Some months after the elopement, an old friend met the bridegroom, and asked eagerly for details.
"What about her father? Did he catch you?"
"Just that!" quoth the bridegroom grimly. "Incidentally, I may add that the old boy is living with us still."
The darky's clothes were in the last stages of dilapidation, and he wore open work shoes, but his face was radiant, and he whistled merrily as he slouched along the street. A householder called from his porch:
"Sam, I have a job for you, if you want to earn a quarter."
The tattered colored man grinned happily as he shook his head.
"No, suh, thank yoh all de same, boss—I done got a quarter."
In an Irish cemetery stands a handsome monument with an inscription which runs thus:
"This monument is erected to the memory of James O'Flinn, who was accidentally shot by his brother as a mark of affection."
The prisoner, a darky, explained how it came about that he had been arrested for chicken-stealing:
"I didn't hab no trouble wiv de constable ner nobody. It would ab been all right if it hadn't been fer the women's love o' dress. My women folks, dey wasn't satisfied jes' to eat mos' all o' them chickens. Dey had to put de feathers in der hats, an' parade 'em as circumstantial evidence."
* * *
The smug satisfaction of the rustic in his clear perception and shrewd reasoning is illustrated by the dialogue between two farmers meeting on the road.
"Did you hear that old man Jones's house burned down last night?"
"I ain't a mite surprised. I was goin' past there in the evenin', an' when I saw the smoke a-comin' out all round under the eaves, I sez to myself, sez I, 'Where there's smoke there must be fire.' An' so it was!"
* * *
"Shall I leave the hall light burning, ma'am?" the servant asked.
"No," her mistress replied. "I think my husband won't get home until daylight. He kissed me goodbye before he went, and gave me twenty dollars for a new hat."
One of the New York churches is notorious for its exclusiveness. A colored man took a fancy to the church, and promptly told the minister that he wished to join. The clergyman sought to evade the issue by suggesting to the man that he reflect more carefully on the matter, and make it the subject of prayers for guidance. The following day, the darky encountered the minister.
"Ah done prayed, sah," he declared, beaming, "an' de Lawd he done sent me an answer las' night."
"And what was it?" queried the clergyman, somewhat at a loss. "What did the Lord say?"
"Well, sah, He done axed me what chu'ch Ah wanted to jine, an' Ah tole Him it was yourn. An' He says: 'Ho, ho, dat chu'ch!' says he. 'You can't git in dere. Ah know you can't—'cause Ah been tryin' to git in dat chu'ch fer ten years mahself an' Ah couldn't!'"
An Irishman on a scaffolding four stories high heard the noon whistle. But when he would have descended, he found that the ladder had been removed. One of his fellow workmen on the pavement below, to whom he called, explained that the foreman had carried off the ladder for another job.
"But how'll I get down?" Pat demanded.
Mike, on the pavement, suggested jumping as the only means. Pat's lunch was below, he was hungry, and he accepted the suggestion seriously.
"Will yez kitch me?" he demanded.
"Sure, an' I'll do that," Mike agreed.
Pat clapped his arms in imitation of a rooster, and crowed, to bolster up his courage, and leaped. He regained consciousness after a short interval, and feebly sat up on the pavement. He regarded Mike reproachfully.
"For why did yez not kitch me?" he asked, and the pain in bones sounded in his voice.
"Begorry," Mike replied sympathetically, "I was waiting for yez to bounce!"
The woman wrote a reference for her discharged cook as follows:
"Maggie Flynn has been employed by me for a month. She is an excellent cook, but I could not afford to make use of her services longer."
The husband, who was present, afterward expressed his surprise at the final clause.
"But it's true," the wife answered. "The dishes she smashed cost double her wages."
The baby pulled brother's hair until he yelled from the pain of it. The mother soothed the weeping boy:
"Of course, she doesn't know how badly it hurts." Then she left the room.
She hurried back presently on hearing frantic squalling from baby.
"What in the world is the matter with her?" she questioned anxiously.
"Nothin' 'tall," brother replied contentedly. "Only now she knows."
There was a chicken-stealing case before the court. The colored culprit pleaded guilty and was duly sentenced. But the circumstances of the case had provoked the curiosity of the judge, so that he questioned the darky as to how he had managed to take those chickens and carry them off from right under the window of the owner's house, and that with a savage dog loose in the yard. But the thief was not minded to explain. He said:
"Hit wouldn't be of no use, jedge, to try to 'splain dis ting to you-all. Ef you was to try it you more'n like as not would git yer hide full o' shot an' git no chickens, nuther. Ef you want to engage in any rascality, jedge, you better stick to de bench, whar you am familiar."
On her return home after an absence of a few hours, the mother was displeased to find that little Emma, who was ailing, had not taken her pill at the appointed time, although she had been carefully directed to do so.
"You were very naughty, Emma," the mother chided. "I told you to be sure and take that pill."
