“P. S.—Don’t send the hymn-book; send me the two dollars.”
A physician started a model insane asylum, says the New York “Sun,” and set apart one ward especially for crazy motorists and chauffeurs. Taking a friend through the building he pointed out with particular pride the automobile ward and called attention to its elegant furnishings and equipment.
“But,” said the friend, “the place is empty; I don’t see any patients.”
“Oh, they are all under the cots fixing the slats,” explained the physician.
An aged, gray-haired and very wrinkled old woman, arrayed in the outlandish calico costume of the mountains, was summoned as a witness in court to tell what she knew about a fight in her house. She took the witness-stand with evidences of backwardness and proverbial Bourbon verdancy. The Judge asked her in a kindly voice what took place. She insisted it did not amount to much, but the Judge by his persistency finally got her to tell the story of the bloody fracas.
“Now, I tell ye, Jedge, it didn’t amount to nuthn’. The fust I knowed about it was when Bill Saunder called Tom Smith a liar, en Tom knocked him down with a stick o’ wood. One o’ Bill’s friends then cut Tom with a knife, slicin’ a big chunk out o’ him. Then Sam Jones, who was a friend of Tom’s, shot the otherfeller and two more shot him, en three or four others got cut right smart by somebody. That nachly caused some excitement, Jedge, en then they commenced fightin’.”
One morning, as Mr. Clemens returned from a neighborhood call, sans necktie, his wife met him at the door with the exclamation: “There, Sam, you have been over to the Stowes’s again without a necktie! It’s really disgraceful the way you neglect your dress!”
Her husband said nothing, but went up to his room.
A few minutes later his neighbor—Mrs. S.—was summoned to the door by a messenger, who presented her with a small box neatly done up. She opened it and found a black silk necktie, accompanied by the following note: “Here is a necktie. Take it out and look at it. I think I stayed half an hour this morning. At the end of that time will you kindly return it, as it is the only one I have?—Mark Twain.”
The teacher was teaching a class in the infant Sabbath-school room and was making her pupils finish each sentence to show that they understood her.
“The idol had eyes,” the teacher said, “but it could not—”
“See,” cried the children.
“It had ears, but it could not—”
“Hear,” was the answer.
“It had lips,” she said, “but it could not—”
“Speak,” once more replied the children.
“It had a nose, but it could not—”
“Wipe it,” shouted the children; and the lesson had to stop a moment.
She was the dearest and most affectionate little woman in the world, and so thoughtful of her husband’s comfort and his needs. One evening, when company was expected, she inquired solicitously:
“Aren’t you going to wear that necktie I gave you on Christmas, dearie?”
“Of course I am, Henrietta,” responded dearie. “I was saving it up. I am going to wear that red necktie, and my Nile-green smoking-jacket, and my purple and yellow socks, and open that box of cigars you gave me, all at once—to-night.”
When J. M. Barrie addressed an audience of one thousand girls at Smith College during an American visit, a friend asked him how he had found the experience.
“Well,” replied Mr. Barrie, “to tell you the truth I’d much rather talk one thousand times to one girl than to talk one time to a thousand girls.”
The Rev. Mr. Goodman (inspecting himself in mirror)—“Caroline, I don’t really believe I ought to wear this wig. It looks like living a lie.”
“Bless your heart, Avery,” said his better half, “don’t let that trouble you. That wig will never fool anybody for one moment.”
A young man had been calling now and then on a young lady, when one night as he sat in the parlor waiting for her to come down, her mother entered the room instead and asked in a grave, stern way what his intentions were. He was about to stammer a reply, when suddenly the young lady called down from the head of the stairs, “Oh, mama, that isn’t the one.”
A woman hurried up to a policeman at the corner of Twenty-third Street in New York City.
“Does this crosstown car take you down to the Bridge toward Brooklyn?” she demanded.
“Why, madam,” returned the policeman, “do you want to go to Brooklyn?”
“No, I don’t want to,” the woman replied, “but I have to.”
Walter Appleton Clark, whose artistic career was cut short by an untimely death, had a strong sense of humor. In going through a millionaire’s stables, where the floors and walls were of white tiles, drinking fountains of marble, mahogany mangers, silver trimmings, and so forth and so on, “Well,” said the millionaire proudly, “is there anything lacking?” “I can think of nothing,” said Clark, “except a sofa for each horse.”
