On the first morning of the voyage, the vessel ran into a nasty choppy sea, which steadily grew worse. There were twenty-five passengers at the captain's table for dinner, and he addressed them in an amiable welcoming speech:
"I hope that all twenty-five of you will have a pleasant trip." The soup appeared, and he continued: "I sincerely hope that this little assembly of twenty-four will thoroughly enjoy the voyage. I look upon these twenty-two smiling faces as a father upon his family, for I am responsible for the safety of this group of seventeen. And now I ask that all fourteen of you join me in drinking to a merry trip. Indeed, I believe that we eight are most congenial, and I applaud the good fortune that brought these three persons to my table. You and I, my dear sir, are—— Here, steward, clear away all those dishes, and bring me the fish."
* * *
The pair on their honeymoon were crossing the Channel, and the movement of the waves seemed to be going on right inside the bride. In a fleeting moment of internal calm she murmured pathetically to the bridegroom in whose arms she was clasped:
"Oh, Jimmy, Jimmy, do you love me?"
"My darling!" he affirmed. "You know I love you with all my heart and soul—I worship you, I adore you, my precious oontsy-woontsy!"
The boat reeled, and a sickening pang thrilled through all the foundations of the bride's being.
"O dear, O dear!" she gasped. "I hoped that might help a little, but it didn't—not a bit!"
* * *
The seasick voyager on the ocean bowed humbly over the rail and made libation to Neptune. The kindly old gentleman who stood near remarked sympathetically:
"You have a weak stomach."
The victim paused in his distressing occupation to snort indignantly:
"Weak? Humph! I guess I can throw as far as anybody on this ship."
* * *
The wife of the seasick passenger was about to leave the stateroom for dinner. She inquired of her husband solicitously:
"George, shall I have the steward bring some dinner to you here?"
"No," was the reply, haltingly given between groans.
"But I wish, my dear, you would ask him to take it on deck and throw it over the rail for me."
* * *
The moralizing gentleman at the club remarked ponderously:
"If there is anything in a man, travel will bring it out."
One who had just landed from a rough crossing agreed bitterly:
"Especially ocean travel."
Once upon a time a coach was held up by a road-agent. The driver explained to the robber that his only passenger was a man, who was asleep inside. The highwayman insisted that the traveler be awakened. "I want to go through his pockets!" he declared fiercely, with an oath.
The bishop, when aroused, made gentle protests.
"You surely would not rob a poor bishop!" he exclaimed. "I have no money worth your attention, and I am engaged on my duties as a bishop."
The robber hesitated.
"A bishop, eh?" he said thoughtfully. "Of what church?"
"The Episcopal."
"The hell you are! That's the church I belong to! So long!... Driver, larrup them mules!"
* * *
A Scotch Presbyterian clergyman tells the story of a parishioner who formed a secession with a few others unable to accept the doctrines of the church. But when the clergyman asked this man if he and the others worshiped together, the answer was:
"No. The fact is, I found that they accepted certain points to which I could not agree, so I withdrew from communion with them."
"So, then," the clergyman continued, "I suppose you and your wife carry on your devotions together at home."
"No, not exactly," the man admitted. "I found that our views on certain doctrines are not in harmony. So, there has been a division between us. Now, she worships in the northeast corner of the room and I in the southwest."
The old lady was very aristocratic, but somewhat prim and precise. Nevertheless, when the company had been telling of college pranks, she relaxed slightly, and told of a lark that had caused excitement in Cambridge when she was a girl there. This was to the effect that two maidens of social standing were smuggled into the second-story room of a Harvard student for a gay supper. The affair was wholly innocent, but secrecy was imperative, to avoid scandal. The meal was hardly begun when a thunderous knock of authority came on the door. The young men acted swiftly in the emergency. Silently, one of the girls was lowered to the ground from the window by a rope knotted under her arms. The second girl was then lowered, but the rope broke when the descent was hardly half completed.
The old lady had related the incident with increasing animation, and at this critical point in the narrative she burst forth:
"And I declare, when that rope broke, I just knew I was going to be killed, sure!"
The aged colored clergyman, who made up in enthusiasm what he lacked in education, preached a sermon on the verse of the Psalm, "Awake, Psaltery and Harp! I myself will awake right early." The explanation of the words, which preceded the exhortation, was as follows:
"Awake, Peasel Tree an' Ha'ap, I myself will awake airly. Dis yere Sam was wrote by de prophet Moses. Moses was mighty fond o' playin' on de ha'ap all de day long, an' at night when he went to bed he'd hang up de ha'ap on de limb ob a Peasel tree what grew on de outside o' de window, an' in de mawnin', when de sun would get up an' shine in his face, he'd jump out o' bed, an' exclaim, 'Wake, Peasel Tree an' Ha'ap! I myself will awake airly!'"
