The officers' mess was discussing rifle shooting.
"I'll bet anyone here," said one young lieutenant, "that I can fire twenty shots at two hundred yards and call each shot correctly without waiting for the marker. I'll stake a box of cigars that I can."
"Done!" cried a major.
The whole mess was on hand early next morning to see the experiment tried.
The lieutenant fired.
"Miss," he calmly announced.
A second shot.
"Miss," he repeated.
A third shot.
"Miss."
"Here, there! Hold on!" protested the major. "What are you trying to do? You're not shooting for the target at all."
"Of course not," admitted the lieutenant. "I'm firing for those cigars." And he got them.
Two old cronies went into a drug store in the downtown part of New York City, and, addressing the proprietor by his first name, one of them said:
"Dr. Charley, we have made a bet of the ice-cream sodas. We will have them now and when the bet is decided the loser will drop in and pay for them."
As the two old fellows were departing after enjoying their temperance beverage, the druggist asked them what the wager was.
"Well," said one of them, "our friend George bets that when the tower of the Singer Building falls, it will topple over toward the North River, and I bet that it won't."
"Miss Jane, did Moses have the same after-dinner complaint my papa's got?" asked Percy of his governess.
"Gracious me, Percy! Whatever do you mean, my dear?"
"Well, it says here that the Lord gave Moses two tablets."
"Mr. Preacher," said a white man to a colored minister who was addressing his congregation, "you are talking about Cain, and you say he got married in the land of Nod, after he killed Abel. But the Bible mentions only Adam and Eve as being on earth at that time. Who, then, did Cain marry?"
The colored preacher snorted with unfeigned contempt. "Huh!" he said, "you hear dat, brederen an' sisters? You hear dat fool question I am axed? Cain, he went to de land o' Nod just as de Good Book tells us, an' in de land o' Nod Cain gits so lazy an' so shif'less dat he up an' marries a gal o' one o' dem no' count pore white trash families dat de inspired apostle didn't consider fittin' to mention in de Holy Word."
There once was an old man of Lyme.Who married three wives at a time:When asked, "Why a third?"He replied, "One's absurd!And bigamy, sir, is a crime."
There once was an old man of Lyme.Who married three wives at a time:When asked, "Why a third?"He replied, "One's absurd!And bigamy, sir, is a crime."
There once was an old man of Lyme.
Who married three wives at a time:
When asked, "Why a third?"
He replied, "One's absurd!
And bigamy, sir, is a crime."
The proverb, "Where there's a will there's a way" is now revised to "When there's a bill we're away."
YOUNG DOCTOR—"Why do you always ask your patients what they have for dinner?"
OLD DOCTOR—"It's a most important question, for according to their menus I make out my bills."
Farmer Gray kept summer boarders. One of these, a schoolteacher, hired him to drive her to the various points of interest around the country. He pointed out this one and that, at the same time giving such items of information as he possessed.
The school-teacher, pursing her lips, remarked, "It will not be necessary for you to talk."
When her bill was presented, there was a five-dollar charge marked "Extra."
"What is this?" she asked, pointing to the item.
"That," replied the farmer, "is for sass. I don't often take it, but when I do I charge for it."—E. Egbert.
PATIENT (angrily)—"The size of your bill makes my blood boil."
DOCTOR—"Then that will be $20 more for sterilizing your system."
At the bedside of a patient who was a noted humorist, five doctors were in consultation as to the best means of producing a perspiration.
The sick man overheard the discussion, and, after listening for a few moments, he turned his head toward the group and whispered with a dry chuckle:
"Just send in your bills, gentlemen; that will bring it on at once."
"Thank Heaven, those bills are got rid of," said Bilkins, fervently, as he tore up a bundle of statements of account dated October 1st.
"All paid, eh?" said Mrs. Bilkins.
"Oh, no," said Bilkins. "The duplicates dated November 1st have come in and I don't have to keep these any longer."
When a man has a birthday he takes a day off, but when a woman has a birthday she takes a year off.
