An eight-year-old boy went to a church picnic, and, being a favorite with the ladies, had been liberally supplied with good things to eat. Later in the day one of the ladies noticed the boy sitting near a stream with a woebegone expression on his face and his hands clasped over his stomach.
“Why, what’s the matter, Willie?” she kindly asked. “Haven’t you had enough to eat?”
“Oh, yes’m,” said the boy. “I’ve had enough. I feel as though I don’t want all I’ve got.”
A pretty young girl was walking through a Richmond hospital with delicacies for the sick and wounded. She overheard a suffering young Confederate officer say, “Oh, my Lord!”
Wishing to rebuke him slightly she came to his bedside and said:
“I think that I heard you call upon the name of the Lord. I am one of His daughters. Is there anything that I can do for you?”
He looked upon the lovely face.
“Yes,” he said, “please ask Him to make me His son-in-law.”
A well-known English surgeon was imparting some clinical instructions to half a dozen students, according to “The Medical Age.” Pausing at the bedside of a doubtful case he said: “Now, gentlemen, do you think this is or is not a case for operation?”
One by one each student made his diagnosis, and all of them answered in the negative.
“Well, gentlemen, you are all wrong,” said the wielder of the scalpel, “and I shall operate to-morrow.”
“No, you won’t,” said the patient, as he rose in his bed; “six to one is a good majority; gimme my clothes.”
Attorney-General Moody was once riding on the platform of a Boston street car, standing next to the gate that protected passengers from cars coming on the other track. A Boston lady came to the door of the car, and, as it stopped, started toward the gate, which was hidden from her by the men standing before it.
“Other side, please, lady,” said the conductor.
He was ignored as only a born-and-bred Bostonian can ignore a man. The lady took another step toward the gate.
“You must get off the other side,” said the conductor.
“I wish to get off on this side,” came the answer in tones that congealed that official into momentary silence. Before he could explain or expostulate Mr. Moody came to his assistance.
“Stand to one side, gentlemen,” he remarked quietly. “The lady wishes to climb over the gate.”
One rainy afternoon Aunt Sue was explaining the meaning of various words to her young nephew. “Now, an heirloom, my dear, means something that has been handed down from father to son,” she said.
“Well,” replied the boy thoughtfully, “that’s a queer name for my pants.”
A bishop in full robes of office, with his gown reaching to his feet, was teaching a Sunday-school class. At the close he said he would be glad to answer any questions.
A little hand went up, and he asked: “Well, my boy?”
“Can I ask?” said the boy.
“Certainly,” said the Bishop; “what is it?”
“Well,” asked the boy, “is dem all you’ve got on, or do you wear pants under dem?”
“There’s just two things that break up most happy homes,” observed a philosopher.
“What’s them?” inquired a listener.
“Woman’s love for dry goods an’ man’s love for wet goods, b’gosh!”
At a country fair out in Kansas a man went up to a tent where some elk were on exhibition, and stared wistfully up at the sign.
“I’d like to go in there,” he said to the keeper, “but it would be mean to go in without my family, and I cannot afford to pay for my wife and seventeen children.”
The keeper stared at him in astonishment. “Are all those your children?” he gasped.
“Every one,” said the man.
“You wait a minute,” said the keeper. “I’m going to bring the elk out and let them see you all.”
A school principal was trying to make clear to his class the fundamental doctrines of the Declaration of Independence.
“Now, boys,” he said, “I will give you each three ordinary buttons. Here they are. You must think of the first one as representing Life, of the second one as representing Liberty, and the third one as representing the Pursuit of Happiness. Next Sunday I will ask you each to produce the three buttons and tell me what they represent.”
The following Sunday the teacher said to the youngest member:
“Now, Johnnie, produce your three buttons and tell me what they stand for.”
“I ain’t got ’em all,” he sobbed, holding out two of the buttons. “Here’s Life an’ here’s Liberty, but mommer sewed the Pursuit of Happiness on my pants.”
A restaurant-keeper hung out this sign:
“Coffee:Such as Mother Used to Make.”
A customer asked, pointing to the sign:
“Is your coffee really such as mother used to make?”
“It is,” replied the proprietor.
“Then,” said the man with a reminiscent look, “give me a cup of tea.”
A young man, not regarded as a very desirable suitor, had called upon a young lady a number of times, each time to be told by the maid that “Miss Florence was not well today.”
One day, in response to his card, the young lady’s mother, who was a recent accession to the newly-rich ranks, and whose education was not as sure as it might be, appeared and explained once more to the young man that the daughter was not well.
“I am very sorry, indeed,” said the young man as he rose to go, “that your daughter is so delicate.”
“Delicate?” sniffed the mother; “Florence dell’cate? Not at all. Why, she is the most indelicate girl you ever met.”
