AMONG THE HUMORISTS AND AFTER-DINNER SPEAKERS (continued 3)

“Look here, Bruce,” said the senior decidedly, “you are a donkey! Why can not you keep quiet, instead of making your asinine remarks? I am speaking to you now as a brother——”

Loud laughter interrupted him at this point, and for the moment he wondered why.

An earnest clergyman one Sunday morning was exhorting those who had anxious and troubled consciences to be sure and call on their pastor for guidance and prayer.

“To show you, my brethren, the blessed results of these visits with your pastor,” said he, “I will state to you that only yesterday a gentleman of wealth called upon me for counsel and instruction; and now to-day, my friends—to-day he sits among us, not only a Christian, but a happy husband and father.”

A young lady in the audience whispered to a matron: “Wasn’t that pretty quick work?”

A good story is told of the late George Augustus Sala in his early and impecunious days. At some festive gathering where Mr. Sala was present, Mr. Attemborough, the famous pawnbroker, was also a guest. They recognized each other, and shook hands.

“How do you do, Mr. Attemborough,” said the journalist. “We have met often before, but I think this is the first time I have ever seen your legs.”

A clergyman in the West Country had two curates, one a comparatively old man, the other very young. With the former he had not been able to work agreeably; and on being invited to another living, he accepted it, and took the young curate with him. Naturally, there was a farewell sermon; and we can imagine the feelings of the curate who was to be left behind when he heard the text given out, “Abide ye here with the ass, and I and the lad will go yonder and worship.”

A bishop was staying with a friend in a country house. On Sunday morning as he passed through the library he found a small boy curled up in a big chair, deeply interested in a book.

“Are you going to church, Tom?” he asked.

“No, sir,” he replied.

“Why, I am,” said the Bishop.

“Huh,” said the boy, “you’ve got to go. It’s your job.”

A celebrated continental specialist to whom time was literally money and who was possessed of a fiery temper made it a rule that all patients should undress before entering his consulting room so as not to waste any of his valuable time. One day a meek-looking little man entered with all his clothes on. “What do you mean by coming in like that?” said the doctor in a rage. “Go and strip at once!” “But I—” faltered the man. “I tell you I’ve no time to waste,” yelled the doctor, and the poor man left the room in haste. When his turn came he reentered the room. “Now then,” said the doctor, “that’s better. What can I do for you?” “I called to collect your subscription for the benevolent society.”

A tall man, impatiently pacing the platform of a wayside station, accosted a red-haired boy of about twelve.

“S-s-say,” he said, “d-d-do y-you know ha-ha-how late this train is?”

The boy grinned but made no reply. The man stuttered out something about red-headed kids in general and passed into the station.

A stranger, overhearing the one-sided conversation, asked the boy why he hadn’t answered the big man.

“D-d-d’ye wanter see me g-g-get me fa-fa-face punched?” stammered the boy. “D-d-dat big g-g-guy’d tink I was mo-mo-mocking him.”

“Mother,” said a college student who had brought his chum home for the holidays, “permit me to present my friend, Mr. Specknoodle.”

His mother, who was a little hard of hearing, placed her hand to her ear.

“I’m sorry, George, but I didn’t quite catch your friend’s name. You’ll have to speak a little louder, I’m afraid.”

“I say, mother,” shouted George, “I want to present my friend Mr. Specknoodle.”

“I’m sorry, George, but Mr. —— What was the name again?”

“Mr. Specknoodle!” George fairly yelled.

The old lady shook her head sadly.

“I’m sorry, George, but I’m afraid it’s no use. It sounds just like Specknoodle to me.”

A young American lady on a visit to London was being shown some of the sights by a boastful Englishman. “This is a cannon captured at Bunker Hill,” said the Englishman. “How interesting,” exclaimed the lady. “I must explain,” said the gentleman tauntingly, “that this cannon was captured from the Americans by the English.” The lady quietly retorted, “Well, you have the cannon; we have the hill.”

Former Congressman Fred Landis of Indiana has made a reputation for himself as an orator. A year or so ago Landis, speaking at the unveiling of a monument to President Lincoln, uttered the phrase, “Abraham Lincoln—that mystic mingling of star and clod.” This was loudly applauded. After the speech a friend of Landis approached him, and, repeating the phrase, said: “Fred, what in the name of heaven does that mean?” Putting his arm around his friend’s shoulder, Landis replied: “I don’t know, really, but it gets ’em every time.”