Oliver Herford, equally famous as poet, illustrator, and brilliant wit, was entertaining four magazine editors at luncheon when the bell rang, and a maid entered with the mail.
“Oh,” said an editor, “an epistle.”
“No,” said Mr. Herford, tearing open the envelope, “not an epistle, a collect.”
An old gentleman on board one of the numerous steamers which ply between Holyhead and the Irish coast missed his handkerchief, and accused a soldier standing by his side of stealing it, which the soldier, an Irishman, denied. Some few minutes afterward the gentleman found the missing article in his hat; he was then most profuse in his apologies to the soldier.
“Not another wurrd,” said Pat; “it was a misthake on both sides—ye took me for a thafe, and I took ye for a gintlemon.”
The family were gathered in the library enjoying a magnificent thunder-storm when the mother thought of Dorothy alone in the nursery. Fearing lest the little daughter should be awakened and feel afraid, she slipped away to quiet her. Pausing at the door, however, in a vivid flash of lightning that illuminated the whole room, she saw the little girl sitting up in bed clapping her hands in excitement and shouting, “Bang it again, God! Bang it again!”
A little girl ate at a feast a great quantity of chocolate eggs and bananas and cakes and peanuts and things of that sort, and finally the time came for her to go.
“But you will have a little more cake before you go?” her hostess said politely.
“No, thank you, ma’am. I’m full,” said the little girl.
“Then,” said the hostess, “you’ll put some nuts and candies in your pockets, won’t you?”
The little girl shook her head regretfully.
“They’re full, too,” she said.
“My dear, I couldn’t match that dress goods.”
“You couldn’t?”
“No, and after what the various clerks said to me, I can’t see why a person in tolerable circumstances should want to match it.”
A boy in a certain school would persist in saying “have went.” One day the teacher kept him in, saying, “While I am out of the room you may write ‘have gone’ fifty times.” When the teacher returned she found he had dutifully performed the task, but on the other side of the paper was a message from the absent one: “I have went. John White.”
On one of his trips abroad Mr. Evarts landed at Liverpool. The steamer was proceeding slowly up the river to the wharf, and Mr. Evarts, after looking at the muddy waters of the Mersey, said to his companion, “Evidently the quality of mercy is not strained.”
Once, at breakfast at a friend’s, Phillips Brooks noticed the diminutive but amusingly dignified daughter of the house having constant trouble with the large fork that she was vainly trying to handle properly with her tiny fingers. In a spirit of kindness, mingled with mischief, the Bishop said:
“Why don’t you give up the fork, my dear, and use your fingers? You know, fingers were made before forks.”
Quick as a flash came the crushing retort: “Mine weren’t.”
Two stout old Germans were enjoying their pipes and placidly listening to the strains of the summer-garden orchestra. One of them in tipping his chair back stepped on a parlor match, which exploded with a bang.
“Dot vas not on de program,” he said, turning to his companion.
“Vat was not?”
“Vy, dot match.”
“Vat match?”
“De match I valked on.”
“Vell, I didn’t see no match; vat aboud it?”
“Vy, I valked on a match and it vent bang, and I said it vas not on de program.”
The other picked up his program and read it through very carefully. “I don’t see it on de program,” he said.
“Vell, I said it vas not on the program, didn’t I?”
“Vell, vat has it got to do mit de program, anyvay? Egsplain yourself.”
Charles Dana Gibson, the creator of the “Gibson girl,” is one of the tallest men in his profession, standing six feet two inches tall and weighing two hundred pounds.
A fellow-illustrator, called upon Mr. Gibson in his studio one day and found him working at a specially constructed table accommodated to his height and breadth. He shook hands cordially with his visitor, but his frank face revealed deep discontent. His visitor expressed the fear that his visit was untimely.
“Not at all, my dear fellow,” Mr. Gibson responded. “But I was just looking at this as you came in,” and he showed him a very small pen, called a crow-quill, with which illustrators make their sketches. The crow-quill is smaller than the ordinary pen and holder, a fragile, perishable, and insignificant instrument.
“Just look at it,” complained Mr. Gibson, “and think of a man of my size earning his living with a thing like that!”