A member of the faculty of the University of Chicago, according to “Harper’s Weekly,” tells of the sad case of a young woman from Indiana who was desirous of attaining social prominence in Chicago.
Soon after her arrival there she made the acquaintance of a student at the university to whom she took a great fancy.
Evidently it was at this time she realized for the first time that her early education had been neglected, for she said to a friend:
“I suppose that, as he is a college man, I’ll have to be awful careful what I say. Whatever will I talk about to him?”
The friend suggested history as a safe topic. To her friend’s astonishment she took the advice seriously, and shortly commenced in earnest to “bone up” in English history.
When the young man called, the girl listened for some time with ill-concealed impatience to his talk of football, outdoor meets, dances, etc., but finally she decided to take the matter in her own hands. She had not done all that reading for nothing; so, a pause in the conversation affording the desired opportunity, she suddenly exclaimed, with considerable vivacity:
“Wasn’t it awful about Mary, Queen of Scots?”
“Why, what’s the matter?” stammered the student, confused.
“My gracious!” almost yelled the girl from Indiana, “didn’t you know? Why, the poor thing had her head cut off!”
A lady was calling on some friends one summer afternoon. The talk buzzed along briskly, fans waved and the daughter of the house kept twitching uncomfortably, frowning and making little smothered exclamations of annoyance. Finally, with a sigh, she rose and left the room.
“Your daughter,” said the visitor, “seems to be suffering from the heat.”
“No,” said the hostess. “She is just back home from college and she is suffering from the family grammar.”
A city man once had occasion, says “Lippincott’s Magazine,” to stop at a country home where a tin basin and a roller-towel on the back porch sufficed for the family’s ablutions. For two mornings the “hired man” of the household watched in silence the visitor’s efforts at making a toilette under the unfavorable auspices, but when on the third day the tooth-brush, nail-file, whisk-broom, etc., had been duly used and returned to their places in the traveler’s grip, he could suppress his curiosity no longer, so boldly put the question: “Say, Mister, air you always that much trouble to yo’se’f?”
A famous statesman prided himself on his success in campaigning, when called upon to reach a man’s vote through his family pride.
On one of his tours he passed through a country town when he came suddenly upon a charming group—a comely woman with a bevy of little ones about her—in a garden. He stopped short, then advanced and leaned over the front gate.
“Madam,” he said in his most ingratiating way, “may I kiss these beautiful children?”
“Certainly, sir,” the lady answered demurely.
“They are lovely darlings,” said the campaigner after he had finished the eleventh. “I have seldom seen more beautiful babies. Are they all yours, marm?”
The lady blushed deeply.
“Of course they are—the sweet little treasures,” he went on. “From whom else, marm, could they have inherited these limpid eyes, these rosy cheeks, these profuse curls, these comely figures and these musical voices?”
The lady continued blushing.
“By-the-way, marm,” said the statesman, “may I bother you to tell your estimable husband that ———, the Republican candidate for Governor, called upon him this evening?”
“I beg your pardon,” said the lady, “I have no husband.”
“But these children, madam—you surely are not a widow?”
“I fear you were mistaken, sir, when you first came up. These are not my children. This is an orphan asylum!”
A prominent physician, whose specialty was physical diagnosis, required his patients, before entering his private consultation-room, to divest themselves of all superfluous clothing in order to save time. One day a man presented himself without having complied with this requirement.
“Why do you come in here without complying with my rules?” demanded the doctor. “Just step into that side room and remove your clothing and then I’ll see you. Next patient, please!”
The man did as requested, and after a time presented himself in regular order duly divested of his clothing.
“Now,” said the doctor, “what can I do for you?”
“I just called,” replied the man, “to collect that tailoring bill which you owe us.”
One winter’s day a very bowlegged tramp called at a home in Ontario and stood to warm himself by the kitchen stove. A little boy in the home surveyed him carefully for some minutes, then finally approaching him, he said: “Say, mister, you better stand back; you’re warping!”
Chief Justice Matthews, while presiding over the Supreme Court at Washington, took the several Justices of the Court for a run down Chesapeake Bay. A stiff wind sprang up, and Justice Gray was getting decidedly the worst of it. As he leaned over the rail in great distress, Chief Justice Matthews touched him on the shoulder and said in a tone of deepest sympathy: “Is there anything I can do for you, Gray?”
“No, thank you,” returned the sick Justice, “unless your Honor can overrule this motion.”
A young North Carolina girl is charming, but, like a great many other charming people, she is poor. She never has more than two evening gowns in a season, and the ruin of one of them is always a very serious matter to her. She went to a little dancing-party last week and she wore a brand-new white frock. During the evening a great big, red-faced, perspiring man came up and asked her to dance. He wore no gloves. She looked at his well-meaning but moist hands despairingly, and thought of the immaculate back of her waist. She hesitated a bit, and then she said, with a winning smile;
“Of course I’ll dance with you, but, if you don’t mind, won’t you please use your handkerchief?”