Francis Wilson, the comedian, says that many years ago when he was a member of a company playing "She Stoops to Conquer," a man without any money, wishing to see the show, stepped up to the box-office in a small town 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 box-office man, as he hurriedly wrote out an order for a box.
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 black-berry."
The ship doctor of an English liner notified the death watch steward, an Irishman, that a man had died in stateroom 45. The usual instructions to bury the body were given. Some hours later the doctor peeked into the room and found that the body was still there. He called the Irishman's attention to the matter and the latter replied:
"I thought you said room 46. I wint to that room and noticed wan of thim in a bunk. 'Are ye dead?' says I. 'No,' says he, 'but I'm pretty near dead.'
"So I buried him."
Telephone girls sometimes glory in their mistakes if there is a joke in consequence. The story is told by a telephone operator in one of the Boston exchanges about a man who asked her for the number of a local theater.
He got the wrong number and, without asking to whom he was talking, he said, "Can I get a box for two to-night?"
A startled voice answered him at the other end of the line, "We don't have boxes for two."
"Isn't this the —— Theater?" he called crossly.
"Why, no," was the answer, "this is an undertaking shop."
He canceled his order for a "box for two."
A good Samaritan, passing an apartment house in the small hours of the morning, noticed a man leaning limply against the doorway.
"What's the matter?" he asked, "Drunk?"
"Yep."
"Do you live in this house?"
"Yep."
"Do you want me to help you upstairs?"
"Yep."
With much difficulty he half dragged, half carried the drooping figure up the stairway to the second floor.
"What floor do you live on?" he asked. "Is this it?"
"Yep."
Rather than face an irate wife who might, perhaps, take him for a companion more at fault than her spouse, he opened the first door he came to and pushed the limp figure in.
The good Samaritan groped his way downstairs again. As he was passing through the vestibule he was able to make out the dim outlines of another man, apparently in worse condition than the first one.
"What's the matter?" he asked. "Are you drunk, too?"
"Yep," was the feeble reply.
"Do you live in this house, too?"
"Yep."
"Shall I help you upstairs?"
"Yep."
The good Samaritan pushed, pulled, and carried him to the second floor, where this man also said he lived. He opened the same door and pushed him in.
As he reached the front door he discerned the shadow of a third man, evidently worse off than either of the other two. He was about to approach him when the object of his solicitude lurched out into the street and threw himself into the arms of a passing policeman.
"For Heaven's sake, off'cer," he gasped, "protect me from that man. He's done nothin' all night long but carry me upstairs 'n throw me down th' elevator shaf."
There was a young man from the city,Who met what he thought was a kitty;He gave it a pat,And said, "Nice little cat!"And they buried his clothes out of pity.
There was a young man from the city,Who met what he thought was a kitty;He gave it a pat,And said, "Nice little cat!"And they buried his clothes out of pity.
There was a young man from the city,
Who met what he thought was a kitty;
He gave it a pat,
And said, "Nice little cat!"
And they buried his clothes out of pity.
Maybe the man who boasts that he doesn't owe a dollar in the world couldn't if he tried.
"What sort of chap is he?"
"Well, after a beggar has touched him for a dime he'll tell you he 'gave a little dinner to an acquaintance of his.'"—R.R. Kirk.
WILLIE—"All the stores closed on the day my uncle died."
TOMMY—"That's nothing. All the banks closed for three weeks the day after my pa left town."—Puck.
Two men were boasting about their rich kin. Said one:
"My father has a big farm in Connecticut. It is so big that when he goes to the barn on Monday morning to milk the cows he kisses us all good-by, and he doesn't get back till the following Saturday."
"Why does it take him so long?" the other man asked.
"Because the barn is so far away from the house."
"Well, that may be a pretty big farm, but compared to my father's farm in Pennsylvania your father's farm ain't no bigger than a city lot!"
"Why, how big is your father's farm?"
"Well, it's so big that my father sends young married couples out to the barn to milk the cows, and the milk is brought back by their grandchildren."
A certain Congressman had disastrous experience in goldmine speculations. One day a number of colleagues were discussing the subject of his speculation, when one of them said to this Western member:
"Old chap, as an expert, give us a definition of the term, 'bonanza.'"