Captain Foretopp tells a story of a certain noted divine who was on his steamer when a great gale overtook them off the Oregon coast. “It looks pretty bad,” said the Bishop to the Captain. “Couldn’t be much worse, Bishop,” replied Foretopp.

Half an hour later the steamer was diving under the waves as if she were a submarine and leaking like an old door. “Looks worse, I think, Captain,” said the Bishop. “We must trust in Providence now, Bishop,” answered Foretopp.

“Oh, I hope it has not come to that,” gasped the Bishop.

A couple of New Yorkers were playing golf on a New Jersey course on Election Day when they saw a fine-appearing old gentleman looking at them wistfully. They asked him to join the game, which he did with alacrity. He was mild in speech and manner and played well. But once when he had made a foozle he ejaculated vehemently the word: “Croton!” A few minutes later when he made another bad play, he repeated: “Croton!” The third time he said it, one of his new-made friends said: “I don’t want to be inquisitive, but will you tell me why you say ‘Croton’ so often?” “Well,” said the old gentleman, “isn’t that the biggest dam near New York?” He was a Presbyterian clergyman from Brooklyn.

Willie, aged five, was taken by his father to his first football game. The feature that caught his chief approval, however, did not become evident until he said his prayers that night. To the horror of his parents Willie prayed with true football snap:

A suburban minister during his discourse one Sabbath morning said: “In each blade of grass there is a sermon.” The following day one of his flock discovered the good man pushing a lawn mower about his garden and paused to say: “Well, parson, I’m glad to see you engaged in cutting your sermons short.”

“Now, Bobby,” instructed the Fond Maternal Parent of the prodigy in velveteens, bound for a children’s party, “the weather looks rather threatening. Here is half a dollar for you, and if it rains come back by cab.”

Two hours later it came down cats and dogs, and F. M. P. (Fond Maternal Parent) returned devout thanks for her forethought.

But when little Bobby Velveteens returned he was wet to the skin.

“Why, Bobby,” cried the F. M. P., “didn’t you come back by cab, as I told you?”

“Oh, yes, ma!” answered Bobby. “And it was simply splendid! I rode on the box beside the driver!”

A Bishop of the Episcopal Church lived all his life unwed. A friend mentioned that one of the States was imposing a tax on bachelors, to be increased a certain percentage every ten years of bachelorhood, and added: “Why, Bishop, at your age you would have to pay a hundred dollars a year.”

“Well,” said the Bishop quietly, “it’s worth it.”

Two old women, on their way home from church, in a country district of Scotland, were speaking of Napoleon’s overthrow, by the allied troops at Waterloo. The minister had been pointing a moral by aid of the Corsican hero’s defeat.

“Hoo is it,” said one, in her narrow way, “the Scotch aye win their battles?”

“Weel, ye ken, it’s because they aye pray afore they go in the fecht,” replied the other.

“Ay! But mercy, wuman, canna the French pray, as weel?”

“Nae doobt, they dae; but wha could understan’ they jabberin’ bodies?” snapped the interrogated one, in peremptory answer.

Curiously worded advertisements that are funny without intent are common in the London papers. Here are a few examples:

“A boy wanted who can open oysters with references.”

“Bulldog for sale; will eat anything, very fond of children.”

“Wanted an organist and a boy to blow the same.”

“Wanted, a boy to be partly outside and partly inside the counter.”

“Lost, near Highgate Archway, an umbrella belonging to a gentleman with a bent rib and a bone handle.”

“To be disposed of, a mail phaeton, the property of a gentleman with a movable headpiece as good as new.”

A tall young man stalked with stately stride into the office of a small hotel in a remote part of the White Mountains. Behind him came a severe valet carrying bags and a gun-case, and on a wagon at the door were two prosperous trunks. In an armchair behind the hotel counter sat a spare old man placidly chewing tobacco and reading the “Weekly Recorder.”

“Ah-h-h! Hm!” the tall young man began. “Is this Mr. Silas P. Meacham, proprietor of this hotel?”

“Yaas,” replied the old one, glancing up over his paper.

“I am Mr. Hanningford Wattster van Derventer, of the Metropolis Club, of New York,” said the visitor, impressively. “My friend, Mr. Vandergilt, told me you would take excellent care of me here.”

“Ya-as,” replied Silas, still buried in his paper.

“I am Mr. Hanningford Wattster van Derventer, of New York,” the visitor repeated. “My friend, Mr. Vandergilt, told me you would take excellent care of me here.”