The man looked at her blankly a moment or two. Then a light broke over his face.
“Why, certainly,” he said.
And he pulled out his handkerchief and blew his nose.
A man saw a waiter in a restaurant spill a tureen of tomato soup over a young lady’s white gown.
The young lady, instead of flying into a passion, smiled. She said it didn’t matter. She continued to eat and to talk as though nothing had happened.
This so impressed the man that he got an introduction to the young lady, proposed to her at the end of a month or so, and was accepted.
Some time after the marriage he spoke of the tomato-soup accident.
“I shall never forget it,” said the bride.
“Your conduct,” said the man, “was admirable.”
“I remember,” she said, “that I did behave very well at the time; but I wish you could have seen the marks of my teeth on the bedpost that night.”
A mother with her seven children started away on a journey. After entering the car the largest child was laid out flat on the seat, and the remaining six then sat upon him in a row.
When the conductor came around to collect the fares the mother counted her money, handed it over, smiled, and suavely said: “Sir, the oldest is under six.”
An epileptic dropped in a fit on the streets of Boston not long ago, and was taken to a hospital. Upon removing his coat there was found pinned to his waistcoat a slip of paper on which was written:
“This is to inform the house-surgeon that this is just a case of plain fit: not appendicitis. My appendix has already been removed twice.”
A dangerous operation was being performed upon a woman. Old Doctor A———, a quaint German, full of kindly wit and professional enthusiasm, had several younger doctors with him. One of them was administering the ether. He became so interested in the old doctor’s work that he withdrew the cone from the patient’s nostrils and she half-roused and rose to a sitting posture, looking with wild-eyed amazement over the surroundings. It was a critical period, and Doctor A——— did not want to be interrupted. “Lay down, dere, voman,” he commanded gruffly. “You haf more curiosity as a medical student.”
A little girl, brushing her hair, found that it “crackled,” and asked her mother why it did.
“Why, dear, you have electricity in your hair,” explained the mother.
“Isn’t that funny?” commented the little one. “I have electricity in my hair, and Grandmother has gas in her stomach.”
“Here,” said the salesman, “is something we call the ‘lovers’ clock.’ You can set it so it will take it two hours to run one hour.”
“I’ll take that,” said Miss Jarmer with a bright blush. “And now, if you have one that can be set so as to run two hours in one hour’s time or less, I think I’d like one of that kind, too.”
A milliner endeavored to sell to a colored woman one of the last season’s hats at a very moderate price. It was a big white picture-hat.
“Law, no, honey!” exclaimed the woman. “I could nevah wear that. I’d look jes’ like a blueberry in a pan of milk.”
A frivolous young English girl, with no love for the Stars and Stripes, once exclaimed at a celebration where the American flag was very much in evidence:
“Oh, what a silly-looking thing the American flag is! It suggests nothing but checker-berry candy.”
“Yes,” replied a bystander, “the kind of candy that has made everybody sick who ever tried to lick it.”
At a tea the other day, says “The New York Sun,” a woman heard the following remarks made about her favorite author. She turned to listen, amazed by the eccentricities of conduct narrated.
“Yes, you know,” the hostess was saying, “Kipling came in and behaved so strangely! At luncheon he suddenly sprang up and wouldn’t let the waitress come near the table. Every time that she tried to come near he would jump at her.
“He made a dive for the cake, which was on the lower shelf of the sideboard, and took it into the parlor to eat it. He got the crumbs all over the sofa and the beautiful rug.
“When he had finished his cake he simply sat and glared at us.”
The visitor finally could not control herself, and asked:
“Excuse me, but are you speaking of Mr. Rudyard Kipling?”
“Mr. Rudyard Kipling?” echoed the hostess. “Oh, no; Kipling is our dog!”
The kindly ’Squire of the neighborhood was just leaving from a friendly social visit to Mrs. Maguire.
“And your son, Mrs. Maguire?” said the ’Squire as he reached for his hat. “I hope he is well. Busy, I suppose, getting ready for his wedding tonight?”
“Well, not very busy this minit, ’Squire,” answered the beaming mother. “He’s upstairs in bed while I’m washing out his trousseau.”
“Going to send your boy on an ocean trip, are you?” said a friend to a father.
“Yes,” replied the father. “You see, if there is anything in him I think a long sea voyage will bring it out.”
The Judge was at dinner in the new household when the young wife asked: “Did you ever try any of my biscuits, Judge?”
“No,” said the Judge, “I never did, but I dare say they deserve it.”
An old married man happened to meet a beaming bridegroom on the latter’s first day at business after the wedding trip.