Cousin Willie, aged ten, came for a visit to Johnnie, aged twelve. Johnnie's mother directed him to take the visitor out to play with his boy friends in the neighborhood.
"And be sure to have lots of fun," she added.
On the return of the boys, Willie, the guest, appeared somewhat downcast, but Johnnie was radiant.
"Did you have a good time?" his mother asked.
"Bully!" Johnnie answered.
"And lots of fun?"
"Oh, yes!"
"But Willie doesn't look very happy," Johnnie's mother said doubtfully.
"Well, you see," Johnnie answered, beaming, "the rest of us, we had our fun with Willie."
The little girl was deeply impressed by the clergyman's sermon as to the separation of the sheep and the goats. That night after she had gone to bed, she was heard sobbing, and the mother went to her, to ask what was the matter.
"It's about the goats!" Jenny confessed at last. "I'm so afraid I am a goat, and so I'll never go to heaven. Oh, I'm so afraid I'm a goat!"
"My dear," the mother assured her weeping child. "You're a sweet little lamb. If you were to die to-night, you would go straight to heaven." Her words were successful in quieting the little girl, and she slept.
But the following night Jenny was found crying again in her bed, and when her mother appeared she wailed:
"I'm afraid about the goats."
"But mother has told you that you are a little lamb, and that you must never worry over being a goat."
Jenny, however, was by no means comforted, and continued her sobs.
"Yes, mamma," she declared sadly, "I know that. But I'm afraid—awful afraid you're a goat!"
The shiftless man, who preferred reading to labor, closed the book on French history, which he had been perusing with great interest, and addressed his wife.
"Do you know, Mary," he asked impressively, "what I would have done if I had been in Napoleon's place?"
"Certainly!" the wife snapped. "You'd have settled right down on a farm in Corsica, and let it run itself."
The new member of the club listened with solemn interest to the various stories that were told in the smoking room. They were good stories, and obviously lies, and each of them was a bigger lie than any that had gone before. Finally, the company insisted that the new member should relate a tale. He refused at first, but under pressure yielded, and gave a vivid account of a shipwreck at sea during one of his voyages. He described the stress of the terrible situation with such power that his hearers were deeply impressed. He reached the point in his account where only the captain and himself and half a dozen others were left aboard the doomed vessel, after the last of the boats had been lowered.
"And then," he concluded, "a vast wave came hurtling down on us. It was so huge that it shut out all the sky. It crashed over the already sinking ship in a torrent of irresistible force. Under that dreadful blow the laboring vessel sank, and all those left on board of her were drowned."
The narrator paused and there was a period of tense silence. But presently someone asked:
"And you—what became of you?"
"Oh, I," was the reply, "why I was drowned with the rest of them."
The business man's wife, who had called at his office, regarded the pretty young stenographer with a baleful eye.
"You told me that your typewriter was an old maid," she accused.
The husband, at a loss, faltered in his reply, but at last contrived:
"Yes, but she's sick to-day, and sent her grandchild in her place."
A traveler in the South chatted with an aged negro, whom he met in the road.
"And I suppose you were once a slave?" he remarked.
"Yes, suh," the old colored man answered.
"And, so, after the war, you gained your freedom," the gentleman continued.
But the ancient one shook his head sadly.
"No, suh," he declared with great emphasis. "Not perzactly, suh. I didn't git mah freedom, suh, after de war—I done got married!"
An argument arose among a number of British officers during their time of service in the Dardanelles, and wagers were made among them. The question at issue was as to which smells the louder, a goat or a Turk. The colonel was made arbiter. He sat judicially in his tent, and a goat was brought in. The colonel fainted. After the officer had been revived, and was deemed able to continue his duty as referee, a Turk was brought into the tent. The goat fainted.
The somewhat unpleasant person, who was a social worker, completed her call on a dweller in the tenement district, and rose to depart. The unwilling hostess shook her head at the visitor's promise to come again.
"And excuse me if I don't return the call," she vouchsafed. "Myself, I've got no time to go slummin'."
* * *
The philanthropic hostess entertained a party of children from the slums at her home. She addressed one particularly pretty and intelligent-looking little girl, who listened shyly. She urged the child to speak without embarrassment. The little one complied, aspiring:
"How many children have you?"
"Six," the hostess answered, in surprise.
"What a big family! You must be sure to look after them properly, and be very careful to keep them clean."
"I'll try to, certainly," the lady declared, much amused.
"Has your husband got a job?" the girl demanded crisply.
"Well, no," the hostess admitted.
"How unfortunate! You know you must keep out of debt."
"Really, you must not be impertinent," was the reproof.
"No, ma'am," the child responded simply, "mother said I must talk like a lady, and that's the way the ladies talk when they come to see us."
Back in those days when corporal punishment was permitted to teachers, a minor teacher named Miss Bings complained to one of her superiors, Miss Manners, that she had spanked one particular boy, Thomas, until she could spank him no more for physical fatigue.