“Ya-a-as,” said Silas, still chewing and reading his paper.

“I am Mr. Hanningford Wattster van Derventer, of New York,” the young man reiterated with the air of one who tells great news, also with rising indignation. “My friend, Mr. Vandergilt, told me you would take excellent care of me—show me every attention.”

“Wa-al,” exclaimed Silas P. Meacham, throwing down the paper and revealing his few yellow teeth in a mocking grin—“wa-al, what d’ye want me t’ do—kiss ye?”

Court—(to prosecutor)—“Then you recognize this handkerchief as the one which was stolen?”

Prosecutor—“Yes, your honor.”

Court—“And yet it isn’t the only handkerchief of the sort in the world. See, this one I have in my pocket is exactly like it.”

Prosecutor—“Very likely, your honor; there were two stolen.”

The company of soldiers had been receiving a lesson in minor tactics, and among other subjects was the method of patrols in getting information. The book said that information could be obtained from “mayors, postmasters, livery-stable keepers, doctors, peasants, etc.”

The lieutenant turned to Finnegan and said: “Do you know what a peasant is, Finnegan?”

He answered promptly, “Yes, sor.”

“Well, what is it?”

“It’s a bird, sor,” said Finnegan with evident pride.

Senator Pettus, of Alabama, was writing with a noisy, spluttering pen. Laying it down, he smiled and said: “Once I was spending the evening with a friend of mine in Selma. We sat in the dining-room and from the kitchen came a dreadful scratching sound. ‘Martha,’ said my friend to the maid, ‘what is that scratching? it must be the dog trying to get in.’ ‘Huh!’ said Martha, ‘Dat ain’ no dog, dat’s cook writin’ a love-letter to heh honeysuckle.’”

“No smoking in this coach, sir,” said the conductor of a passenger train. “I’m not smokin’,” answered the passenger with an injured air from the depths of his seat.

“You’ve got your pipe in your mouth,” declared the conductor with emphasis, sharply confident. “I hov,” retorted the Hibernian, “and I hov me fut in me shoe, too, but I’m not walkin’.”

Little Alice is old for her years. One evening after she had gone to bed she heard mama and papa laughing in much enjoyment over a game of flinch; she longed to get up and join them, but knew she must not. The next morning at breakfast she was very quiet. Presently she drew a deep sigh, and said, “What a good time you and papa had last night. Oh, I feel the need of a husband, mama, I do feel it!”

A teacher in one of the primary schools of New York recently read to her pupils “The Old Oaken Bucket.”

After explaining the song to them very carefully, she asked the class to copy the first stanza from the blackboard, where she had written it, and try to illustrate the verse by drawings in the same way a story is illustrated.

In a short while one little girl handed up her paper with several little dots between two lines, a circle, half a dozen dots, and three buckets.

“I do not quite understand this, Mamie,” said the teacher, kindly. “What is that circle?”

“Oh, that’s the well,” Mamie replied.

“And why do you have three buckets?” again asked the teacher.

“One,” answered the child, “is the oaken bucket, one is the iron-bound bucket, and the other is the moss-covered bucket that hung in the well.”

“But, Mamie, what are all these little dots for?”

“Why those are the spots which my infancy knew,” earnestly replied Mamie.

Four gentlemen went out to dine. They were Arthur Balfour, Joseph Chamberlain, Lord Charles Beresford, and the Japanese Minister. Mr. Arthur Balfour was standing treat and said to Joey, “What will you take?” “Oh, thanks, I’ll take Scotch, Arthur.” “And what will you take, Lord Charles?” “Oh, thanks, I’ll take Irish, Arthur.” “And now, what will you take?” addressing the Japanese Minister. “I’ll take Port Arthur, thanks.”

Not long after the great Chelsea fire some children in Newton, Massachusetts, held a Charity Fair by which eighteen dollars were realized. This they forwarded to the rector of a certain Boston church who had taken a prominent part in the relief work, with a letter which read somewhat as follows:

“We have had a fair and made eighteen dollars. We are sending it to you. Please give it to the Chelsea sufferers.

“Yours truly, etc.

“P. S. We hope the suffering is not all over.”

A story is told of a certain committee meeting in which the proceedings commenced with noise and gradually became uproarious. At last one of the disputants, losing all control over his emotions, exclaimed to his opponent: “Sir, you are, I think, the biggest ass that I ever had the misfortune to set eyes upon!” “Order! order!” said the chairman, gravely; “you seem to forget that I am in the room.”