"A 'bonanza,'" replied the Western man with emphasis, "is a hole in the ground owned by a champion liar!"
Tommy, fourteen years old, arrived home for the holidays, and at his father's request produced his account book, duly kept at school. Among the items "S. P. G." figured largely and frequently. "Darling boy," fondly exclaimed his doting mamma: "see how good he is—always giving to the missionaries." But Tommy's sister knew him better than even his mother did, and took the first opportunity of privately inquiring what those mystic letters stood for. Nor was she surprised ultimately to find that they represented, not the venerable Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, but "Sundries, Probably Grub."
LADY PRESIDENT—"What book has helped you most?"
NEW MEMBER—"My husband's check-book."—Martha Young.
"You may send me up the complete works of Shakespeare, Goethe and Emerson—also something to read."
There are three classes of bookbuyers: Collectors, women and readers.
The owner of a large library solemnly warned a friend against the practice of lending books. To punctuate his advice he showed his friend the well-stocked shelves. "There!" said he. "Every one of those books was lent me."
In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest.—Bulwer-Lytton.
Learning hath gained most by those books by which the Printers have lost.—Fuller.
Books should to one of these four ends conduce,For wisdom, piety, delight, or use.—Sir John Denham.
Books should to one of these four ends conduce,For wisdom, piety, delight, or use.
Books should to one of these four ends conduce,
For wisdom, piety, delight, or use.
—Sir John Denham.
—Sir John Denham.
A darky meeting another coming from the library with a book accosted him as follows:
"What book you done got there, Rastus?"
"'Last Days of Pompeii.'"
"Last days of Pompey? Is Pompey dead? I never heard about it. Now what did Pompey die of?"
"I don't 'xactly know, but it must hab been some kind of 'ruption."
"I don't know what to give Lizzie for a Christmas present," one chorus girl is reported to have said to her mate while discussing the gift to be made to a third.
"Give her a book," suggested the other.
And the first one replied meditatively, "No, she's got a book."—Literary Digest.
A bookseller reports these mistakes of customers in sending orders:
When a customer in a Boston department store asked a clerk for Hichens'sBella Donna, the reply was, "Drug counter, third aisle over."
It was a few days before Christmas in one of New York's large book-stores.
CLERK—"What is it, please?"
CUSTOMER—"I would like Ibsen'sA Doll's House."
CLERK—"To cut out?"
"A book-worm," said papa, "is a person who would rather read than eat, or it is a worm that would rather eat than read."
SeeRepartee; Retaliation.
"What kind of a looking man is that chap Gabbleton you just mentioned? I don't believe I have met him."
"Well, if you see two men off in a corner anywhere and one of them looks bored to death, the other is Gabbleton."—Puck.
A man who was a well known killjoy was described as a great athlete. He could throw a wet blanket two hundred yards in any gathering.
Seealso Conversation; Husbands; Preaching; Public speakers; Reformers.
A well-known but broken-down Detroit newspaper man, who had been a power in his day, approached an old friend the other day in the Pontchartrain Hotel and said:
"What do you think? I have just received the prize insult of my life. A paper down in Muncie, Ind., offered me a job."
"Do you call that an insult?"
"Not the job, but the salary. They offered me twelve dollars a week."
"Well," said the friend, "twelve dollars a week is better than nothing."
"Twelve a week—thunder!" exclaimed the old scribe. "I can borrow more than that right here in Detroit."—Detroit Free Press.
One winter morning Henry Clay, finding himself in need of money, went to the Riggs Bank and asked for the loan of $250 on his personal note. He was told that while his credit was perfectly good, it was the inflexible rule of the bank to require an indorser. The great statesman hunted up Daniel Webster and asked him to indorse the note.
"With pleasure," said Webster. "But I need some money myself. Why not make your note for five hundred, and you and I will split it?"
This they did. And to-day the note is in the Riggs Bank—unpaid.
The insurance agent climbed the steps and rang the bell.
"Whom do you wish to see?" asked the careworn person who came to the door.