"When you want him spanked again, send him to me," Miss Manners said.
Next morning, Thomas came into the presence of Miss Manners, displaying an air that was downcast. The teacher regarded him with suspicion.
"Did you come from Miss Bings?" she asked sharply.
"Yes, ma'am," Thomas admitted.
"I thought as much!" On the instant, she skillfully inverted the youngster over her lap, and whacked him in a most spirited manner. This duty done, as the wailings of the boy died away, she demanded sternly:
"And now what have you to say?"
"Please, ma'am," Thomas answered brokenly, "Miss Bings wants the scissors!"
In the business college, the instructor addressed the new class concerning the merits of shorthand. In his remarks, he included this statement:
"It is a matter of record that it took the poet Gray seven years to write his famous poem, 'Elegy in a Country Churchyard.' Had he been proficient in stenography, he could have done it in seven minutes. We have had students who have written it in that length of time."
* * *
The young lady interested in botany inquired of the gentleman who had been traveling in the South.
"What sort of a plant is the Virginia creeper?"
"That is not a plant," was the answer, given wearily; "it's a railroad."
Some time before Mr. Taft became President of the United States, he took an extended trip in the mountains of West Virginia. On one occasion, he was conveyed along the mountain roads in a buggy driven by a native of the region. As they came to a small stream, Mr. Taft, without any particular interest, inquired concerning the brook's name. So far as he could understand, the answer was:
"This here are Swum-swum Crick."
"What?" Mr. Taft demanded.
In the repetition, the words sounded like:
"This here are Swoovel Crick."
The questioner was so puzzled that he asked the mountaineer how the name of the Creek was spelled.
The native spat tobacco juice reflectively over the wheel, and then spoke judicially:
"Waal, some spells it one way, an' some spells it another way; but in my jedgmint thar are no propeer way."
* * *
The clerk of the court directed the witness to spell his name. The man started his reply thus:
"O double t, i double u, e double l, double u, double——"
The clerk interrupted:
"Please, begin again."
The witness complied glibly:
"O double t, i double u, e double l, double u, double o——"
The clerk groaned. The judge himself intervened: "What is your name?"
"Your Honor, it is Ottiwell Wood. I spell it: O double t, i double u, e double l, double u, double o, d."
The old colored mammy took advantage of a wedding announcement to question her mistress, who remained a spinster still though approaching middle age.
"When is you gwine to git married, missy?"
"I don't know, mammy," was the thoughtful reply. "Really, I don't think I'll ever get married."
A note of sadness in the speaker's voice moved the old woman to attempt philosophical consolation:
"Well, they do say as how ole maids am the happies' kind after they quits strugglin'."
The faithful old employee asked for a day off. The request was granted, with an inquiry as to what he intended to do on his holiday.
"I think," came the cautious answer, "I shall go to my wife's funeral. She died the other day."
A few weeks later, the request for a day off was repeated.
"And what are you going to do this time?" the employer asked.
"I think, mebbe, I'll get married."
"What! So soon after burying your wife?"
The faithful old employee smiled tolerantly, as he answered:
"Oh, well, I was never one to hold spite."
In the party out after reed birds was a tyro at the sport. When at last he saw one of the birds walking about, he plumped down on his stomach, and took aim. A companion called to him sharply:
"You're not going to shoot the bird while it's walking?"
"No," was the firm response; "I'll wait till it stops."
The teacher talked on the four seasons, telling how in the spring the new life comes to the earth, with the growth of grasses and leaves and flowers, how this life matures in summer, and so on, and so on. Then she called on the class to repeat the information she had given. She asked one little boy about spring.
"What do we find in the spring, George?"
George seemed very reluctant to answer, but when the teacher insisted he at last said:
"Why, ma'am, there's a frog, an' a lizard, an' a snake, an' a dead cat, but I didn't put the cat there. It was another boy."
On the occasion of a most interesting family event, Mr. Peedle, who desired a son, paced the drawing-room in extreme agitation, until at last the doctor appeared in the doorway.
"Oh, oh, tell me," he gasped, "what is it—a boy or a girl?"
"Tr-tr-tr—" the physician began stammeringly.
Peedle paled.
"Triplets! Merciful providence!"
"Qu-qu-qu—" spluttered the doctor.
Peedle paled some more.
"Quadruplets!" he moaned.
"N-n-no!" the physician snapped. "Qu-qu-quite the contrary. Tr-tr-try to take it qu-quietly. It's a girl."
Two old friends met, and immediately found that they were equally devoted to motoring. After a discussion of their various cars, one bethought himself to ask concerning the other's wife, whom he had never seen. That lady was described by her husband, as follows:
"Nineteen-six model, limousine so to say, heavy tread, runs on low."
"Self-starter?"
"You bet!"
The young lady worker for the Sunday school called on the newly wedded pair.
"I am endeavoring to secure new scholars," she explained. "Won't you send your children?"