“Hello!” said he; “finished your honeymoon yet?”
“I don’t know,” replied the happy husband, smiling. “I have never been able to determine the exact meaning of the word honeymoon.”
“Well, then, has your wife commenced to do the cooking yet?”
No one is said to be without a mole or two, and these are some of the prognostications that mole-wearers may draw from their brown ornaments;
A mole on the right side of a man’s forehead denotes wonderful luck; on the right side of a woman’s forehead, gifts from the dead.
On the left side of a man’s forehead a mole denotes a long term in prison, on the left side of a woman’s forehead, two husbands and a life of exile.
A man with a mole in the middle of his forehead has a cruel mind; a woman with such a mole is foolish and envious.
A mole on the neck in man or woman promises a long and happy life, wealth and fame.
A man with a mole on the left side of the upper lip rarely marries, and such a mole in the case of a woman denotes suffering.
On the right side of the upper-lip a mole promises great good fortune to both sexes.
A little Scotch boy’s grandmother was packing his luncheon for him to take to school one morning. Suddenly looking up in the old lady’s face, he said:
“Grandmother, does yer specs magnify?”
“A little, my child,” she answered.
“Aweel, then,” said the boy, “I wad juist like it if ye wad tak’ them aff when ye’re packin’ my loonch.”
After dinner, when the ladies had gone upstairs, the men, over their coffee and cigars, talked, as men will, of love.
All of a sudden the host cried in a loud voice:
“I will tell you, gentlemen, this is the truth: I have kissed the dainty Japanese girl. I have kissed the South Sea Island maiden. I have kissed the slim Indian beauty. And the girls of England, of Germany, even of America, I have kissed, but it is most true that to kiss my wife is best of all.”
Then a young man cried across the table:
“By Heaven, sir, you are right there!”
Vincent was altogether too garrulous in school to please his teachers. Such punishments as the institution allowed to be meted out were tried without any apparent effect upon the boy until at last the head Master decided to mention the lad’s fault upon his monthly report.
So the next report to his father had these words: “Vincent talks a great deal.”
Back came the report by mail duly signed, but with this written in red ink under the comment: “You ought to hear his mother.”
In one of the lesser Indian hill wars an English detachment took an Afghan prisoner. The Afghan was very dirty. Accordingly two privates were deputed to strip and wash him.
The privates dragged the man to a stream of running water, undressed him, plunged him in, and set upon him lustily with stiff brushes and large cakes of white soap.
After a long time one of the privates came back to make a report. He saluted his officer and said disconsolately:
“It’s no use, sir. It’s no use.”
“No use?” said the officer. “What do you mean? Haven’t you washed that Afghan yet?”
“It’s no use, sir,” the private repeated. “We’ve washed him for two hours, but it’s no use.”
“How do you mean it’s no use?” said the officer angrily.
“Why, sir,” said the private, “after rubbin’ him and scrubbin’ him till our arms ached I’ll be hanged if we didn’t come to another suit of clothes.”
The hero of the play, after putting up a stiff fight with the villain, had died to slow music, says a storyteller in “The Chicago Tribune.”
The audience insisted on his coming before the curtain.
He refused to appear.
But the audience still insisted.
Then the manager, a gentleman with a strong accent, came to the front.
“Ladies an’ gintlemen,” he said, “the carpse thanks ye kindly, but he says he’s dead, an’ he’s goin’ to stay dead.”
A little boy bustled into a grocery one day with a memorandum in his hand.
“Hello, Mr. Smith,” he said. “I want thirteen pounds of coffee at 32 cents.”
“Very good,” said the grocer, and he noted down the sale, and put his clerk to packing the coffee. “Anything else, Charlie?”
“Yes. Twenty-seven pounds of sugar at 9 cents.”
“The loaf, eh? And what else?”
“Seven and a half pounds of bacon at 20 cents.”
“That will be a good brand. Go on.”
“Five pounds of tea at 90 cents; eleven and a half quarts of molasses at 8 cents a pint; two eight-pound hams at 21¼ cents, and five dozen jars of pickled walnuts at 24 cents a jar.”
The grocer made out the bill,
“It’s a big order,” he said. “Did your mother tell you to pay for it?”
“My mother,” said the boy, as he pocketed the neat and accurate bill, “has nothing to do with this business. It is my arithmetic lesson and I had to get it done somehow.”
Chatting in leisurely fashion with Prince Bismarck in Berlin Lord Russell asked the Chancellor how he managed to rid himself of importunate visitors whom he could not refuse to see, but who stuck like burrs when once admitted.
“Oh,” replied Bismarck, “I have my easy escape. My wife knows people of this class very well, and when she is sure there is a bore here and sees them staying too long she manages to call me away on some plausible pretext.”