"But, mamma," the child pleaded in extenuation, "you didn't tell me where to take it to."
A rich and listless lady patron examined the handbags in a leading jeweler's shop in New York City. The clerk exhibited one bag five inches square, made of platinum and with one side almost covered with a setting of diamonds. This was offered at a price of $9,000.
But the lady surveyed the expensive bauble without enthusiasm. She turned it from side to side and over and over, regarding it with a critical eye and frowning disapprovingly. At last she voiced her comment:
"Rather pretty, but I don't like this side without diamonds. Honestly, the thing looks skimpy—decidedly skimpy!"
For $7,000 additional, the objectional skimpiness was corrected.
The burly man spoke lucidly to his gangling adversary:
"You're a nincompoop, a liar and hoss-thief."
The other man protested, with a whine in his voice:
"Sech talk ain't nice—and, anyhow, 'tain't fair twittin' on facts."
After years of endeavor in poverty, the inventor made a success, and came running home with pockets bulging real money. He joyously strewed thousand-dollar bills in his wife's lap, crying:
"Now, at last, my dear, you will be able to buy you some decent clothes."
"I'll do nothing of the kind," was the sharp retort. "I'll get the same kind the other women are wearing."
* * *
At the village store, the young farmer complained bitterly.
"Old Si Durfee wants me to be one of the pall-bearers once more at his wife's funeral. An' it's like this. Si had me fer pall-bearer when his first wife was buried. An' then agin fer his second. An' when Eliza died, she as was his third, he up an' axed me agin. An' now, I snum, it's the fourth time. An' ye know, a feller can't be the hull time a-takin' favors, an' not payin' 'em back."
The boy hurried home to his father with an announcement:
"Me and Joe Peck had a fight to-day."
The father nodded gravely.
"Mr. Peck has already called to see me about it."
The little boy's face brightened.
"Gee, pop! I hope you made out 's well 's I did!"
A very black little girl made her way into the presence of the lady of the house, and with much embarrassment, but very clearly, explained who she was, and what her mission:
"Please, mum, I'se Ophelia. I'se de washerwoman's little girl, an' mama, she sent me to say, would you please to len' her a dime. She got to pay some bills."
* * *
The successful financier snorted contemptuously.
"Money! pooh! there are a million ways of making money."
"But only one honest way," a listener declared.
"What way is that?" the financier demanded.
"Naturally, you wouldn't know," was the answer.
* * *
The eminent financier was discoursing.
"The true secret of success," he said, "is to find out what the people want."
"And the next thing," someone suggested, "is to give it to them."
The financier shook his head contemptuously.
"No—to corner it."
* * *
The eminent banker explained just how he started in business:
"I had nothing to do, and I rented an empty store, and put up a sign, Bank. As soon as I opened for business, a man dropped in, and made a deposit of two hundred dollars. The next day another man dropped in and deposited three hundred dollars. And so, sir, the third day, my confidence in the enterprise reached such a point that I put in fifty dollars of my own money."
"My pa, he's a financier," boasted one small boy to another.
"'Tain't much to brag of," the other sneered. "My pa an' uncle Jack are in jail, too."
The congressman from California was telling at dinner in the hotel of tuna fishing.
"Just run out in a small motor boat," he explained, "and anything less than a hundred pounds is poor sport."
The colored waiter was so excited that he interrupted:
"You say you go after hundred-pound fish in a little motor boat, suh?"
The congressman nodded.
"But," the darky protested, "ain't you scairt fer fear you'll ketch one?"
An eminent statesman was being driven rapidly by his chauffeur, when the car struck and killed a dog that leaped in front of it. At the statesman's order, the chauffeur stopped the car, and the great man got out and hurried back to where a woman was standing by the remains. The dead dog's mistress was deeply grieved, and more deeply angered. As the statesman attempted to address her placatingly, she turned on him wrathfully, and told him just what she thought, which was considerable and by no means agreeable. When, at last, she paused for breath, the culprit tried again to soothe her, saying:
"Madam, I shall be glad to replace your dog."
The woman drew herself up haughtily, surveyed the statesman with supreme scorn, and hissed:
"Sir, you flatter yourself!"
The debutante was alarmed over the prospect of being taken in to dinner by the distinguished statesman.
"Whatever can we talk about?" she demanded anxiously of her mother.
Afterward, in the drawing-room, she came to her mother with a radiant smile.
"He's fine," she exclaimed. "We weren't half way through the soup before we were chatting cozily about the fleas in Italian hotels."
The gentleman at the party, who was old enough to know better, turned to another guest, who had just paused beside him:
"Women are fickle. See that pretty woman by the window? She was smiling at me flirtatiously a few minutes ago and now she looks cold as an iceberg."
"I have only just arrived," the other man said. "She is my wife."
The breakfaster in the cheap restaurant tried to make conversation with the man beside him at the counter.
"Awful rainy spell—like the flood."
"The flood?" The tone was polite, but inquiring.