Going into a port where the water was very deep—Rio de Janeiro, I believe—relates Captain A. T. Mahan, the chain cables “got away,” as the expression is, control was lost, and shackle after shackle tore out of the hawse-holes with tremendous rattling and roaring. The admiral was on deck at the moment, and when the chain had been stopped and secured he said to the captain: “Alfred, send for the young man in charge of those chains and give him a good setting-down. Ask him what he means by letting such things happen.” Alfred was a mild person, and clearly did notlike his job; he could not have come up to the admiral’s standard. The latter saw it, and said: “Perhaps you had better leave it to me. I’ll settle him.” Fixing his eyes on the offender, he said, sternly: “What do you mean by this, sir? Why the hell didn’t you stop that chain?” The culprit looked quietly at him and said: “How the hell could I?” After a moment the admiral turned to the captain and said meekly: “That’s true, Alfred; how the hell could he?”
An old darky of the Blue Grass State was looking at the high steppers belonging to his new master, who said, “I suppose your master down South had a good many horses?” “’Deed we did, sah, dat we did; an’ ole massa had ’em all name’ Bible names. Faith, Hope, and Charity, Bustle, Stays, and Crinoline was all one spring’s colts!”
The wife of a well-known judge lost her cook, and since she had no other recourse she rolled up her sleeves and for a week provided such meals as the judge had not enjoyed since those happy days when they didn’t keep a cook. The judge’s delight was so great that by way of acknowledgment he presented his wife with a beautiful ermine coat. Naturally the incident was noised about among their acquaintances and a spirit of envious emulation was developed in certain quarters. Mrs. Jerome, after reciting the story to her husband, asked, “What do I get, Jerry, if I will do the cooking for a week?”
“At the end of the week, dear, you’ll get one of those long crêpe veils.”
Perhaps one of Lord Beaconsfield’s brightest flings was at the wife of his bitterest political foe. Mrs. Gladstone passed the Prime Minister one day, and he cast a glance at her over his shoulder, saying: “There goes a woman without one redeeming fault.”
A private, anxious to secure leave of absence, sought his captain with a most convincing tale about a sick wife breaking her heart for his presence.
The officer, familiar with the soldier’s ways, replied:
“I am afraid you are not telling the truth. I have just received a letter from your wife urging me not to let you come home because you get drunk, and mistreat her shamefully.”
The private saluted and started to leave the room. He paused at the door, asking: “Sor, may I spake to you, not as an officer, but as mon to mon?”
“Yes, what is it?”
“You and I are two of the most illigant liars the Lord ever made. I’m not married at all.”
A very prosy gentleman, who was in the habit of waylaying Douglas Jerrold, met his victim and, planting himself in the way, said: “Well, Jerrold, what is going on to-day?”
Jerrold replied, darting past the inquirer, “I am!”
Foote, the English actor, was once praising the hospitality of the Irish, after one of his trips toIreland. A gentleman in his audience asked him whether he had ever been at Cork. “No, sir,” replied Foote; “but I have seen many drawings of it.”
A lady one day meeting a girl who had formerly been in her employ inquired, “Well Mary, where do you live now?” “Please ma’am, I don’t live nowhere now,” rejoined the girl; “I am married.”
When a Mr. Wilberforce was a candidate for election in Hull, England, his sister, an amiable and witty young lady offered to make a present of a new gown to each of the wives of the men who voted for her brother. Upon hearing this, the crowd whom she was addressing broke out into cries of “Miss Wilberforce forever.” “I thank you gentlemen,” the young lady replied, “but I do not wish to be Miss Wilberforce forever!”
“How do you define ‘black as your hat?’” said a schoolmaster to one of his pupils.
“Darkness that may be felt,” replied the budding genius.
She—“He married her for her money. Wasn’t that awful?”
He—“Did he get it?”
She—“No.”
He—“It was.”
“My, but it is hot in your office,” said a client to his lawyer.
“It ought to be,” replied the lawyer, “I make my bread here.”
The town council of a small German community met to inspect a new site for a cemetery. They assembled at a chapel, and as it was a warm day some one suggested they leave their coats there.
“Some one can stay behind and watch them,” suggested Herr Botteles.
“What for?” demanded Herr Ehrlich. “If we are all going out together what need is there for any one to watch the clothes?”
After a brief two weeks’ acquaintance he invited her to go to the ball-game with him.
“There’s Jarvis! He’s a good one. He’s a pitcher for your life. And that’s Johnson, over there. He’s going to be our best man in a few weeks.”
“Oh, Walter! He’ll do, all right,” she lisped hurriedly, “but it is so sudden, dear.”
Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson, of Concord, is fond of telling of an old servant whose heart was exceedingly kind, and in whom the qualities of pity and compassion were developed nearly to perfection. He was once driving his master and Emerson through the country. As they approached a new house that the master was building, they saw an old woman sneakingaway with a bundle of wood. “Jabez, Jabez,” cried the master, “do you see that old woman taking my wood?” Jabez looked with pity at the old woman, then with scorn at his master. “No, sir,” he said stoutly, “I don’t see her, and I didn’t think that you would see her either.”
“They said that we would never be happy,” moaned the young bride.
“But youarehappy.”
“But now they say it won’t last.”
“That fellow,” said Alfred Henry Lewis, the other day, when a certain well-known Tammany man was mentioned, “puts up a good bluff, but there is nothing to him. Open the front door and you are in his back yard.”
Little Paul trying on his grandmother’s glasses—“Grandma, what is it between my eyes and the glasses, I can’t see anything.”
“Eighty years, my dear.”
To Richard Mansfield an enthusiastic woman admirer had paid tribute of praise, adding: “I suppose, sir, that when in the spirit of those great rôles you forget your real self for days.”
“Yes, madam, for days, as well as nights. It is then I do those dreadful things—trample on the upturnedfeatures of my leading lady and hurl tenderloin steaks at waiters.”
“And you do not know of it at all?”
“Not a solitary thing, until I read the papers the next day,” said Mr. Mansfield solemnly.
When Marquis Ito was in the United States, in 1901, an inexperienced St. Paul reporter sought an interview with him. He met Ito’s secretary, and made known his mission. “Me newspaper man. Me writee news. Me heardee marquis velly ill. He better to-day? You savve?” began the reporter, to the secretary’s amazement. But the latter was equal to the occasion. “Me savve,” he said gravely. “Marquis he no better. Belly blad. Catchee cold. Doctor him no lettee him leave bled to-day. You savve?” The interview proceeded in this way, but at its termination the secretary, with a twinkle in his eye, remarked: “The marquis is greatly fatigued by his arduous journey, but—” But the reporter had fled.
Professor Phelps, who disliked mathematics, was once walking with Professor Newton, who began discussing a problem so deep that his companion could not follow it. He fell into a brown study, from which he was aroused by Newton’s emphatic assertion, “And that, you see, gives usx!” “Does it?” asked Mr. Phelps, politely. “Why, doesn’t it?” exclaimed the professor, excitedly, alarmed at the possibility of a flaw in his calculations. Quickly his mind ran back and detected a mistake. “You are right, Mr. Phelps.You are right!” shouted the professor. “It doesn’t give usx; it gives usy.” And from that time Professor Phelps was looked upon as a mathematical prodigy, the first man who ever tripped Newton.
Ambassador Choate and his daughter visited the restaurant made famous by Dr. Samuel Johnson. It is the custom there to give the guests lark pie, such as Johnson used to eat, and the Choates were served with one of the pasties. Choate was in the chair that Johnson was wont to occupy, and had just begun his meal, when his daughter exclaimed: “Isn’t it funny, papa? You are in Johnson’s chair and eating a tradition.” “Eating a tradition!” retorted the ambassador struggling valiantly; “I have got hold of one of Johnson’s larks.”
A New England school-teacher recited “The Landing of the Pilgrims” to her pupils, then asked each of them to draw from their imagination a picture of Plymouth Rock. One little fellow hesitated and then raised his hand. “Well, Willie, what is it?” asked the teacher. “Please teacher, do you want us to draw a hen or a rooster?”
An English gentleman had sent a private note to a marquis, on a personal matter, by hand, and on the return of the man questioned him as to his reception. “Ah, sir,” said the man, “there’s no use writing him any letter, he can’t see to read them. He’s blind.”
“Blind!”
“Yes, sir. He asked me twice where my hat was, and I had it on my head all the time.”
A magician was performing in a Kentucky town, and during the evening announced that in his next trick he would need a pint flask of whisky. No move was made to supply the liquor. “Perhaps you did not understand me. Will some gentleman kindly loan me a pint flask of whisky?” Then a lank man in the rear of the hall arose. “Mistah,” said he, “will a quart flask do?” “Just as well, sir,” replied the magician, and every gentleman in the hall arose with flask extended.