An Irish priest had labored hard with one of his flock to induce him to give up whisky. “I tell you, Michael,” said the priest, “whisky is your worst enemy, and you should keep as far away from it as you can.” “The enemy is it, father?” responded Michael, “and it was your riverence’s self that was telling us in the pulpit last Sunday to love our enemies.” “So I was, Michael,” rejoined the priest, “but I didn’t tell you to swallow them.”

A Sabbath-school worker was visiting a Sabbath-school some distance from home. Being called upon to address the school, he commenced by asking, “Who can tell me something about Peter?” (the lesson was about Peter that day). Having received no answer from either large or small pupils, he again made the request. This time a little girl put up her hand. He called the little girl to him and placed her upon a chair. After complimenting her on her bravery and brightness, he asked her to tell him all she knew about Peter. In return came the following:

Senator Beveridge, in recommending broad and generous views to the graduating class of a medical school, told this story:

“I once saw two famous physicians introduced at a reception. They were deservedly famous, but they were of opposing schools; and the regular, as he shook the other by the hand, said loudly:

“‘I am glad to meet you as a gentleman, sir, though I can’t admit that you are a physician.’

“‘And I,’ said the homeopathist, smiling faintly, ’am glad to meet you as a physician, though I can’t admit you are a gentleman.’”

At a recent dinner in London the conversation turned to the subject of lynching in the United States. It was the general opinion that a large percentage of Americans met death at the end of a rope. Finally the hostess turned to an American, who had taken no part in the conversation, and said:

“You, sir, must have often seen these affairs.”

“Yes,” he replied, “we take a kind of municipal pride in seeing which city can show the greatest number of lynchings yearly.”

“Oh, do tell us about a lynching you have seen yourself,” broke in half a dozen voices at once.

“The night before I sailed for England,” said Eugene Field, “I was giving a dinner at a hotel to a party of intimate friends when a colored waiter spilled a plate of soup over the gown of a lady at an adjoining table. The gown was utterly ruined, and the gentlemen of her party at once seized the waiter, tied a rope around his neck, and at a signal from the injured lady swung him into the air.”

“Horrible,” said the hostess with a shudder. “And did you actually see this yourself?”

“Well, no,” admitted the American apologetically. “Just at that moment I happened to be downstairs killing the chef for putting mustard in the blanc mange.”

Mrs. Jones recently spent a few days at a farm, and in a moment of originality bought some poultry from the farmer with a view to their providing fresh eggs for breakfast every morning. She sent them to town per the local carrier, despatching a note at the same time to her husband telling him to look out for the consignment. When Jones reached home from his office he inquired if the poultry had arrived. The servant told him they had, but the man had carelessly put them in the back yard, leaving the door open, and they had all escaped. Thereupon a fowl hunt was immediately organized. The next day Jones saw the carrier. “Nice trick you played me yesterday,” said he; “spent three hours hunting those fowls and only found ten.” “Then think yourself blessed lucky,” replied the man. “I only brought six.”

A patronizing young lord was seated opposite the late James McNeill Whistler at dinner one evening. During a lull in the conversation he adjusted his monocle and leaned forward toward the artist.

“Aw, y’ know, Mr. Whistler,” he drawled, “I pahssed your house this mawning.”

“Thank you,” said Whistler quietly. “Thank you very much.”

The new minister in a Georgia church was delivering his first sermon. The darky janitor was a critical listener from a back corner of the church. The minister’s sermon was eloquent, and his prayers seemed to cover the whole category of human wants.

After the services one of the deacons asked the old darky what he thought of the new minister. “Don’t you think he offers up a good prayer, Joe?”

“Ah mos’ suhtainly does, boss. Why, dat man axed de good Lord fo’ things dat de odder preacher didn’t even know He had!”

For weeks the kindergarten had been deluged with nature verses, and the process of absorption was far advanced. Sufficiently to admit of a little squeezing with results, thought the teacher.

“Now, children,” she said, “I want you each to bring in a little verse that you have made yourselves about the buds, or the trees, or the flowers, or anything that pleases you.”

Various specimens were produced next day, but the gem of the collection was little May Flynn’s. With appropriate gestures she recited:

A story about King Edward is worth repeating. Just before the illness which caused the postponement of the coronation, he was racing down one of the country roads in his motor-car at a speed which was away beyond the legal limit.

“Hi! Hi!” called a policeman. “Stop there, in the name of the law!”