"The flood—Noah, the Ark, Mount Ararat."
The other bit off half a slice of bread, shook his head, and mumbled thickly:
"Hain't read to-day's paper yit."
Gilbert wrote a couplet concerning—
Such suggestion is all very well in a humorous ballad, but we do not look for anything of the sort in a serious romance of real life. Nevertheless, a Welsh newspaper of recent date carried the following paragraph:
"At —— Church, on Monday last, a very interesting wedding was solemnized, the contracting parties being Mr. Richard ——, eldest son of Mr. and Mrs. ——, and a bouquet of pink carnations."
The old gentleman was lost in a London fog, so thick that he could hardly see his hand before his face. He became seriously alarmed when he found himself in a slimy alley. Then he heard footsteps approaching through the obscurity, and sighed with relief.
"Where am I going to?" he cried anxiously.
A voice replied weirdly from the darkness beyond:
"Into the river—I've just come out!"
A wise old Quaker woman once said that men were guilty of three most astonishing follies. The first was the climbing of trees to shake down the fruit, when if they would but wait, the fruit would fall of itself. The second was the going to war to kill one another, when if they would only wait, they must surely die naturally. The third was that they should run after women, when, if they did not do so, the women would surely run after them.
The Arctic explorer at a reception on his return gave an informal talk concerning his experiences. He explained that a point further north would have been reached, if the dogs had not given out at a critical time.
A lady, who had followed the explorer's remarks carefully, ventured a comment as the speaker paused:
"But I thought those Esquimaux dogs were actually tireless."
The explorer hesitated, and cleared his throat before answering.
"I spoke," he elucidated, "in a—er—culinary sense."
* * *
The young mother asked the man who supplied her with milk if he kept any calves, and smiled pleasedly when he said that he did.
"Then," she continued brightly, "bring me a pint of calf's milk every day. I think cow's milk is too strong for baby."
The highly efficient housewife bragged that she always rose early, and had every bed in the house made before anybody else in the house was up.
The master directed that the picture should be hung on the east wall; the mistress preferred the west wall.
The servant drove the nail where his master directed, but when he was left alone in the room he drove a nail in the other wall.
"That," he said to himself, "will save my lugging the steps up here again to-morrow, when he has come around to agreeing with her."
The foreman of a Southern mill, who was much troubled by the shiftlessness of his colored workers, called sharply to two of the men slouching past him.
"Hi, you! where are you going?"
"Well, suh, boss," one of them answered, "we is goin' to de mill wid dis-heah plank."
"Plank? What plank? Where's the plank?" the foreman demanded.
The colored spokesman looked inquiringly and somewhat surprisedly at his own empty hands and those of his companion, whom he addressed good-naturedly:
"Now, if dat don't beat all, George! If we hain't gone an' clean forgitted dat plank!"
* * *
Two men met on the city street in the evening, and had a number of drinks together. The one who lived in the suburbs became confidential, and exhibited a string tied around a finger.
"I don't dare to go home," he explained. "There's something my wife told me to do, without fail, and to make sure I wouldn't forget, she tied that string around my finger. But for the life of me I can't remember what the thing was I am to do. And I don't dare to go home!"
A few days later the two men met again, this time in the afternoon.
"Well," the one asked, "did you finally remember what that string was to remind you of?"
The other showed great gloom in his expression, as he replied:
"I didn't go home until the next night, just because I was scared, and then my wife told me what the string was for all right—she certainly did!" There was a note of pain in his voice. "The string was to remind me to be sure to come home early."
* * *
The clergyman drew near to the baptismal font, and directed that the candidates for baptism should now be presented. A woman in the congregation gave a gasp of dismay and turned to her husband, whom she addressed in a strenuous whisper:
"There! I just knew we'd forget something. John, you run right home as fast as you can, and fetch the baby."
The traveler wrote an indignant letter to the officials of the railroad company, giving full details as to why he had sat up in the smoking-room all night, instead of sleeping in his berth. He received in reply a letter from the company, which was so courteous and logical that he was greatly soothed. His mood changed for the worse, however, when he happened to glance at his own letter, which had been enclosed through error. On the margin was jotted in pencil:
"Send this guy the bed-bug letter."
* * *
A worker in the steel mills applied direct to Mr. Carnegie for a holiday in which to get married. The magnate inquired interestedly concerning the bride:
"Is she tall or short, slender or plump?"
The prospective bridegroom answered seriously:
"Well, sir, I'm free to say, that if I'd had the rollin' of her, I sure would have given her three or four more passes."
The hired man on a New England farm went on his first trip to the city. He returned wearing a scarf pin set with at least four carats bulk of radiance. The jewelry dazzled the rural belles, and excited the envy of the other young men. His employer bluntly asked if it was a real diamond.
"If it ain't," was the answer, "I was skun out o' half a dollar."
The kindly lady accosted the little boy on the beach, who stood with downcast head, and grinding his toes into the sand and looking very miserable and lonely indeed.