Scarcely had he finished speaking when the Princess Bismarck appeared at the door. “My dear,” she said to her husband, “you must come at once and take your medicine; you should have taken it an hour ago.”
A quiet and retiring citizen occupied a seat near the door of a crowded car when a masterful stout woman entered.
Having no newspaper behind which to hide he was fixed and subjugated by her glittering eye. He rose and offered his place to her. Seating herself—without thanking him—she exclaimed in tones that reached to the farthest end of the car:
“What do you want to stand up there for? Come here and sit on my lap.”
“Madam,” gasped the man, as his face became scarlet. “I beg your pardon, I—I——”
“What do you mean?” shrieked the woman. “You know very well I was speaking to my niece there behind you.”
“It ain’t ev’rybody I’d put to sleep in this room,” said old Mrs. Jinks to the fastidious and extremely nervous young minister who was spending a night at her house.
“This here room is full of sacred associations to me,” she went on, as she bustled around opening shutters and arranging the curtains. “My first husband died in that bed with his head on these very pillers, and poor Mr. Jinks died settin’ right in that corner. Sometimes when I come into the room in the dark I think I see him settin’ there still.
“My own father died layin’ right on that lounge under the winder. Poor Pa! He was a Speeritualist, and he allus said he’d appear in this room after he died, and sometimes I’m foolish enough to look for him. If you should see anything of him tonight you’d better not tell me; for it’d be a sign to me that there was something in Speeritualism, and I’d hate to think that.
“My son by my first man fell dead of heart-disease right where you stand. He was a doctor, and there’s two whole skeletons in that closet that belonged to him, and half a dozen skulls in that lower drawer.
“There, I guess things’ll do now——
“Well, good-night, and pleasant dreams.”
The car was full and the night was wet. The bell rang, the car stopped, and a lady entered. As she looked tired a nice old gentleman in the corner rose and inquired in a kind voice, “Would you like to sit down, ma’am? Excuse me, though,” he added; “I think you are Mrs. Sprouter, the advocate of woman’s rights.”
“I am, sir,” replied the lady calmly.
“You think that women should be equal to men?” further queried the old gentleman.
“Certainly,” was the firm reply.
“You think that they should have the same rights and privileges?” was the next question.
“Most emphatically,” came from the supporter of woman’s rights.
“Very well,” said the kind old gentleman, sitting down again, “just stand up and enjoy them.”
I asked my Pa a simple thing;“Where holes in doughnuts go?”Pa read his paper, then he said:“Oh, you’re too young to know.”I asked my Ma about the wind:“Why can’t you see it blow?”Ma thought a moment, then she said:“Oh, you’re too young to know.”Now, why on earth do you supposeThey went and licked me so?Ma asked: “Where is that jam?” I said:“Oh, you’re too young to know.”
Mrs. Hicks was telling some ladies about the burglar scare in her house the night before.
“Yes,” she said, “I heard a noise and got up, and there from under the bed I saw a man’s legs sticking out.”
“Mercy,” exclaimed a woman—“the burglar’s legs?”
“No, my dear, my husband’s legs. He had heard the noise, too.”
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 after, 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.”
President Eliot, of Harvard, on a visit to the Pacific Coast, met Professor O. B. Johnson, of the University of Washington, says “The New York Tribune.” In the course of the conversation President Eliot asked the Westerner what chair he held.
“Well,” said Professor Johnson, “I am professor of biology, but I also give instruction in meteorology, botany, physiology, chemistry, entomology and a few others.”
“I should say that you occupied a whole settee, not a chair,” replied Harvard’s chief.
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 other feller 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’.”
An early morning customer in an optician’s shop was a young woman with a determined air. She addressed the first salesman she saw. “I want to look at a pair of eyeglasses, sir, of extra magnifying power.”
“Yes, ma’am,” replied the salesman; “something very strong?”
“Yes, sir. While visiting in the country I made a very painful blunder which I never want to repeat.”
“Indeed! Mistook a stranger for an acquaintance?”
“No, not exactly that; I mistook a bumblebee for a blackberry.”
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.”
A busy merchant was about to leave his home in Brixton for a trip on the Continent, and his wife, knowing his aversion to letter-writing, reminded him gently of the fact that she and the children would be lonely in his absence and anxious as to his welfare from day to day. Kissing him affectionately, she said:
“Now, John, you must be eyes and ears for us at home and drop us an occasional post-card telling us anything of interest. Don’t forget, will you, dear?”
The husband promised. The next morning his wife received a postal-card: “Dear wife, I reached Dover all right. Yours aff.”
Though somewhat disappointed she thought her husband must have been pressed for time. Two days later, however, another card arrived, with the startling announcement: “Here I am in Paris. Yours ever.” And still later: “I am indeed in Paris. Yours.”