His Majesty is said to have slackened speed and called out: “But I’m the king!”

“Jest you come aht o’ that,” was the reply; “yer the third king wot’s come along this morning.”

In order to play “Rosemary” some years ago, John Drew shaved off his mustache, thereby greatly changing his appearance. Shortly afterward he met Max Beerbohm in the lobby of a London theater, but could not just then recall who the latter was. Mr. Beerbohm’s memory was better.

“Oh, Mr. Drew,” he said, “I’m afraid you don’t know me without your mustache.”

A truly eloquent parson had been preaching for an hour or so on the immortality of the soul.

“I looked at the mountains,” he declaimed, “and could not help thinking, ‘Beautiful as you are, you will be destroyed, while my soul will not.’ I gazed upon the ocean and cried, ‘Mighty as you are you will eventually dry up, but not I.’”

“Now if I don’t git rid o’ dis cold soon,” complained Jimmy, the jockey, “I’ll be a dead one.”

“Did you go to Dr. Goodman, as I told you?” asked his friend.

“Naw! De sign on his door said ’10 to 1’ an’ I wouldn’t monkey wid no long shot like dat.”

Herbert S. Stone, the publisher, described at a dinner in Washington the amusing methods of a newspaper writer who used to write articles at a set rate a column.

He was once commissioned to do a serial story for a Chicago paper. The story, as it proceeded from week to week, was interesting, but it contained many passages like the following:

“Did you hear him?”

“I did.”

“Truly?”

“Truly.”

“Where?”

“By the well.”

“When?”

“To-day.”

“Then he lives?”

“He does.”

“Ah.”

The editor, sending for the man, said:

“Hereafter we will pay you by the letters in your serial. We will pay you so much a thousand letters.”

The young man, looking crestfallen, went away, but in the very next instalment of his story he introduced a character who stuttered, and all through the chapter were scattered passages like this:

“B-b-b-b-believe me, s-s-s-sir, I am n-n-not g-g-g-guilty. M-m-m-my m-m-m-mother c-c-c-committed this c-c-c-crime.”

A man with a soft, low voice had just completed his purchases in a department store of the City of Churches.

“What is the name?” asked the clerk.

“Jepson,” replied the man.

“Chipson?”

“No, Jepson.”

“Oh, yes, Jefferson.”

“No, Jepson; J-e-p-s-o-n.”

“Jepson?”

“That’s it. You have it. Sixteen eighty-two—”

“Your first name, initial, please.”

“Oh, K.”

“O. K. Jepson.”

“Excuse me, it isn’t O. K. You did not understand me. I said ‘Oh.’”

“O. Jepson.”

“No; rub out the O and let the K stand.”

The clerk looked annoyed. “Will you please give me your initials again?”

“I said K.”

“I beg your pardon, you said O. K. Perhaps you had better write it yourself.”

“I said ‘Oh’—”

“Just now you said K.”

“Allow me to finish what I started to say. I said ‘Oh,’ because I did not understand what you were asking me. I did not mean that it was my initial. My name is Kirby Jepson.”

“Oh!”

“No, not O., but K.,” said the man. “Give me the pencil, and I’ll write it down for you myself. There, I guess it’s O. K. now.”

The furnishing of the new house had gone on vociferously. All the family told stories of the beautiful and rare articles picked up at auctions, usually at such bargains as only amateurs in such matters are able to find. There was naturally much curiosity to see how the house looked. The first visitor who had the opportunity to inspect it was eagerly questioned by her friends.

“I can’t describe it myself,” she explained. “All I can say is that auctions speak louder than words.”

When Frank R. Stockton started out with his Rudder Grange experiences he undertook to keep chickens. One old motherly Plymouth Rock brought out a brood late in the fall, and Stockton named each of the chicks after some literary friend, among the rest Mary Mapes Dodge. Mrs. Dodge was visiting the farm some time later, and, happening to think of her namesake, she said: “By the way, Frank, how does little Mary Mapes Dodge get along?” “The funny thing about little Mary Mapes Dodge,” said he, “is, she turns out to be Thomas Bailey Aldrich.”

A short time ago a lady with an only child (aged seven) was entertaining the bishop of the diocese to afternoon tea. The small girl was allowed to come to tea, but her mother had instilled into her mind the necessity of speaking reverently to the bishop. Tea came and with it the pangs of hunger, but at the same time her mother’s warning, “speak reverently,” was always before her. After sitting for about ten minutes gazing at the good things and repeating over and over again, “speak reverently,” she exclaimed, “For God’s sake pass me the bread and butter.”