"Haven't you anybody to play with?" she inquired sympathetically.
The boy shook his head forlornly, as he explained:
"I have one friend—but I hate him!"
* * *
The clergyman on his vacation wrote a long letter concerning his traveling experiences to be circulated among the members of the congregation. The letter opened in this form:
"Dear Friends:
"I will not address you as ladies and gentlemen, because I know you so well."
An American tourist in France found that he had a two hours' wait for his train at a junction, and set out to explore the neighborhood. He discovered at last that he was lost, and could not find his way back to the station. He therefore addressed a passer-by in the best French he could recollect from his college days, mispronouncing it with great emphasis. He voiced his request for information as follows:
"Pardonnez-moi. J'ai quitté ma train et maintenant je ne sais pas où le trouver encore. Est-ce que vous pouvez me montrer le route à la train?"
"Let's look for it together," said the stranger genially. "I don't speak French, either."
The traveler in the Blue Ridge Mountains made his toilet as best he could with the aid of the hand basin on its bench by the cabin door and the roller towel. He made use of his own comb and brush, tooth-brush, nail-file and whiskbroom. The small son of the cabin regarded his operations with rounded eyes, and at last broke forth:
"By cricky, mister, I wantta know! Be ye allus thet much trouble to yerself?"
It is quite possible to trap clergymen, as well as laymen, with the following question, because they are not always learned in the Old Testament.
"If David was the father of Solomon, and Joab was the son of Zeruiah, what relation was Zeruiah to Joab?"
Most persons give the answer that Zeruiah was the father of Joab, necessarily. That is not the correct answer. The trouble is that Zeruiah was a woman. And, of course, David and Solomon having nothing whatever to do with the case.
There has been much controversy for years as to the proper definition of the much abused word "gentleman." Finally, by a printer's error in prefixing un to an adverb, an old and rather mushy description of a gentleman has been given a novel twist and a pithy point. A contributor's letter to a metropolitan daily appeared as follows:
"Sir—I can recall no better description of a gentleman than this—
"'A gentleman is one who never gives offense unintentionally.'"
The airman, after many hours of thick weather, had lost his bearings completely. Then it cleared and he was able to make a landing. Naturally, he was anxious to know in what part of the world he had arrived. He put the question to the group of rustics that had promptly assembled. The answer was explicit:
"You've come down in Deacon Peck's north medder lot."
There was a haunted house down South which was carefully avoided by all the superstitious negroes. But a new arrival in the community, named Sam, bragged of his bravery as too superior to be shaken by any ghosts, and declared that, for the small sum of two dollars cash in hand paid, he would pass the night alone in the haunted house. A score of other darkies contributed, and the required amount was raised. It was not, however, to be delivered to the courageous Sam until his reappearance after the vigil. With this understanding the boaster betook himself to the haunted house for the night.
When a select committee sought for Sam next morning, no trace of him was found. Careful search for three days failed to discover the missing negro.
But on the fourth day Sam entered the village street, covered with mud and evidently worn with fatigue.
"Hi, dar, nigger!" one of the bystanders shouted. "Whar you-all been de las' foh days?"
And Sam answered simply:
"Ah's been comin' back."
The little boy was found by his mother with pencil and paper, making a sketch. When asked what he was doing, he answered promptly, and with considerable pride:
"I'm drawing a picture of God."
"But," gasped the shocked mother, "you cannot do that. No one has seen God. No one knows how God looks."
"Well," the little boy replied, complacently, "when I get through they will."
The clergyman was calling, when the youthful son and heir approached his mother proudly, and exhibited a dead rat. As she shrank in repugnance, he attempted to reassure her:
"Oh, it's dead all right, mama. We beat it and beat it and beat it, and it's deader 'n dead."
His eyes fell on the clergyman, and he felt that something more was due to that reverend presence. So he continued in a tone of solemnity:
"Yes, we beat it and beat it until—until God called it home!"
The eminent English Statesman Arbuthnot-Joyce plays golf so badly that he prefers a solitary round with only the caddy present. He had a new boy one day recently, and played as wretchedly as usual.
"I fancy I play the worst game in the world," he confessed to the caddy.
"Oh, I wouldn't say that, sir," was the consoling response. "From what the boys were saying about another gentleman who plays here, he must be worse even than you are."
"What's his name?" asked the statesman hopefully.
And the caddy replied:
"Arbuthnot-Joyce."
The son and heir had just been confirmed. At the dinner table, following the church service, the father called on his son to say grace. The boy was greatly embarrassed by the demand. Moreover, he was tired, not only from the excitement of the special service through which he had passed, but also from walking to and from the church, four miles away, and, too, he was very hungry indeed and impatient to begin the meal. Despite his protest, however, the father insisted.
So, at last, the little man folded his hands with a pious air, closed his eyes tight, bent his head reverently, and spoke his prayer:
"O Lord, have mercy on these victuals. Amen!"