When she was informed that there were no children in the family as yet, she continued brightly:
"But won't you please send them when you do have them?"
* * *
The Sunday-school teacher examined his new class.
"Who made the world?" he demanded. Nobody seemed to know. He repeated the question somewhat sternly. As the silence persisted, he frowned and spoke with increased severity:
"Children, I must know who made the world!"
Then, at last, a small boy piped up in much agitation:
"Oh, sir, please, sir, it wasn't me!"
It is told of Mrs. Gladstone that a number of ladies in her drawing-room once became engaged in earnest discussion of a difficult problem. It chanced that at the time the great prime minister was in his study upstairs. As the argument in the drawing-room became hopelessly involved, a devout lady of the company took advantage of a lull to say:
"Ah, well, there is One above Who knows it all."
Mrs. Gladstone beamed.
"Yes," she said proudly. "And William will be down directly to tell us all about it."
The superstitious sporting editor of the paper condemned the "Horse Fair" by Rosa Bonheur.
"Just look at those white horses!" he exclaimed disgustedly. "And not a red-headed girl in sight."
The passionate lover wrote to his inamorata as follows:
"Adored of my soul:—If you love me, wear a red rose in your corsage to-night at the opera. If my devotion to you is hopeless, wear a white rose."
She wore a yellow rose.
The eminent politicians of opposing parties met on a train, and during their chat discovered that they agreed concerning primaries.
"It is the first time," said one, "that we have ever agreed on a matter of public policy."
"That is so," the other assented. "The fact leads me to suspect that I am wrong, after all in this matter of the primaries."
A tramp devised a new scheme for working on the sympathy of the housewife. After ringing the front door bell, he got on his knees, and began nibbling at the grass of the lawn. Presently the woman opened the door, and, in surprise at sight of him on all fours, asked what he was doing there.
The tramp got to his feet shakily, and made an eloquent clutch at his stomach as he explained:
"Dear madam, I am so hungry that like Nebuchadnezzar I just had to take to eatin' grass."
"Well, well, now ain't that too bad!" the woman cried. "You go right into the back yard—the grass there is longer."
The senator from Utah was able to disarm by flattery the resentment of a woman at a reception in Washington, who upbraided him for that plurality of wives so dear to Mormon precept and practice.
"Alas, madam," the senator declared with a touch of sadness in his voice, "we are compelled in Utah to marry a number of wives."
His fair antagonist was frankly surprised.
"What do you mean?" she demanded.
The senator explained suavely:
"We have to seek there in several women the splendid qualities that here are to be found in one."
Many a man who has suffered from tongue-lashings at home will be moved to profound sympathy for the victim described as follows in a local news item of a country paper:
"Alice Jardine, a married woman, was charged with unlawfully wounding her husband, Charles Jardine, a laborer, by striking him with a pair of tongues."
The victim of the Klu Klux Klan plucked some feathers from his neck with one hand, while he picked gingerly at the tar on his legs with the other.
"The excitement," he murmured, "rose to a terrible pitch, but it soon came down."
A noted humorist once spent a few weeks with a tribe of western Indians. On his return, he was asked concerning his experiences. One question was:
"Did you ever taste any dog-feast stew?"
"Yes," was the melancholy reply. "I tasted it twice—once when it went down, and once when it came up."
* * *
It's all a matter of taste, as the old lady said when she kissed the cow.
* * *
The master of the house was hungry at breakfast, and swallowed a good part of his bacon before he tasted it. Then he took time to protest violently to his wife against the flavor of the food. The good lady offered no apology, but rang for the servant. When the latter appeared, the mistress asked a question that was little calculated to soothe her husband.
"Maggie," she inquired serenely, "what did you do with the bacon we poisoned for the rats?"
The kind lady stopped to tell the sobbing little girl not to cry, and she offered as a convincing argument:
"You know it makes little girls homely."
The child stared belligerently at the benevolent lady, and then remarked:
"You must have cried an awful lot when you was young."
"Please tell me, James," directed the young lady teacher, "where shingles were first used?"
"I could, ma'am," little Jimmie replied in great embarrassment, "but I'd rather not."
When the bishop was entertained at an English country house, the butler coached carefully the new boy who was to carry up the jug of hot water for shaving in the morning.
"When you knock," the butler explained, "and he asks, 'Who's there?' then you must say, 'It's the boy, my Lord.'"
The lad, in much nervous trepidation, duly carried up the hot water, but in answer to the bishop's query as to who was at the door, he announced:
"It's the Lord, my boy!"
The butler overheard and was horrified. He hammered into the youth's consciousness, the fact that a bishop must be addressed as my lord. Finally, he was satisfied that the boy understood, and permitted him to assist in serving the dinner that night. The youngster was sent to the bishop to offer a plate of cheese. With shaking knees, he presented the dish to the prelate, and faltered:
"My God, will you have some cheese?"