Hiram Hardscrabble and his load of hay, two horses, and a perfectly good wagon were pitched so high and so far by a reckless railroad train that when they came down they weren’t—any of ’em—good for much. The local Congressman took the case, and after some months advised Hiram to accept the railroad company’s offer of lifelong employment at $15 a week. Hiram accepted. They put him out as a flagman on a crossing near his native village.

Cassidy, the section boss, stopped his handcar before the flag-shanty, and after a searching look at Hiram advised as follows:

“So you’re the new flagman, are ye? And ye’ve niver railroaded before. No harm. We’ll make a man iv ye. See, now, there’s yer red flag and yer green flag and yer white flag, and yer thrain schedule within on the wall. All ye have to do is dhrop the gates befoor the thrains do come, so that they’ll have a clear thrack. D’ye mind, now?

“But there’s wan thing above all others—th’ Impire Shtate Express! Putt yer gates down two minyits before she comes and keep them down till she’s pasht. Mind now, she must niver be late on this section. Niver wan minyit late. I won’t sthand f’r it. Remimber—th’ Impire Shtate Express. She must niver be late here.”

Hiram promised. At 2 p.m., when the Empire State Express was due in two minutes, he dropped the crossing gates and stood by with the white flag to wave her along. Three minutes passed, four, five—and still no train. As a matter of fact, she had lost half an hour at an open draw on the Harlem River in the morning, and was laboring mightily to regain lost time in spite of her fast schedule.

Seven minutes late, and then Hiram heard a wild shriek a mile away and saw the express coming. He darted into the shanty, grabbed a red flag, and leaped out upon the track, waving it furiously. The engineer shut off, threw over the reverse lever, gave her sand and the air; and the mighty train stopped short, in a whirl of sand, cinders, and sparks, brakes creaking and passengers pitchpoling everywhere.

“What’s the matter now?” roared the engineer, thrusting half his body out of the cab and glaring down at Hiram.

“Be yeou th’ ingineer?” asked the flagman, peering at him with suspicion.

“Yes, yes! Whad-do-you want?”

“I want t’ know whut’s made ye so goldinged late? Cassidy says he wun’t stand f’r it.”

During a match at St. Andrews, Scotland, a rustic was struck in the eye accidentally by a golf ball. Running up to his assailant, he yelled:

“This’ll cost ye five pounds—five pounds!”

“But I called out ‘fore’ as loudly as I could,” explained the golfer.

“Did ye, sir?” replied the troubled one, much appeased. “Weel, I didna hear; I’ll take fower.”

Mark Twain observed once at a public dinner that he had written a friendly letter to Queen Victoria protesting against a tax being levied in England on his head, on the ground that it was a gas-works. “I don’t know you,” he wrote, “but I’ve met your son. He was at the head of a procession in the Strand, and I was on a ’bus.” Years afterward he met the King at Homburg, and they had a long talk. At parting the King said: “I am glad to have met you again.” That last word troubled Mark, who asked whether the King had not mistaken him for some one else. The reply—“Why, don’t you remember meeting me in the Strand when I was at the head of a procession and you were on a ’bus?” revealed the strength of Royal memories.

An Irishman and an Englishman were recounting feats of physical prowess. The Englishman, by way of showing his strength, said that he was accustomed to swim across the Thames three times before breakfast every morning.

“Well,” said the Irishman, “that may be all right, but it do seem to me that your clothes would be on the wrong side of the river all the time.”

An excess luggage porter at a large railway station said to a “commercial,” “I see your luggage is overweight, sir.” “Ah! your visionary powers are far too acute for me, my friend.” “What did you say, sir?” “I say you can see too well for me.” “Ah! to be sure, sir. I take you——” “Could you see as well now if you had sixpence over one eye?” “Well, I don’t know, sir, but I’m darned well sure I couldn’t see at all if I’d another over t’other one.”

Henry James, the American novelist, lives at Rye, one of the Cinque Ports, but recently he left Rye for a time and took a house in the country near the estate of a millionaire jam manufacturer, retired. This man, having married an earl’s daughter, was ashamed of the trade whereby he had piled up his fortune.

The jam manufacturer one day wrote Mr. James an impudent letter, vowing that it was outrageous the way the James servants were trespassing on his grounds. Mr. James wrote back:

“Dear Sir: I am very sorry to hear that my servants have been poaching on your preserves.