* * *
The new clergyman in the country parish, during his visit to an old lady of his flock, inquired if she accepted the doctrine of Falling from Grace. The good woman nodded vigorously.
"Yes, sir," she declared with pious zeal, "I believe in it, and, praise the Lord! I practise it!"
The passing lady mistakenly supposed that the woman shouting from a window down the street was calling to the little girl minding baby brother close by on the curb.
"Your mother is calling you," she said kindly.
The little girl corrected the lady:
"Her ain't a-callin' we. Us don't belong to she."
* * *
The teacher asked the little girl if she was going to the Maypole dance. "No, I ain't going," was the reply.
The teacher corrected the child:
"You must not say, 'I ain't going,' you must say, 'I am not going.'" And she added to impress the point: "I am not going. He is not going. We are not going. You are not going. They are not going. Now, dear, can you say all that?"
The little girl nodded and smiled brightly.
"Sure!" she replied. "They ain't nobody going."
* * *
The witness, in answer to the lawyer's question, said:
"Them hain't the boots what was stole."
The judge rebuked the witness sternly:
"Speak grammatic, young man—speak grammatic! You shouldn't ought to say, 'them boots what was stole,' you should ought to say, 'them boots as was stealed.'"
The auctioneer, offering the pasture lot for sale, waved his hand enthusiastically, pointed toward the rich expanse of herbage, and shouted:
"Now, then, how much am I offered for this field? Jest look at that grass, gentlemen. That's exactly the sort of grass Nebuchadnezzar would have given two hundred dollars an acre for."
An eminent doctor successfully attended a sick child. A few days later, the grateful mother called on the physician. After expressing her realization of the fact that his services had been of a sort that could not be fully paid for, she continued:
"But I hope you will accept as a token from me this purse which I myself have embroidered."
The physician replied very coldly to the effect that the fees of the physician must be paid in money, not merely in gratitude, and he added:
"Presents maintain friendship: they do not maintain a family."
"What is your fee?" the woman inquired.
"Two hundred dollars," was the answer.
The woman opened the purse, and took from it five $100 bills. She put back three, handed two to the discomfited physician, then took her departure.
At the wake, the bereaved husband displayed all the evidences of frantic grief. He cried aloud heart-rendingly, and tore his hair. The other mourners had to restrain him from leaping into the open coffin.
The next day, a friend who had been at the wake encountered the widower on the street and spoke sympathetically of the great woe displayed by the man.
"Did you go to the cemetery for the burying?" the stricken husband inquired anxiously, and when he was answered in the negative, continued proudly: "It's a pity ye weren't there. Ye ought to have seen the way I cut up."
* * *
The old woman in indigent circumstances was explaining to a visitor, who found her at breakfast, a long category of trials and tribulations.
"And," she concluded, "this very morning, I woke up at four o'clock, and cried and cried till breakfast time, and as soon as I finish my tea I'll begin again, and probably keep it up all day."
It was the bridegroom's third matrimonial undertaking, and the bride's second. When the clergyman on whom they had called for the ceremony entered the parlor, he found the couple comfortably seated. They made no effort to rise, so, as he opened the book to begin the service, he directed them, "Please, stand up."
The bridegroom looked at the bride, and the bride stared back at him, and then both regarded the clergyman, while the man voiced their decision in a tone that was quite polite, but very firm:
"We have ginerally sot."
* * *
It is a matter of common knowledge that there have been troublous times in Ireland before those of the present. In the days of the Land League, an Irish Judge told as true of an experience while he was holding court in one of the turbulent sections. When the jury entered the court-room at the beginning of the session, the bailiff directed them to take their accustomed places.... And every man of them walked forward into the dock.
The school girl from Avenue A, who had just learned that the notorious Gorgon sisters had snakes for hair, chewed her gum thoughtfully as she commented:
"Tough luck to have to get out and grab a mess of snakes any time you want an extry puff."
The rather ferocious-appearing husband who had taken his wife to the beach for a holiday scowled heavily at an amateur photographer, and rumbled in a threatening bass voice:
"What the blazes d'ye mean, photographin' my wife? I saw ye when ye done it."
The man addressed cringed, and replied placatingly:
"You're mistaken, really! I wouldn't think of doing such a thing."
"Ye wouldn't, eh?" the surly husband growled, still more savagely. "And why not? I'd like to know. She's the handsomest woman on the beach."
The colored man was condemned to be hanged, and was awaiting the time set for execution in a Mississippi jail. Since all other efforts had failed him, he addressed a letter to the governor, with a plea for executive clemency. The opening paragraph left no doubt as to his urgent need:
"Dear Boss: The white folks is got me in dis jail fixin' to hang me on Friday mornin' and here it is Wednesday already."
The convicted feudist was working for a pardon. It was reported to him that the opposing clan was pulling wires against him, and spreading false reports concerning him. He thereupon wrote a brief missive to the governor:
"Deer guvner, if youve heared wat ive heared youve heared youve heared a lie."