* * *
The master of the house returned from business somewhat early. He did not find his wife about, and so called downstairs to the cook:
"Bridget, do you know anything of my wife's whereabouts?"
"No, sor," Bridget answered, "Sure, I know nothin' but I'm thinkin', sor, it's likely they're in the wash."
Paul Smith, the famous hotel-keeper in the Adirondacks, told of a law suit that he had with a man named Jones in Malone.
"It was this way: I sat in the courtroom before the case opened with my witnesses around me. Then Jones bustled in. He stopped abruptly, and looked my witnesses over carefully. Presently he turned to me.
"'Paul,' he asked, 'are those your witnesses?'
"'They are,' I replied.
"'Then you win,' he exclaimed. 'I've had them witnesses twice myself.'"
* * *
The grateful woman on the farm in Arkansas wrote to the vendors of the patent medicine:
"Four weeks ago I was so run down that I could not spank the baby. After taking three bottles of your Elegant Elixir I am now able to thrash my husband in addition to my other housework. God bless you!"
* * *
In one of the most desolate areas of Montana, a claim was taken by a man from Iowa. The nearest neighbor, from twenty miles away, visited the homesteader's shack, and introduced himself.
"Where did you come from?" the visitor inquired presently, and when he had been told:
"I can't understand why anybody should want to get out of that civilized country to come and live in this lonesomeness."
"Fact was," the man from Iowa explained somberly, "I didn't exactly like it down there any more. You see, it was this way. They got to telling things about me. Why, they even said I was a liar and hoss thief, and no better than I ought to be. And, by Jemima, I jest pulled out and went right away from them scandalous folks."
"Well, I swan!" the visitor exclaimed indignantly. "You can bet I wouldn't leave a place for any reason like that. I'd make them prove what they said."
The homesteader sighed dismally as he answered:
"That's jest the trouble—they did prove it!"
The mother, who was a believer in strict discipline, sternly addressed her little daughter, who sat wofully shrinking in the dentist's chair as the ogre approached forceps in hand:
"Now, Letty, if you cry, I'll never take you to the dentist's again."
A Scotchman was questioned by a friend:
"Mac, I hear ye have fallen in love wi' bonny Kate McAllister."
"Weel, Sanders," Mac replied, "I was near—veera near—doin' it, but the bit lassy had nae siller, so I said to meaself, 'Mac, be a mon.' And I was a mon, and noo I jist pass her by."
* * *
The thrifty housewife regarded her dying husband with stern disapproval as he moaned and tossed restlessly from side to side.
"William Henry," she rebuked him, "you jest needn't kick and squirm so, and wear them best sheets all out, even if you be a-dyin'."
The ardent lover heard the clock strike the hours—first nine, then ten, then eleven. At the sound of twelve strokes, he burst forth passionately:
"How fleet are the hours in your presence, my beloved!"
"Don't be silly!" the girl chided. "That's pa setting the clock."
The prize bull-dog attacked a farmer, who defended himself with a pitchfork, and in doing so killed the dog. The owner was greatly distressed, and reproached the farmer.
"Why didn't you use the other end of the fork," he demanded, "and just beat him off, without killing him?"
"I would have," the farmer answered, "if he had come at me with the other end."
The native pointed with pride to two doddering ancients hobbling painfully down the village street, and informed the stranger:
"Them fellers is the Dusenbury twins—ninety-eight year old!" The visitor was duly impressed, and asked to what the pair of venerable citizens attributed their long life.
"It's kind o' which and t' other," the native confessed. "Obadiah declares its all along o' his chewin' an' smokin' an' snuffin' day in an' day out, fer nigh onto a hundred year; an' Ebenezer declares he has his health becase he never touched the filthy weed."
The little girl who had observed certain details in the toilette preparations of her elders, was observed by her mother at work over her most elaborate doll in a somewhat strange manner.
"Whatever are you trying to do with your doll, Mary?" the mother asked.
"I'm just going to put her to bed, mummy," the child replied seriously. "I've taken off her hair, but I can't get her teeth out."
An old lady in the London parish of the famous Doctor Gill made a nuisance of herself by constant interference in the affairs of others. As a gossip she was notorious. It appeared to her that the neckbands worn by the Doctor were longer than was fitting. She therefore took occasion to visit the clergyman, and harangued him at length on the sinfulness of pride. Then she exhibited a pair of scissors, and suggested that she should cut down the offending neckbands to a size fitting her ideas of propriety. The Doctor listened patiently to her exhortation, and at the end offered her the neckbands on which to work her will. She triumphantly trimmed them to her taste, and returned the shorn remnants to the minister.
"And now," said the Doctor, "you must do me a good turn also."
"That I will, Doctor," the woman declared heartily. "What can it be?"
"Well," the clergyman explained, "you have something about you which is a deal too long and which causes me and many others such trouble, that I should like to see it shorter."