Then the wife decided to have a little fun and seized her pen and wrote: “Dear husband, the children and I are at Brixton. Yours.”
A few days later she wrote again: “We are still in Brixton.”
In her last communication she grew more enthusiastic: “Dear husband, here we are in Brixton. I repeat it, sir, we are in Brixton. P.S.—We are, indeed.”
In due time her husband reached home, fearing that his poor wife had temporarily lost her senses, and hastened to ask the meaning of her strange messages. With a winning smile she handed him his own three postal-cards.
“Life” has the latest and best of those jokes aimed at this magazine, which seem so popular.
This time it is of a mighty hunter who has just killed, by a single shot, a tiger of incredible immensity.
After the great feat a friend standing by says to the man of brawn:
“Mighty steady nerves you must have. That beast was right on you! How do you explain it?”
“Easy enough,” says the mighty hunter. “I bathe three times a day, never touch meat, fruit, cereals, stimulants or tobacco, drink five gallons of water after every meal, and read nothing but THELADIES’ HOMEJOURNAL.”
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.”
Here is a young physician who has never been able to smoke a cigar. “Just one poisons me,” says the youthful doctor.
Recently the doctor was invited to a large dinner-party. When the women had left the table cigars were accepted by all the men except the physician. Seeing his friend refuse the cigar the host in astonishment exclaimed:
“What, not smoking? Why, my dear fellow, you lose half your dinner!”
“Yes, I know I do,” meekly replied the doctor, “but if I smoked one I should lose the whole of it!”
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.
A young man asked a country ’squire what the letters “R. S. V. P.” meant at the foot of an invitation. The ’squire, with a little chuckle, answered:
“They mean, ‘Rush in, Shake hands, Victual up, and Put.’”
In a certain home where the stork recently visited there is a six-year-old son of inquiring mind. When he was first taken in to see the new arrival he exclaimed:
“Oh, mamma, it hasn’t any teeth! And no hair!” Then, clasping his hands in despair, he cried: “Somebody has done us! It’s an old baby.”
“It’s not so much a durable article that I require, sir,” said Miss Simpkins. “I want something dainty, you know; something coy, and at the same time just a wee bit saucy—that might look well for evening wear.”
A Methodist negro exhorter shouted: “Come up en jine de army ob de Lohd.”
“Ise done jined,” replied one of the congregation.
“Whar’d yoh jine?” asked the exhorter.
“In de Baptis’ Chu’ch.”
“Why, chile,” said the exhorter, “yoh ain’t in the army; yoh’s in de navy.”
A talented young professor who was dining one evening at the home of a college president became very much interested in the very pretty girl seated at his left. Conversation was somewhat fitful. Finally he decided to guide it into literary channels, where he was more at home, and, turning to his companion, asked;
“Are you fond of literature?”
“Passionately,” she replied. “I love books dearly.”
“Then you must admire Sir Walter Scott,” he exclaimed with sudden animation. “Is not his ‘Lady of the Lake’ exquisite in its flowing grace and poetic imagery? Is it not——”
“It is perfectly lovely,” she assented, clasping her hands in ecstasy. “I suppose I have read it a dozen times.”
“And Scott’s ‘Marmion’” he continued, “with its rugged simplicity and marvelous description—one can almost smell the heather on the heath while perusing its splendid pages.”
“It is perfectly grand,” she murmured.
“And Scott’s ‘Peveril of the Peak’ and his noble ‘Bride of Lammermoor’—where in the English language will you find anything more heroic than his grand auld Scottish characters and his graphic, forceful pictures of feudal times and customs? You like them, I am sure.”
“I just dote upon them,” she replied.
“And Scott’s Emulsion,” he continued hastily, for a faint suspicion was beginning to dawn upon him.
“I think,” she interrupted rashly, “that it’s the best thing he ever wrote.”
“I’m glad Billy had the sense to marry a settled old maid,” said Grandma Winkum at the wedding.
“Why, Grandma?” asked the son.
“Well, gals is hity-tity, and widders is kinder overrulin’ and upsettin’. But old maids is thankful and willin’ to please.”
A woman riding in a Philadelphia trolley-car said to the conductor:
“Can you tell me, please, on what trolley-cars I can use these exchange slips? They mix me up somewhat.”
“They really shouldn’t, madam,” said the polite conductor. “It is very simple: East of the junction by a westbound car an exchange from an eastbound car is good only if the westbound car is west of the junction formed by said eastbound car. South of the junction formed by a northbound car an exchange from a southbound car is good south of the junction if the northbound car was north of the junction at the time of issue, but only south of the junction going south if the southbound car was going north at the time it was south of the junction. That is all there is to it.”
A New York firm recently hung the following sign at the entrance of a large building: “Wanted: Sixty girls to sew buttons on the sixth floor.”