The clergyman in the following story probably did not mean exactly what he said, though, human nature being what it is, maybe it was true enough.
A parishioner meeting the parson in the street inquired:
"When do you expect to see Deacon Jones again?"
"Never, never again!" the minister declared solemnly. "The deacon is in heaven!"
The farmer found his new hired man very unsatisfactory. A neighbor who chanced along inquired:
"How's that new hand o' your'n?"
"Cuss the critter!" was the bitter reply. "He ain't a hand—he's a sore thumb."
* * *
A savage old boar got into a garden, and was doing much damage. When two men tried to drive it out, the animal charged. One of the two climbed a tree, the other dodged, and laid hold on the boar's tail. He hung on desperately, and man and beast raced wildly round and round the tree. Finally, the man shouted between gasps:
"For heaven's sake, Bill, climb down here, and help me leggo this ornery old hog!"
Many a mayor is a friend to the people—just like his honor in the following story.
A taxpayer entered the office of the water registrar in a small city, and explained himself and his business there as follows:
"My name is O'Rafferty. And my cellar is full of wather, and my hins will all be drowned intirely if it ain't fixed. And I'm here to inform yez that I'm wantin' it fixed."
It was explained to the complainant that the remedy for his need must be sought at the office of the mayor, and he therefore departed to interview that official.
After an interval of a few days, O'Rafferty made a second visit to the office of the registrar.
"Sure, and I've come agin to tell yez that my cellar is now fuller of water than ever it was before. And I'm tellin' yez that I want it fixed, and I'm a man that carries votes in my pocket."
The registrar again explained that he was powerless in the matter, and that the only recourse must be to the mayor.
"The mayor is ut!" O'Rafferty snorted. "Sure and didn't I see the mayor? I did thot! And what did the mayor say to me? Huh! he said, 'Mr. O'Rafferty, why don't you keep ducks?'"
The customer asked for fresh eggs, and the clerk in the London shop said:
"Them are fresh which has a hen on 'em."
"But I don't see any hen."
The clerk explained patiently.
"Not the fowl, mum, but the letter hen. Hen stands for noo-laid."
This is the dialogue between a little girl and a little boy:
"What are you bawling about, Jimmie?"
"I'm cryin' because maw has wented to heaven."
"That's silly. Maybe she hain't."
* * *
Little Alice questioned her mother concerning heaven, and seemed pleased to be assured that she would have wings and harp and crown.
"And candy, too, mamma?"
The mother shook her head.
"Anyhow," Alice declared, "I'm tickled we have such a fine doctor."
The woman, who had a turn-up nose and was somewhat self-conscious concerning it, bought a new pug dog, and petted it so fondly as to excite the jealousy of her little daughter.
"How do you like your new little brother?" she asked the child teasingly.
The girl replied, rather maliciously, perhaps:
"He looks just like his muvver."
Two men were talking together in the Public Library. One of them said:
"The dime novel has gone. I wonder where it's gone to?"
The other, who knew something of literature in its various phases, answered cynically:
"It's gone up to a dollar and ninety cents."
Mike, the hod-carrier, was still somewhat fuddled when he arose Monday morning, with the result that he put on his overalls wrong side to; with the further result, that he was careless while mounting the ladder later with a load of bricks, and fell to the ground. As he raised himself into a sitting position, a fellow workman asked solicitously:
"Are yez kilt intoirly, Mike?"
Mike, with drooping head, stared down dully at the seat of his overalls, and shook his head.
"No," he declared in a tone of awe, "I'm not kilt, but I'm terrible twisted."
* * *
A rustic visitor to the city made a desperate run for the ferry boat as it was leaving the slip. He made a mighty leap, and covered the intervening space, then fell sprawling to the deck, where he lay stunned for about two minutes. At last he sat up feebly, and stared dazedly over the wide expanse of water between boat and shore.
"Holy hop-toads!" he exclaimed in a tone of profound awe. "What a jump!"
A Kansas editor hit on the following gentle device for dunning delinquent subscribers to the paper:
"There i$ a little matter that $ome of our $ub$criber$ have $eemingly forgotten entirely. $ome of them have made u$ many promi$e$, but have not kept them. To u$ it i$ a very important matter—it'$ nece$$ary in our bu$me$$. We are very mode$t and don't like to $peak about $uch remi$$ne$$."
The faculty were arranging the order of examinations. It was agreed that the harder subjects should be placed first in the list. It was proposed that history should have the final place. The woman teacher of that subject protested:
"But it is certainly one of the easiest subjects," the head of the faculty declared.
The young woman shook her head, and spoke firmly:
"Not the way I teach it. Indeed, according to my method, it is a very difficult study, and most perplexing."