"I want to see the boss of the house," replied the insurance agent. "Are you the boss?"
"No," meekly returned the man who came to the door; "I'm only the husband of the boss. Step in, I'll call the boss."
The insurance agent took a seat in the hall, and in a short time a tall dignified woman appeared.
"So you want to see the boss?" repeated the woman. "Well, just step into the kitchen. This way, please. Bridget, this gentleman desires to see you."
"Me th' boss!" exclaimed Bridget, when the insurance agent asked her the question. "Indade Oi'm not! Sure here comes th' boss now."
She pointed to a small boy of ten years who was coming toward the house.
"Tell me," pleaded the insurance agent, when the lad came into the kitchen, "are you the boss of the house?"
"Want to see the boss?" asked the boy. "Well, you just come with me."
Wearily the insurance agent climbed up the stairs. He was ushered into a room on the second floor and guided to the crib of a sleeping baby.
"There!" exclaimed the boy, "that's the real boss of this house."
A tourist from the east, visiting an old prospector in his lonely cabin in the hills, commented: "And yet you seem so cheerful and happy." "Yes," replied the one of the pick and shovel. "I spent a week in Boston once, and no matter what happens to me now, it seems good luck in comparison."
A little Boston girl with exquisitely long golden curls and quite an angelic appearance in general, came in from an afternoon walk with her nurse and said to her mother, "Oh, Mamma, a strange woman on the street said to me, 'My, but ain't you got beautiful hair!'"
The mother smiled, for the compliment was well merited, but she gasped as the child innocently continued her account:
"I said to her, 'I am very glad to have you like my hair, but I am sorry to hear you use the word "ain't"!'"—E. R. Bickford.
NAN—"That young man from Boston is an interesting talker, so far as you can understand what he says; but what a queer dialect he uses."
FAN—"That isn't dialect; it's vocabulary. Can't you tell the difference?"
A Bostonian died, and when he arrived at St. Peter's gate he was asked the usual questions:
"What is your name, and where are you from?"
The answer was, "Mr. So-and-So, from Boston."
"You may come in," said Peter, "but I know you won't like it."
There was a young lady from Boston,A two-horned dilemma was tossed on,As to which was the best,To be rich in the westOr poor and peculiar in Boston.
There was a young lady from Boston,A two-horned dilemma was tossed on,As to which was the best,To be rich in the westOr poor and peculiar in Boston.
There was a young lady from Boston,
A two-horned dilemma was tossed on,
As to which was the best,
To be rich in the west
Or poor and peculiar in Boston.
John L. Sullivan was asked why he had never taken to giving boxing lessons.
"Well, son, I tried it once," replied Mr. Sullivan. "A husky young man took one lesson from me and went home a little the worse for wear. When he came around for his second lesson he said: 'Mr Sullivan, it was my idea to learn enough about boxing from you to be able to lick a certain young gentleman what I've got it in for. But I've changed my mind,' says he. 'If it's all the same to you, Mr. Sullivan, I'll send this young gentleman down here to take the rest of my lessons for me.'"
A certain island in the West Indies is liable to the periodical advent of earthquakes. One year before the season of these terrestrial disturbances, Mr. X., who lived in the danger zone, sent his two sons to the home of a brother in England, to secure them from the impending havoc.
Evidently the quiet of the staid English household was disturbed by the irruption of the two West Indians, for the returning mail steamer carried a message to Mr. X., brief but emphatic:
"Take back your boys; send me the earthquake."
Aunt Eliza came up the walk and said to her small nephew: "Good morning, Willie. Is your mother in?"
"Sure she's in," replied Willie truculently. "D'you s'pose I'd be workin' in the garden on Saturday morning if she wasn't?"
An iron hoop bounded through the area railings of a suburban house and played havoc with the kitchen window. The woman waited, anger in her eyes, for the appearance of the hoop's owner. Presently he came.
"Please, I've broken your window," he said, "and here's Father to mend it."
And, sure enough, he was followed by a stolid-looking workman, who at once started to work, while the small boy took his hoop and ran off.