"Indeed, dear Doctor, I shall not hesitate to gratify you. What is it? See, here are the scissors! Use them as you please."
"Come, then," said the Doctor, "good sister, put out your tongue."
The Italian workman in the West was warned to look out for rattlesnakes. He was assured, however, that a snake would never strike until after sounding the rattles. One day, while seated on a log, eating his lunch, the Italian saw a rattlesnake coiled ready to strike. He lifted his legs carefully, with the intention of darting away on the other side of the log the moment the rattles should sound their warning. But just as his feet cleared the top of the log, the snake struck out and its fangs were buried in the wood only the fraction of an inch below the Italian's trousers. The frightened man fled madly, but he took breath to shriek over his shoulder:
"Son of a gun! Why you no ringa da bell?"
An old negro, who had almost attained the century mark, nearly blind, almost completely disabled, without friends, relations, or money, felt himself about to die, and stealthily made his way into a farmer's barn, where he burrowed into the haymow. But the farmer had observed the man's entrance, and after getting his shotgun, he hurried to the barn.
"I got you!" he cried savagely. "Dog gone you! I got you!"
The moribund derelict thrust his black face from the mow, and showed his toothless gums in a grin, as he answered:
"An' a great git you got!"
The colored man was before the court, accused of horse-stealing. The prosecuting attorney read the indictment sternly, and then asked:
"Are you guilty, or not guilty?"
The prisoner wriggled perplexedly, and then grinned propitiatingly as he said:
"Now, suh, boss, ain't dat perzakly de ting we'se done gwine diskiver in dis-yere trial?"
When the domestic event was due, the prospective father, being ordered out of the house, celebrated the occasion with many friends in a number of saloons. He celebrated so well that the clock was striking three in the morning when he entered the house. A nurse hurried to him, and undid some wrappings that revealed three tiny faces. The father stared reproachfully at the clock in the hall, and then, again regarding his group of children, spoke earnestly:
"Oi'm not superstitious, but Oi thank hivin Oi didn't come home at twelve!"
The little girl evidently appreciated the fact that all men and women are liars, for Punch records the following as the dialogue between her and her mother when she had been caught in a fib:
Mother: "It is very naughty to tell untruths, Kitty. Those who do so, never go to heaven."
Kitty: "Don't you ever tell an untruth, Mummy?"
Mother: "No, dear—never."
Kitty: "Well, you'll be fearfully lonely, won't you, with only George Washington?"
The woman lecturing on dress reform was greatly shocked when she read the report as published in the local paper. The writer had been innocent enough, for his concluding sentence was:
"The lady lecturer on dress wore nothing that was remarkable."
But the merry compositor inserted a period, which was left undisturbed by the proofreader, so that the published statement ran:
"The lady lecturer on dress wore nothing. That was remarkable."
* * *
The poet, in a fine frenzy, dashed off a line that was really superb:
"See the pale martyr in his sheet of fire."
The devilish compositor so tangled the words that, when the poem was published, this line read:
"See the pale martyr with his shirt on fire."
* * *
The critic, in his review of the burlesque, wrote:
"The ladies of Prince Charming's household troops filled their parts to perfection."
The compositor, in his haste, read an n for the r in the word parts, and the sentence, thus changed, radically in its significance, duly appeared in the morning paper.
An American girl who married a Bavarian baron enjoyed playing Lady Bountiful among the tenants on her husband's estate. On the death of the wife of one of the cottagers, she called to condole with the bereaved widower. She uttered her formal expressions of sympathy with him in his grief over the loss of his wife, and she was then much disconcerted by his terse optimistic comment:
"But it's a good thing, your ladyship, that it wasn't the cow."
Wives are to be had for the asking; cows are not.
The fair penitent explained to the confessor how greatly she was grieved by an accusing conscience. She bewailed the fact that she was sadly given over to personal vanity. She added that on this very morning she had gazed into her mirror and had yielded to the temptation of thinking herself beautiful.
"Is that all, my daughter?" the priest demanded.
"Then, my daughter," the confessor bade her, "go in peace, for to be mistaken is not to sin."
That celebrated statue, the Winged Victory, has suffered during the centuries to the extent of losing its head and other less vital parts. When the Irish tourist was confronted by this battered figure in the museum, and his guide had explained that this was the famous statue of victory, he surveyed the marble form with keen interest.
"Victory, is ut?" he said, "Thin, begorra, Oi'd loike to see the other fellow."
A report has come from Mexico concerning the doings of three revolutionary soldiers who visited a ranch, which was the property of an American spinster and her two nieces. The girls are pretty and charming, but the aunt is somewhat elderly and much faded, though evidently of a dauntless spirit. The three soldiers looked over the property and the three women, and then declared that they were tired of fighting, and had decided to marry the women and make their home on the ranch.
The two girls were greatly distressed and terrified, but even in their misery they were unselfish.