When the President alighted at Red Hill, Virginia, a few months ago, to see his wife’s new cottage, he noticed that an elderly woman was about to board the train, and, with his usual courtesy, he rushed forward to assist her. That done, he grasped her hand and gave it an “executive shake.” This was going too far, and the woman, snatching her hand away and eying him wrathfully, exclaimed: “Young man, I don’t know who you are, and I don’t care a cent; but I must say you are the freshest somebody I’ve ever seen in these parts.”
The lesson was from the “Prodigal Son,” and the Sunday-school teacher was dwelling on the character of the elder brother. “But amidst all the rejoicing,” he said, “there was one to whom the preparation of the feast brought no joy, to whom the prodigal’s return gave no pleasure, but only bitterness; one who did not approve of the feast being held, and had no wish to attend it. Now can any of you tell who this was?” There was a short silence, followed by a vigorous cracking of thumbs, and then from a dozen little mouths came the chorus: “Please, sir, it was the fatted calf.”
The teacher was taking 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.
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 him in a very grave, stern way what his intentions were.
He turned very red, and was about to stammer some incoherent reply, when suddenly the young lady called down from the head of the stairs:
“Mamma, mamma, that is not the one.”
“You know,” said a “smart” young man to a girl, “some one has said that ‘if you would make a lasting pair of boots take for the sole the tongue of a woman.’”
“Yes,” replied the girl, “and for the uppers you ought to take the cheek of the man who said it.”
A bashful young couple, who were evidently very much in love, entered a crowded street car.
“Do you suppose we can squeeze in here?” he asked, looking doubtfully at her blushing face.
“Don’t you think, dear, we had better wait until we get home?” was the low, embarrassed reply.
There is a man who is the head of a large family, nearly every member of which is a performer on some kind of musical instrument.
A friend who was visiting the house of this man referred to the fact, remarking that it must be a source of great pleasure to the family, but to this observation the father made no reply.
“Really,” continued the friend, “it is remarkable. Your younger son is a cornetist, both your daughters are pianists, your wife is a violinist, and, I understand, the others are also musicians. Now what are you, the father of such a musical combination?”
“I,” replied the old man sadly—“I am a pessimist.”
An American doctor built an elegant home, says the “San Francisco Chronicle”; his bathroom was exceptionally beautiful, being of white marble with silver hardware; a music-box was concealed in the room. After completion of the home an Englishman came to visit the doctor. Now the English always show great respect for their sovereign and their country, and this one was no exception.
After showing his home to the Englishman the doctor remembered the fondness English people have for the bath, and escorted his guest to the bathroom, and while there turned on the music-box, wishing to give his guest a pleasant surprise as he bathed. Then he left his friend in the bathroom.
About an hour later the Englishman joined his host in the drawing-room. The doctor immediately asked what his guest thought of the bathroom. The Englishman replied: “It is beautiful, beautiful.”
“Well,” said the doctor, “how did you like my music-box?”
Said his guest with great disgust in his tones:
“Bah! That music-box! The old thing played ‘God Save the King,’ and I had to stand up the whole time I was trying to bathe.”
“Darling,” said the bride, “I had a terrible feeling of sadness come over me this afternoon—a sort of feeling that you were doing something that would break my heart if I knew of it. Think, sweet, what were you doing, now, this afternoon at four o’clock?”
“Dearest,” replied the husband tenderly and reassuringly, “at that hour I was licking stamps and pasting them on envelopes.”
An Irishman, upon arriving in America, was asked his name at Ellis Island. He gave it.
“Speak louder,” said the officer.
He repeated it.
“Louder,” again said the officer; “why, man, your voice is as soft as a woman’s!”
“Well,” said Pat, “that might be. Me mother was a woman.”
A merry party being gathered in a city flat made such a racket that the occupant of a neighboring apartment sent his servant down with a polite message asking if it would be possible for the party to make less noise, since, as the servant announced, “Mr. Smith says that he cannot read.”
“I am very sorry for Mr. Smith,” replied the host. “Please present my compliments to your master, say that I am sorry he cannot read, and tell him I could when I was four years old!”
A prominent man called to condole with a lady on the death of her husband, and concluded by saying, “Did he leave you much?”
“Nearly every night,” was the reply.
The salesman in a large department store wore a troubled look. “You must be severely tried,” said a man standing by. “There are all sorts and conditions of people in the world,”
“Yes, there are,” said the salesman, “and they’re all here, too!”
A young man engaged board and lodging in a private family who were extremely devout. Before each meal a long grace was said. To their dismay and horror the new boarder sat bolt upright while the others at table reverently bowed their heads. When the second day passed and the young man evinced no disposition to unbend, the good lady of the house could endure the situation no longer.
“Atheism?” asked she sharply.