“P.S.—You’ll excuse my mentioning your preserves, won’t you?”

An Omaha man was taking an automobile trip through the ranching section of the State, and to save time took a short cut over a bad stretch of road, full of jolts and bumps. During the afternoon his machine broke down, and, as the monkey wrench was missing from his tool kit, he started on foot for the nearest ranch house to borrow one. On arriving he found the farmer repairing his fence.

“Have you a monkey wrench about here that I can use?” he asked.

“Ay tank not,” replied the farmer. “Yonson in nax saction ha kape cattle ranch, Svenson down har ha kape sheep ranch. Faller bane big fool to make monkey ranch in dese place.”

Andrew Carnegie is fond of the Scots’ national instrument, the bagpipe, and when he is at home at Skibo Castle usually has his pet piper to play for him at dinner. Particularly is the musician in attendance when the great philanthropist has guests.

On one occasion a big company of men sat down to table, and the piper pranced up and down the room as he played.

The whole thing was new to a French literary man, who politely asked the guest on his right, “Why does he walk up and down when he does this thing? Does it add to the volume of the sound, or does it make a cadence?”

“No,” said the other, “I don’t think it’s that. I fancy it’s to prevent the listeners getting his range with a knife or a water bottle.”

Some time ago Professor Brander Matthews went to dine at a certain dramatic club in New York. Going to the club letter box he picked up and perused a letter which seemed to be addressed to him. It was a request from a tailor for the settlement of his little bill. As the man’s name was quite strange to him he made a careful examination, and finding that he had been mistaken, put the missive back into its place. Immediately afterward he saw the real owner take possession of it, walk into the reading-room, read it carefully, and tear it into shreds. Then, assured of an audience, the man whose clothes were still unpaid for, assumed the weary smile of an accomplished ladykiller and remarked audibly, “Poor, silly, little girl!”

A street-car “masher” tried in every way to attract the attention of the pretty young girl opposite him. Just as he had about given up, the girl, entirely unconscious of what had been going on, happened to glance in his direction. The “masher” immediately took fresh courage.

“It’s cold out to-day, isn’t it?” he ventured.

The girl smiled and nodded assent, but had nothing to say.

“My name is Specknoodle,” he volunteered.

“Oh, I am so sorry,” she said sympathetically, as she left the car.

A Jew crossing the Brooklyn Bridge met a friend who said, “Abe, I’ll bet you ten dollars that I can tell you exactly what you’re thinking about.”

“Vell,” agreed Abe, producing a greasy bill, “I’ll haf to take dot bet. Put up your money.”

The friend produced two fives. “Abe,” he said, “you are thinking of going over to Brooklyn, buying a small stock of goods, renting a small store, taking out all the fire-insurance that you can possibly get, and then burning out. Do I win my bet?”

“Vell,” replied Abe, “you don’t egsactly vin, but the idea is worth de money. Take id.”

Andrew Carnegie tells a good story illustrating the canniness of the Scot.

An Irish friend had insisted that a Scotchman should stay at his house, instead of at a hotel, and kept him there for a month, playing the host in detail, even to treating him to sundry visits to the theater, paying the cab fares and the rest. When the visitor was returning home, the Irishman saw him to the station, and they went together to have a last cigar.

“Now, look here,” said the Scot, “I’ll hae nae mair o’ this. Here ye’ve been keepin’ me at your hoose for a month, an’ payin’ for a’ the amusements and cabs and so on—I tell you I’ll stan’ nae mair o’ it! We’ll just hae a toss for this one!”

“Uncle Joe” Cannon has a way of speaking his mind that is sometimes embarrassing to others. On one occasion an inexperienced young fellow was called upon to make a speech at a banquet at which Speaker Cannon was also present.

“Gentlemen,” began the young fellow, “my opinion is that the generality of mankind in general is disposed to take advantage of the generality of ——”

“Sit down, son,” interrupted “Uncle Joe.” “You are coming out of the same hole you went in at.”

It is a well-established fact that the average school-teacher experiences a great deal of difficulty when she attempts to enforce the clear pronunciation of the terminal “g” of each present participle.

“Robert,” said the teacher of one of the lower classes during the progress of a reading exercise, “please read the first sentence.”

A diminutive lad rose to his feet and, amid a series of labored gasps, breathed forth the following:

“See the horse runnin’.”

“Don’t forget the ‘g,’ Robert,” admonished the teacher.

“Gee! See the horse runnin’.”