"That'll be four bits, ma'am," announced the glazier when the window was whole once more.
"Four bits!" gasped the woman. "But your little boy broke it—the little fellow with the hoop, you know. You're his father, aren't you?"
The stolid man shook his head.
"Don't know him from Adam," he said. "He came around to my place and told me his mother wanted her winder fixed. You're his mother, aren't you?"
And the woman shook her head also.—Ray Trum Nathan.
See alsoEgotism; Employers and employees; Office boys.
Pharaoh had just dreamed of the seven full and the seven blasted ears of corn.
"You are going to invent a new kind of breakfast food," interpreted Joseph.—Judge.
One day a teacher was having a first-grade class in physiology. She asked them if they knew that there was a burning fire in the body all of the time. One little girl spoke up and said:
"Yes'm, when it is a cold day I can see the smoke."
Said the bibulous gentleman who had been reading birth and death statistics: "Do you know, James, every time I breathe a man dies?"
"Then," said James, "why don't you chew cloves?"
An after-dinner speaker was called on to speak on "The Antiquity of the Microbe." He arose and said, "Adam had 'em," and then sat down.
A negro servant, on being ordered to announce visitors to a dinner party, was directed to call out in a loud, distinct voice their names. The first to arrive was the Fitzgerald family, numbering eight persons. The negro announced Major Fitzgerald, Miss Fitzgerald, Master Fitzgerald, and so on.
This so annoyed the master that he went to the negro and said, "Don't announce each person like that; say something shorter."
The next to arrive were Mr. and Mrs. Penny and their daughter. The negro solemnly opened the door and called out, "Thrupence!"
Dr. Abernethy, the famous Scotch surgeon, was a man of few words, but he once met his match—in a woman. She called at his office in Edinburgh, one day, with a hand badly inflamed and swollen. The following dialogue, opened by the doctor, took place.
"Burn?"
"Bruise."
"Poultice."
The next day the woman called, and the dialogue was as follows:
"Better?"
"Worse."
"More poultice."
Two days later the woman made another call.
"Better?"
"Well. Fee?"
"Nothing. Most sensible woman I ever saw."
A judge, disgusted with a jury that seemed unable to reach an agreement in a perfectly evident case, rose and said, "I discharge this jury."
One sensitive talesman, indignant at what he considered a rebuke, obstinately faced the judge.
"You can't discharge me," he said in tones of one standing upon his rights.
"And why not?" asked the surprised judge.
"Because," announced the juror, pointing to the lawyer for the defense, "I'm being hired by that man there!"
"My dear," said the young husband as he took the bottle of milk from the dumb-waiter and held it up to the light, "have you noticed that there's never cream on this milk?"
"I spoke to the milkman about it," she replied, "and he explained that the company always fill their bottles so full that there's no room for cream on top."
"Do you think only of me?" murmured the bride. "Tell me that you think only of me."
"It's this way," explained the groom gently. "Now and then I have to think of the furnace, my dear."
"How about the sermon?"
"The minister preached on the sinfulness of cheating at bridge."
"You don't say! Did he mention any names?"
At the Brooklyn Bridge.—"Madam, do you want to go to Brooklyn?"
"No, I have to."—Life.
Some time after the presidential election of 1908, one of Champ Clark's friends noticed that he still wore one of the Bryan watch fobs so popular during the election. On being asked the reason for this, Champ replied: "Oh, that's to keep my watch running."
Pat had gone back home to Ireland and was telling about New York.
"Have they such tall buildings in America as they say, Pat?" asked the parish priest.
"Tall buildings ye ask, sur?" replied Pat. "Faith, sur, the last one I worked on we had to lay on our stomachs to let the moon pass."
A burglar was one night engaged in the pleasing occupation of stowing a good haul of swag in his bag when he was startled by a touch on the shoulder, and, turning his head, he beheld a venerable, mild-eyed clergyman gazing sadly at him.
"Oh, my brother," groaned the reverend gentleman, "wouldst thou rob me? Turn, I beseech thee—turn from thy evil ways. Return those stolen goods and depart in peace, for I am merciful and forgive. Begone!"