“No, madam,” humbly responded the new boarder; “boil.”
As the railroad train was stopping an old lady, not accustomed to traveling, hailed the passing conductor and asked:
“Conductor, what door shall I get out by?”
“Either door, ma’am,” graciously answered the conductor. “The car stops at both ends.”
“Good-morning, Mrs. Stubbins,” said the parson; “is your husband at home?”
“’E’s ’ome, sir, but ’e’s abed,” replied Mrs. Stubbins, who had just finished hanging a pair of recently-patched trousers on the clothesline.
“How is it he didn’t come to church on Sunday? You know we must have our hearts in the right place.”
“Lor’, sir,” retorted the faithful wife, “’is ’eart’s all right. It’s ’is trouziz!”
President Lincoln once wrote to General McClellan, when the latter was in command of the army. General McClellan, as is well known, conducted a waiting campaign, being so careful not to make any mistakes that he made very little headway. President Lincoln sent this brief but exceedingly pertinent letter:
“My Dear McClellan:If you don’t want to use the army I should like to borrow it for a while.”
“Yours respectfully,A. LINCOLN.”
A group of drummers were trading yarns on the subject of hospitality, says “Lippincott’s Magazine,” when one of them took up his parable thus:
“I was down in Louisiana last month travelin’ cross country when we kinder got lost in a lonesome sort of road just about dark, and when we saw a light ahead I tell you it looked first rate. We drove up to the light, findin’ ’twas a house, and when I hollered the man came out and we asked him to take us in for the night. He looked at us mighty hard, then said, ‘Wall, I reckon I kin stand it if you kin.’
“So we unhitched, went in, and found ’twas only a two-room shanty and just swarmin’ with children. He had six from four to ’leven years old, and as there didn’t seem to be but one bed, me an’ Stony was wonderin’ what in thunder would become of us.
“They gave us supper, and then the old woman put the two youngest kids to bed. They went straight to sleep. Then she took those out, laid them over in the corner, put the next two to bed, and so on. After all the children were asleep on the floor the old folks went in the other room and told us we could go to bed if we wanted to, and, bein’ powerful tired out, we did.
“Well, sir, the next morning when we woke up we was lying over in the corner with the kids, and the old man and the old woman had the bed!”
A country minister who lived quite a distance from his church was overtaken on the way over one Sunday morning by a heavy shower. The rain poured in torrents, and by the time he arrived at the church he was almost drenched. Shaking the water from his hat and coat he remarked:
“Really, friends, I am almost too wet to preach.”
“Oh, never mind,” replied one of his congregation; “you’ll be dry enough in the pulpit!”
She was a winsome country lass,So William on a brief vacation,The time more pleasantly to pass,Essayed flirtation.And while they strolled in twilight dim,As near the time for parting drew,Asked if she would have from himA “billet-doux.”Now this simple maid of French knew naught,But doubting not ’twas something nice,Shyly she lifted her pretty head,Her rosy lips together drew, and coyly said,“Yes, Billy—do,”And William—did.
A short time ago two Englishmen on a visit to Ireland hired a boat for the purpose of having a sail.
One of the Britons, thinking he would have a good joke at Pat’s expense, asked him if he knew anything about astrology.
“Be jabers, no,” said Pat.
“Then that’s the best part of your life just lost,” answered the Englishman.
The second Englishman then asked Pat if he knew anything about theology.
“Be jabers, no,” answered Pat.
“Well,” the second said, “I must say that’s the very best part of your life lost.”
A few minutes later a sudden squall arose and the boat capsized. Pat began to swim. The Britons, however, could not swim, and both called loudly to Pat to help them.
“Do you know anything about swimology?” asked Pat.
“No,” answered both Englishmen.
“Well, be jabers,” replied Pat, “then both of your lives is lost!”
A farmer who went to a large city to see the sights engaged a room at a hotel, and before retiring asked the clerk about the hours for dining.
“We have breakfast from six to eleven, dinner from eleven to three, and supper from three to eight,” explained the clerk.
“Wa-al, say,” inquired the farmer in surprise, “what time air I goin’ ter git ter see the town?”
A little girl was sent by her mother to the grocery store with a jug for a quart of vinegar.
“But, mamma,” said the little one, “I can’t say that word.”
“But you must try,” said the mother, “for I must have vinegar and there’s no one else to send.”
So the little girl went with the jug, and as she reached the counter of the store she pulled the cork out of the jug with a pop, swung the jug on the counter with a thud, and said to the astonished clerk:
“There! Smell of that and give me a quart!”
Asked what made him look so ill, an Irishman replied, “Faith, I had the grip last winter.” To draw him out the questioner asked, “What is the grip, Patrick?”
“The grip!” he says. “Don’t you know what the grip is? It’s a disease that makes you sick six months after you get well!”