“Phœbe,” said a mistress in reproof to her colored servant whom she found smoking a short pipe after having repeatedly threatened to discharge her if again caught in the act, “if you won’t stop that bad habit for any other reason do so because it is right. You are a good church member—and, don’t you know that smoking makes the breath unpleasant, and that nothing unclean can enter Heaven?” “’Deed, missie, I does,” said the woman, “but bress’ yo’ heart, when I go to Heaben I’ll leave my bref behin’.”
It was the custom of a certain deacon, when dining at the home of one of his best friends, to drink a glass of milk, as a prelude to his dinner. One day when the minister was scheduled to appear, instead of the rich,foamy glass of milk, his friend placed beside his plate a glass of milk punch. After the blessing, the deacon seized his glass and drank to the last drop, and then exclaimed as he closed his eyes and smacked his lips, “Oh, what a cow!”
Dean Hole of Rochester, England, told of a very innocent and obliging curate who went to a Yorkshire parish where many of the parishioners bred horses and sometimes raced them. A few Sundays after his arrival he was asked to invite the prayers of the congregation for Lucy Grey. He did so. They prayed for three Sundays for her. On the fourth, the church clerk told the curate that he need not do it any more. “Why,” he asked, “is she dead?” “No,” said the clerk, “she’s won the steeplechase.”
The late Richard Henry Stoddard while endeavoring to procure an impromptu luncheon for a number of his friends after his wife and the servants had retired, found a box of sardines. His vigorous remarks, inspired by the sardine-can’s objections to the “open sesame” of a dull jack-knife, attracted the attention of Mrs. Stoddard on the floor above.
“Whatareyou doing?” she called down.
“Opening a can of sardines.”
“With what?”
“A dashed old jack-knife,” cried the exasperated poet; “what did you think I was opening it with?”
“Well, dear,” she answered, “I didn’t think you were opening it with prayer.”
“What is the matter with your father, Gladys?” asked the child’s aunt.
“He’s awful sick with a headache,” the little girl answered, “an’ he’s hurt, too, ‘cause mama said he’s broke his resolution.”
Colored people are proverbially fond of funerals, and Mrs. Walker’s cook was trying to make her mistress realize what she had missed by not attending the funeral of a prominent citizen of their village.
“Mis’ Fanny,” she said, “you sholy orto hev been thar. I ain’ nevvah seen sech a big funril in dis heah town. Dey had all de kerridges fum bofe liberty stables, ’mos’ all de private conveniences, an’ dat new fambly fum de North was dere in a two-hoss syringe!”
William Bourke Cochran took his seat in Congress on the day that the House went into turmoil over the special report on post-office affairs. “I suppose it looks like old times to you, Cochran,” said a friend, who, with others, had crowded around to welcome him back. Just then such epithets as “coward,” “knave,” “scoundrel,” and “liar,” hurtled across the chamber. “Well, I can’t say it looks much like old times,” replied Cochran, “too many new faces for that. But it certainly sounds like old times.”
This happened in Scotland: The last edition of the newspapers had been sold out and the newsboys were calculating their takings. “Hallo,” said Jimmy, inalarm, “I’m a ’a’penny short!” “Well, wats the use of ’arpin’ on it?” growled Dick, as he calmly cracked a nut; “you don’t think I took it, do you?” “I don’t say you ’ave. But there it is, I’m a ’a’penny short, and you’re eatin’ nuts.”
Inthe“Diary of a Frenchman” by Flandrau, he makes a student say to his chum: “I’ve an idea that we’re going to have ‘je suis bon’ in French to-day. I wish you would write out a few tenses for me.”
Whereupon his friend wrote:
“Je suis bon.Tu es bones,Il est beans,Nous sommes bon bons,Vous êtes bonbonnières,Ils sont bon-ton.”
“Je suis bon.Tu es bones,Il est beans,Nous sommes bon bons,Vous êtes bonbonnières,Ils sont bon-ton.”
“Je suis bon.
Tu es bones,
Il est beans,
Nous sommes bon bons,
Vous êtes bonbonnières,
Ils sont bon-ton.”
Tolstoy told Isabel Habgard, who has translated many of his books, a good story of one of his ancestors, an army officer, who was an excellent mimic. One day he was impersonating the Emperor Paul to a group of his friends, when Paul himself entered, and for some moments looked on, unperceived, at the antics of the young man. Tolstoy finally turned, and beholding the emperor, bowed his head and was silent. “Go on, sir,” said Paul; “continue the performance.” The young man hesitated a moment, and then, folding his arms and imitating every gesture and intonation of his sovereign, he said: “Tolstoy, you deserve to bedegraded, but I remember the thoughtlessness of youth, and you are pardoned.” The czar smiling, said, “Well, be it so.”