"We are but two helpless women," they said in effect, "and if we must, we bow to our cruel fate. But please—oh, please—spare our dear auntie. Do not marry her."
At this point, their old-maid relation spoke up for herself:
"Now, now, you girls—you mind your own business. War is war."
* * *
"How do countries come to go to war?" the little boy inquired, looking up from his book.
"For various reasons," explained the father. "Now, there was Germany and Russia. They went to war because the Russians mobilized."
"Not at all, my dear," the wife interrupted. "It was because the Austrians—"
"Tut, tut, my love!" the husband remonstrated. "Don't you suppose I know?"
"Certainly not—you are all wrong. It was because—"
"Mrs. Perkins, I tell you it was because—"
"Benjamin, you ought to know better, you have boggled—"
"Your opinion, madam, has not been requested in this matter."
"Shut up! I won't have my child mistaught by an ignoramus."
"Don't you dare, you impudent—"
"And don't you dare bristle at me, or I'll—"
"Oh, never mind!" the little boy intervened. "I think I know now how wars begin."
* * *
At our entry into the World War, a popular young man enlisted and before setting forth for camp in his uniform made a round of farewell calls. The girl who first received him made an insistent demand:
"You'll think of me every single minute when you're in those stupid old trenches!"
"Every minute," he agreed solemnly.
"And you'll kiss my picture every night."
"Twice a night," he vowed, with the girl's pretty head on the shoulder of the new uniform coat.
"And you'll write me long, long letters?" she pleaded.
"I'll write every spare minute," he assured her, "and if I haven't any spare minutes, I'll take 'em anyhow."
After a tender interval punctuated with similar ardent promises, he went away from there, and called on another girl. In fact, he called on ten separate and distinct pretty girls, and each of them was tender and sought his promises, which he gave freely and ardently and when it was all done with, he communed with himself somewhat sadly.
"I do hope," he said wearily, "there won't be much fighting to do over there—for I'm going to be awfully busy."
The old colored attendant at the court house had a formula for addressing the judge:
"What's the news this mawnin', Jedge?"
And the judge's habitual reply was to the effect that there was no news in particular.
But one morning, in answer to the usual query, there came a variation:
"Our country has declared war against Spain." The darky scratched his head thoughtfully, then rolled his eyes to squint at the cloudless blue of the sky, and finally remarked in a pleased tone:
"They shohly done picked a fine day fer it."
At the time when petroleum began to be used instead of whale oil for burning in lamps, a kindly old lady was deeply perturbed by the change.
"What," she wanted to know, "will the poor whales do now?"
An elderly man was on his way home by train from a session of three days at a convention of his political party. (This was antedating the era of prohibition.) The man's personal preferences had been gratified in the nominations at the convention, and he had celebrated in a way only too common in the bibulous period of our history. His absorption in other things and of other things had led him to neglect shaving throughout the three days. Now, as he chanced to move his hand over his chin, it encountered the long growth of white bristles, and he was aroused to a realization of his neglect. To determine just how badly he needed a shave, the elderly gentleman opened his handbag, and fumbled in it for a mirror. In his confused condition, he seized on a silver-backed hair-brush of the same set, pulled it forth, and held it up to his face with the bristles toward him. He studied these with great care, groaned and muttered:
"I look worse than I thought for. Whatever will Sarah Ann say!"
One of the ladies assembled at the club was describing the wedding she had just attended:
"And then, just as Frank and the widow started up the aisle to the altar, every light in the church went out."
The listeners exclaimed over the catastrophe.
"And what did the couple do then?" someone questioned.
"Kept on going. The widow knew the way."
* * *
A widow visited a spiritualistic medium, who satisfactorily produced the deceased husband for a domestic chat.
"Dear John," the widow questioned eagerly, "are you happy now?"
"I am very happy," the spook assured her.
"Happier than you were on earth with me?" the widow continued, greatly impressed.
"Yes," John asserted, "I am far happier now than I was on earth with you."
"Oh, do tell me, John," the widow cried rapturously, "what is it like in heaven?"
"Heaven!" the answer snapped. "I ain't in heaven!"
During the parade at the last encampment of the G.A.R., a woman in the crowd of spectators made herself not only conspicuous, but rather a nuisance by the way she carried on. She waved a flag with such vigor as to endanger the bystanders and yelled to deafen them. An annoyed man in the crowd after politely requesting her to moderate her enthusiasm, quite without effect, bluntly told her to shut up.
"Shut up yourself!" she retorted in high indignation. "If you had buried two husbands who had served in the war, you would be hurrahing, too."
A young skeptic in the congregation once interrupted Billy Sunday with the question:
"Who was Cain's wife?"
The Evangelist answered in all seriousness:
"I honor every seeker after knowledge of the truth. But I have a word of warning for this questioner. Don't risk losing salvation by too much inquiring after other men's wives."
The old sea captain was surrounded at the tea party, to which his wife had dragged him, much against his will, by a group of women pestering him for a story from his adventures. Finally, at the end of his patience, he began.