* * *
Down in Virginia, near Yorktown, lived an aged negro whose proud boast was that he had been the body servant of George Washington. As he was very old indeed, no one could disprove his claims, and he made the most of his historical pretentions. He was full of anecdotes concerning the Father of His Country, and exploited himself in every tale. His favorite narrative was of the capture of Lord Cornwallis by his master, which was as follows:
"Yassuh, it were right on dis yere road, jest over dar by de fo'ks. Gen'l Washin'ton, he knowed dat ole Co'nwallis, he gwine pass dis way, an' 'im an' me, we done hid behin' de bushes an' watched. Yassuh, an' when ole Co'nwallis, he come by, Gen'l Washin'ton, he jumped out at 'im, an' he grab 'im by de collah, an' he say, 'Yoh blame' ole rascal, dat de time what Ah done gone cotch ye!"
The professor and his wife were doubtful about returning to the farm on which they had passed the previous summer, because they had been somewhat annoyed by the proximity of the pigsty to the house. Finally, the professor wrote to the farmer and explained the objectionable feature. He received the following reply:
"We hain't had no hogs on the place since you was here last summer. Be sure to come."
The farmer, after seven years of effort on the stony farm, announced to all and sundry:
"Anyhow, I'm holdin' my own. I hadn't nothin' when I come here, an' I haven't nothin' now."
The young man had offered his heart and hand to the fair damsel.
"Before giving you my decision," she said sweetly, "I wish to ask you a question." Then, as he nodded assent: "Do you drink anything?"
The young man replied without an instant of hesitation and proudly:
"Anything!"
And she fell into his arms.
One of our volunteers in the late war lost some of his first enthusiasm under the bitter experience of campaigning. One night at the front in France, while his company was stationed in a wood, a lieutenant discovered the recruit sitting on a log and weeping bitterly. The officer spoke roughly:
"Now, what are you bawling about, you big baby?"
"I wish I was in my daddy's barn!" replied the soldier in a plaintive voice.
"In your daddy's barn!" the astonished lieutenant exclaimed. "What for? What would you do if you were in your daddy's barn?"
"If I was in my daddy's barn," the youth explained huskily through a choking sob, "I'd go into the house mighty quick!"
The newly married pair were stopping in a hotel. The bride left the groom in their room while she went out on a brief shopping expedition. She returned in due time, and passed along the hotel corridor to the door, on which she tapped daintily.
"I'm back, honey—let me in," she murmured with wishful tenderness. But there was no answer vouchsafed to her plea. She knocked a little more firmly, and raised her voice somewhat to call again:
"Honey, honey—it's Susie! Let me in!"
Thereupon a very cold masculine voice sounded through the door:
"Madam, this is not a beehive; it's a bathroom!"
A certain man notorious for his slowness paid attention for two years to a young lady, without coming to the point. The girl's father thought it time for him to interfere. On the swain's next visit, the father interviewed him:
"Clinton, you've been settin' up with Nellie, an' takin' her to picnics, an' to church an' buggy-ridin', an' nothin's come of it. So, now, Clinton, I ask you, as man to man, what be your intentions?"
And Clinton responded unabashed:
"Well, answerin' you as man to man, I'll say there hain't no cause for you to ruffle your shirt. My intentions is honorable—but remote."
Little Mary, who had fallen ill, begged for a kitten. It was found that an operation was necessary for the child's cure, and that she must go to the hospital. The mother promised that if she would be very brave during this time of trial she should have the very finest kitten to be found.
As Mary was coming out from the influence of the anesthetic, the nurse heard her muttering, and stooping, heard these words:
"It's a bum way to get a cat."
The good wife apologized to her unexpected guests for serving the apple pie without cheese. The little boy of the family slipped quietly away from the table for a moment, and returned with a cube of cheese, which he laid on the guest's plate. The visitor smiled in recognition of the lad's thoughtfulness, popped the cheese into his mouth, and then remarked:
"You must have sharper eyes than your mother, sonny. Where did you find it?"
The boy replied with a flush of pride:
"In the rat-trap."
Two boys once thought to play a trick on Charles Darwin. They took the body of a centipede, the wings of a butterfly, the legs of a grasshopper and the head of a beetle, and glued these together to form a weird monster. With the composite creature in a box, they visited Darwin.
"Please, sir, will you tell us what sort of a bug this is?" the spokesman asked.
The naturalist gave a short glance at the exhibit and a long glance at the boys.
"Did it hum?" he inquired solemnly.
The boys replied enthusiastically, in one voice:
"Oh, yes, sir."
"Well, then," Darwin declared, "it is a humbug."
The little boy had been warned repeatedly against playing on the lawn when it was damp. Saturday evening, his father heard him recite a Scripture verse learned for the Sunday school.
"'Put off thy shoes from they feet, for the ground whereon thou standest is——'" He halted at a loss.
"Is what, my boy?" asked the father.
"Is damp."
The slow suitor asked:
"Elizabeth, would you like to have a puppy?"
"Oh, Edward," the girl gushed, "how delightfully humble of you. Yes, dearest, I accept."