When President Nicholas Murray Butler was at college, certain freshmen of his time made no scruple of stealing a pail of milk which a dairyman daily placed outside the door of Mr. Butler’s room while the occupant was in class. In order to foil the boys, Mr. Butler printed a sign in big letters, “I have poisoned this milk with arsenic.” Upon his return he found the milk intact, but added to the notice were these words: “So have we.”
There is an amusing story told of a clergyman, who, upon one of his trips through the West, observed that almost every man he met and spoke with used profanity. Finally he found one man who talked to him for twenty minutes without using an oath. The clergyman shook hands with him at parting and said: “You don’t know how glad I am to have a chance to have a talk with a man like you. You are the first man I have met for three days who could talk for five minutes without swearing.” The stranger, shocked, instantly and innocently ejaculated: “Well, I’ll be d——d!”
The other day, while shopping, a lady accidentally picked up another lady’s umbrella from the counter, and had the mistake pointed out to her in a rather frigid manner. She returned the umbrella with apologies,and then remembered that she had no umbrella with her.
As it had begun to rain, she bought one, as well as one for a birthday present for a friend. With the two umbrellas in her hand, she boarded a car and, as luck would have it, sat down opposite the lady whose umbrella she had picked up earlier in the store. As the latter swept out of the car she smiled again frigidly, and remarked to the lady of the umbrellas, “I see you have had a successful day.”
“If a fairy should appear to you and offer you three wishes,” said the imaginative young woman, “what would you do?” “I’d sign the pledge,” answered the matter-of-fact young man.
A summer tourist was passing through a German village in the West recently, when a stout German girl came to the front door and called to a small girl playing in front. “Gusty! Gusty!” she said, “come in and eat yourself. Ma’s on the table, and pa’s half et!”
A university of Illinois professor is very popular among the students. He was entertaining a group of them at his residence one night. Taking down a magnificent sword that hung over the fireplace, he brandished it about, exclaiming, “Never will I forget the day I drew this blade for the first time.” “Where did you draw it, sir?” an awe-struck freshman asked. “At a raffle,” said the professor.
In the vicinity of Germantown there lived a worthy old lady and her son John, who were once called upon to entertain a number of ladies at dinner during Quarterly meeting. As John began to carve the broiled chickens, he entered upon a flowery speech of welcome, but in the midst of his flattering utterances his mother, who was somewhat deaf, piped up from the other end of the table: “You needn’t be praisin’ of ’em up, John, I’m afraid they’re a lot of tough old hens, every one of ’em.”
One of Père Ollivier’s flock, a very beautiful and handsomely dressed woman, coming very late to church one Sunday morning, caused some disturbance and stir among the worshipers by her entrance and interrupted the flow of eloquence of the worthy father, who, very irritable and easily put out, said: “Madame perhaps waited to take her chocolate before coming to church?” To this, madame, unabashed, graciously replied: “Yes, mon père; and two rolls with it.”
Of late years the House of Commons has seen some lively times. Many of them have been brought about by the irascible but delightful Irish member, Dr. Tanner. On one occasion, when he had been indulging rather freely and his ever ready tongue being loosened, he met Sir Ellis Ashmead Bartlett in the lobby, and taking him to one side he said, in the greatest confidence, and without the slightest tinge of anger, but with a world of meaning: “Bartlett, you are a fool.” “You are drunk,” retorted the knight. “That’s allright,” replied Dr. Tanner. “To-morrow I shall be sober, but you will still be a fool.”
A reader for a New York publishing house gives the following, quoted from a story submitted by an Indiana authoress, as being about the choicest bit he has come across in many years:
“Reginald was bewitched. Never had the baroness seemed to him so beautiful as at this moment, when, in her dumb grief, she hid her face.”
“Reginald was bewitched. Never had the baroness seemed to him so beautiful as at this moment, when, in her dumb grief, she hid her face.”
An old negro living in Carrollton was taken ill recently, and called in a physician of his race to prescribe for him. But the old man did not seem to be getting any better, and finally a white physician was called. Soon after arriving Dr. S—— felt the darky’s pulse for a moment, and then examined his tongue. “Did your other doctor take your temperature?” he asked. “I don’t know, sah,” he answered, feebly; “I haint missed nuthin’ but mah watch yit, boss.”