"Once, I was shipwrecked on the coast of South America, and there I came across a tribe of wild women, who had no tongues."
"Mercy!" exclaimed all the fair listeners with one voice. "But they couldn't talk."
"That," snapped the old sea captain, "was what made them wild."
It's a wise child that goes out of the room to laugh when the old man mashes his thumb.
A cynic, considering the fact that women was the last thing made by God, asserts that the product shows both His experience and His fatigue.
* * *
The following extract is from the diary of a New England woman who lived in the eighteenth century:
"We had roast pork for dinner and the Doctor, who carved, held up a rib on his fork, and said: 'Here, ladies, is what Mother Eve was made of.'"
"'Yes,' said sister Patty, 'and it is from very much the same kind of critter'."
* * *
The little girl reported at home what she had learned at Sunday School concerning the creation of Adam and Eve:
"The teacher told us how God made the first man and the first woman. He made the man first. But the man was very lonely with nobody to talk to him. So God put the man to sleep. And while the man was asleep, God took out his brains, and made a woman of them."
During the agitation in behalf of woman's suffrage, an ardent advocate pleaded with a tired-looking married woman, and said:
"Just think! Wouldn't you love to go with your husband to the voting place, and there cast your vote along with his?"
The woman shook her head decisively and she answered:
"For goodness sake! If there's one single thing that a man's able to do by himself, let him do it."
Oldest Inhabitant: "I never expected to live till the end of the War, Ma'am; but now I'm hoping to be spared to see the beginning of the next one."
* * *
"That's Betty Grant's new maid."
"She's much smarter than her mistress."
"Well, they can't both afford to dress like that."
* * *
Father: "Don't know the French for cat, and you had a French nurse for years!"
Hopeful: "But, Dad, we hadn't got a cat when Adele was with us."
* * *
Betty (after flash of lightning): "Count quickly, Jenny! Make it as far away as you possibly can."
* * *
Employer: "John, I wish you wouldn't whistle at your work."
Boy: "I wasn't working, Sir; only whistling."
* * *
Mistress: "Oh, Jane, how did you break that vase?"
Maid: "I'm very sorry, Mum; I was accidentally dusting."
* * *
Little Girl (in foreground): "Mother, I suppose the bridegroom must come to his wedding."
* * *
Mistress: "I hope you're doing what you can to economise the food."
Cook: "Oh, yes'm. We've put the cat on milk-an'-water."
* * *
Raw Hand (at sea for first time and observing steamer's red and green lights): "'Ere's some lights on the starboard side, Sir."
Officer: "Well, what is it?"
R. H.: "Looks to me like a drug store, Sir."
* * *
"Can you play bridge to-night?"
"Sorry. Going to hear some Wagner."
"What—do you like the stuff?"
"Frankly, no; but I've heard on the best authority that his music's very much better than it sounds."
* * *
Master: "But, Jenkins, the name of the complaint is not pewmonia. Surely, you've heard me again and again say 'pneumonia'?"
Man: "Well, Sir, I 'ave; but I didn't like to correct you."
* * *
Successful Poultry Farmer: "You'd be surprised what a difference these incubators make. We can hatch out two or three hundred chicks every week."
Champion Dog Breeder: "Good gracious! How ever do you manage to find names for them all?"
* * *
Small Boy (who has been promised a visit to the Zoo to-morrow): "I hope we shall have a better day for it than Noah had."
* * *
Mother: "Oh, Mary, why do you wipe your mouth with the back of your hand?"
Mary: "'Cos it's so much cleaner than the front."
* * *
Mother (to child who has been naughty): "Aren't you rather ashamed of yourself?"
Child: "Well, Mother, I wasn't. But now that you've suggested it I am."
* * *
Belated Traveller (surprised by a bull when taking a short cut to the station): "By jove! I believe I shall catch that train after all."
* * *
Mother: "Why, what's the matter, darling?"
Small daughter (tearfully): "Oh, Mums, I do so want to give this worm to my hen."
Mother: "Then why don't you?"
Small daughter (with renewed wails): "'C-cos I'm so afraid the worm won't like it."
* * *
"Does God make lions, Mother?"
"Yes, dear."
"But isn't he frightened to?"
* * *
"Excuse me, officer, but have you seen any pickpockets about here with a handkerchief marked 'Susan'?"
* * *
Mrs. Green to Mrs. Jones (who is gazing at an aeroplane): "My word! I shouldn't care for one of them flying things to settle on me."
* * *
The Woman: "Jazz stockings are the latest thing, dear. Here's a picture of a girl with them on."
The Man: "What appalling rot! Er—after you with the paper."
* * *
Small Invalid (to visitor): "I've had a lot of diseases in my time—measles—whooping-cough—influenza—tonsilitis—but (modestly) I haven't had dropsy yet."
* * *