"That woman never turns away a hungry man."
"Ah, genuinely charitable!"
"Hardly that. She says, 'Are you so hungry you want to saw some wood for a dinner?' And the answer is, 'No.'"
An amateur sportsman spent the day with dog and gun, but brought home no game. A friend twitted him with his failure:
"Didn't you shoot anything at all?"
The honest fellow nodded miserably.
"I shot my dog."
"Why?" his questioner demanded. "Was he mad?"
The sportsman shook his head doubtfully.
"Not exactly mad," he asserted; "and not so darned tickled neither!"
The paying teller told mournfully of his experience with a strange woman who appeared at his wicket to have a check cashed.
"But, madam," he advised her, "you will have to get some one to introduce you before I can pay you the money on this check."
The woman stared at him disdainfully.
"Sir!" she said haughtily. "I wish you to understand that I am here strictly on business. I am not making a social call. I do not care to know you."
The foreigner, who prided himself on his mastery of colloquial expressions in English, was speaking of the serious illness of a distinguished statesman.
"It would be a great pity," he declared, "if such a splendid man should kick the ghost."
* * *
The old man told how his brother made a hazardous descent into a well by standing in the bucket while those above operated the windlass.
"And what happened?" one of the listeners asked as the aged narrator paused.
The old man stroked his beard, and spoke softly, in a tone of sorrowing reminiscence:
"He kicked the bucket."
Pat was set to work with the circular saw during his first day at the saw mill. The foreman gave careful instructions how to guard against injury, but no sooner was his back turned than he heard a howl from the novice, and, on turning, he saw that Pat had already lost a finger.
"Now, how did that happen?" the foreman demanded.
"Sure," was the explanation, "I was jist doin' like this when,—bejabers, there's another gone!"
An acquaintance encountered in the village inquired of Farmer Jones concerning his wife, who was seriously ill. That worthy scowled and spat, and finally answered in a tone of fretful dejection:
"Seems like Elmiry's falin' drefful slow. Dinged if I don't wish as how she'd git well, or somethin'."
The ice on the river was in perfect condition. A small boy, with his skates on his arm, knocked at the door of the Civil War veteran, who had lost a leg at Antietam. When the door was opened by the old man, the boy asked:
"Are you going out to-day, sir?"
"Well, no, I guess not, sonny," was the answer. "Why?"
"If you ain't," the boy suggested, "I thought I might like to borrow your wooden leg to play hockey."
The bashful suitor finally nerved himself to the supreme effort:
"Er—Jenny, do you—think—er—your mother might—er—seriously consider—er—becoming my—er-mother-in-law?"
A lawyer made his way to the edge of the excavation where a gang was working, and called the name of Timothy O'Toole.
"Who's wantin' me?" inquired a heavy voice.
"Mr. O'Toole," the lawyer asked, "did you come from Castlebar, County Mayo?"
"I did that."
"And your mother was named Bridget and your father Michael?"
"They was."
"It is my duty, then," said the lawyer, "to inform you, Mr. O'Toole, that your Aunt Mary has died in Iowa, leaving you an estate of sixty thousand dollars."
There was a short silence below, and then a lively commotion.
"Are you coming, Mr. O'Toole?" the lawyer called down.
"In wan minute," was bellowed in answer. "I've just stopped to lick the foreman."
It required just six months of extremely riotous living for O'Toole to expend all of the sixty thousand dollars. His chief endeavor was to satisfy a huge inherited thirst.
Then he went back to his job. And there, presently, the lawyer sought him out again.
"It's your Uncle Patrick, this time, Mr. O'Toole," the lawyer explained. "He has died in Texas, and left you forty thousand dollars."
O'Toole leaned heavily on his pick, and shook his head in great weariness.
"I don't think I can take it," he declared. "I'm not as strong as I wance was, and I misdoubt me that I could go through all that money and live."
* * *
In a London theatre, a tragedy was being played. The aged king tottered to and fro on the stage as he declaimed:
"On which one of my two sons shall I bestow the crown?"
A voice came down from the gallery:
"Hi saye, guv'nor, myke it 'arf a crown apiece."
* * *
Said one Tommy to another:
"That's a snortin' pipe, Bill. Where'd you happen on it?"
"It was pussonal property of a Boche what tried to take me prisoner," was the answer. "Inherited it from him."
The sweet little girl had a violent tussle with her particular chum. Her mother reprimanded her, and concluded by saying:
"It was Satan who suggested to you the pulling of Jenny's hair."
"I shouldn't be surprised," the child replied musingly. "But," she added proudly, "kicking her in the shins was entirely my own idea."
The child sat by the road bawling loudly. A passer-by asked him what was the matter.
"My ma, she's gone and drowned the kittens," the boy wailed.
"Oh, isn't that too bad!" was the sympathetic response.
The child bawled the louder.
"An' ma she promised me that I could drown 'em."