And the burglar, only too thankful at not being given into custody of the police, obeyed and slunk swiftly off.
Then the good old man carefully and quietly packed the swag into another bag and walked softly (so as not to disturb the slumber of the inmates) out of the house and away into the silent night.
A Boston lawyer, who brought his wit from his native Dublin, while cross-examining the plaintiff in a divorce trial, brought forth the following:
"You wish to divorce this woman because she drinks?"
"Yes, sir."
"Do you drink yourself?"
"That'smybusiness!" angrily.
Whereupon the unmoved lawyer asked: "Have you any other business?"
At the Boston Immigration Station one blank was recently filled out as follows:
Name—Abraham Cherkowsky.Born—Yes.Business—Rotten.
Name—Abraham Cherkowsky.Born—Yes.Business—Rotten.
Name—Abraham Cherkowsky.
Born—Yes.
Business—Rotten.
It happened in Topeka. Three clothing stores were on the same block. One morning the middle proprietor saw to the right of him a big sign—"Bankrupt Sale," and to the left—"Closing Out at Cost." Twenty minutes later there appeared over his own door, in larger letters, "Main Entrance."
In a section of Washington where there are a number of hotels and cheap restaurants, one enterprising concern has displayed in great illuminated letters, "Open All Night." Next to it was a restaurant bearing with equal prominence the legend:
"We Never Close."
Third in order was a Chinese laundry in a little, low-framed, tumbledown hovel, and upon the front of this building was the sign, in great, scrawling letters:
"Me wakee, too."
A boy looking for something to do saw the sign "Boy Wanted" hanging outside of a store in New York. He picked up the sign and entered the store.
The proprietor met him. "What did you bring that sign in here for?" asked the storekeeper.
"You won't need it any more," said the boy cheerfully. "I'm going to take the job."
A Chinaman found his wife lying dead in a field one morning; a tiger had killed her.
The Chinaman went home, procured some arsenic, and, returning to the field, sprinkled it over the corpse.
The next day the tiger's dead body lay beside the woman's. The Chinaman sold the tiger's skin to a mandarin, and its body to a physician to make fear-cure powders, and with the proceeds he was able to buy a younger wife.
A rather simple-looking lad halted before a blacksmith's shop on his way home from school and eyed the doings of the proprietor with much interest.
The brawny smith, dissatisfied with the boy's curiosity, held a piece of red-hot iron suddenly under the youngster's nose, hoping to make him beat a hasty retreat.
"If you'll give me half a dollar I'll lick it," said the lad.
The smith took from his pocket half a dollar and held it out.
The simple-looking youngster took the coin, licked it, dropped it in his pocket and slowly walked away whistling.
"Do you know where Johnny Locke lives, my little boy?" asked a gentle-voiced old lady.
"He aint home, but if you give me a penny I'll find him for you right off," replied the lad.
"All right, you're a nice little boy. Now where is he?"
"Thanks—I'm him."
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," would seem to be the principle of the Chinese storekeeper whom a traveler tells about. The Chinaman asked $2.50 for five pounds of tea, while he demanded $7.50 for ten pounds of the same brand. His business philosophy was expressed in these words of explanation: "More buy, more rich—more rich, more can pay!"
In a New York street a wagon loaded with lamp globes collided with a truck and many of the globes were smashed. Considerable sympathy was felt for the driver as he gazed ruefully at the shattered fragments. A benevolent-looking old gentleman eyed him compassionately.
"My poor man," he said, "I suppose you will have to make good this loss out of your own pocket?"
"Yep," was the melancholy reply.
"Well, well," said the philanthropic old gentleman, "hold out your hat—here's a quarter for you; and I dare say some of these other people will give you a helping hand too."
The driver held out his hat and several persons hastened to drop coins in it. At last, when the contributions had ceased, he emptied the contents of his hat into his pocket. Then, pointing to the retreating figure of the philanthropist who had started the collection, he observed: "Say, maybe he ain't the wise guy! That's me boss!"