Miss Jeannette Gilder was one of the ardent enthusiasts at the début of Tetrazzini. After the first act she rushed to the back of the house to greet one of her friends. “Don’t you think she is a wonder?” she asked excitedly.

“She is a great singer unquestionably,” responded her more phlegmatic friend, “but the registers of her voice are not so even as, for instance, Melba’s.”

“Oh, bother Melba,” said Miss Gilder. “Tetrazzini gives infinitely more heat from her registers.”

Walter Damrosch tells of a matron in Chicago who, in company with her young nephew, was attending a musical entertainment.

The selections were apparently entirely unfamiliar to the youth; but when the “Wedding March” of Mendelssohn was begun he began to evince more interest.

“That sounds familiar,” he said. “I’m not strong on these classical pieces, but that’s a good one. What is it?”

“That,” gravely explained the matron, “is the ‘Maiden’s Prayer.’”

A messenger came tearing up to the White House in ’63, and hurriedly gaining admission to Mr. Lincoln, informed him in great excitement that a large wagon train had been surprised a short way across the Potomac and a brigadier-general taken prisoner.

“Did they capture the train?” inquired Old Abe.

“No, sir, the regiment came up and saved it,” answered the messenger, “but the general, Mr. President, is a prisoner.”

“Oh, never mind that,” said Lincoln. “I can make a dozen generals in a day, but mules cost $300 apiece.”

Two men were riding together one day through Paris. One was exceedingly bright and clever, while the other was correspondingly dull. As is usually the case, the latter monopolized the conversation. The talk of the dullard had become almost unendurable, when his companion saw a man on the street far ahead yawning.

“Look,” he exclaimed, “we are overheard!”

One afternoon Mrs. Murphy appeared at the settlement house, all dressed up in her best bonnet and shawl. A huge black and blue spot disfigured one side of her face, however, and one eye was nearly closed. “Why, Mrs. Murphy, what is the matter?” cried one of the teachers; and then, realizing that she might have asked a tactless question, she hastily turned it off, by saying, “Well, cheer up, you might be worse off.” “Sure an’ I might,” responded the indignant Mrs. Murphy. “I might not be married at all!”

A young woman in Central Park overheard an old negress call to a piccaninny: “Come heah, Exy, Exy!”

“Excuse me, but that’s a queer name for a baby, aunty?”

“Dat ain’t her full name,” explained the old woman with pride; “dat’s jes’ de pet name I calls for short. Dat chile got a mighty grand name. Her ma picked it out in a medicine book—yessum, de child’s full name is Eczema.”

Sir Richard Bethell, afterward Lord Westbury, with a suave voice and a stately manner, nevertheless had a way of bearing down the foe with almost savage wit. Once, in court, he had to follow a barrister who had delivered his remarks in very loud tones. “Now that the noise in court has subsided,” murmured Bethell, “I will tell your Honor in two sentences the gist of the case.”

The resemblance of the Rev. Robert Collyer to Henry Ward Beecher was often remarked. One day, when walking through Central Park, hat in hand, as the day was hot, at a sharp turn in the path he came upon an old lady seated on one of the park benches. At sight of him she jumped to her feet, exclaiming:

“Goodness me! This is not Mr. Beecher?”

“No, madam,” Dr. Collyer answered, “it is not. I hope Mr. Beecher is in a cooler place.”

It is not necessary that a lawyer should be eloquent to win verdicts, but he must have the tact which turns an apparent defeat to his own advantage. One of the most successful of verdict winners was Sir James Scarlett. His skill in turning a failure into a success was wonderful. In a breach-of-promise case the defendant, Scarlett’s client, was alleged to have been cajoled into an engagement by the plaintiff’s mother. She was a witness in behalf of her daughter, and completely baffled Scarlett, who cross-examined her. But in his argument he exhibited his tact by this happy stroke of advocacy: “You saw, gentlemen of the jury, that I was but a child in her hands. What must my client have been?”

He was a young man—a candidate for an agricultural constituency—and he was sketching in glowing colors to an audience of rural voters the happy life the laborer would lead under an administration for the propagation of sweetness and light. “We have not yet three acres and a cow, but it will come. Old-age pensions are still of the future, but they will come.” Similarly every item of his comprehensive program was endorsed by the same parrot cry. Then he went on to talk of prison reforms. “I have not yet personally,” he said, “been inside a criminal lunatic asylum.” Then there was a voice from the back of the hall, “But it will come.”

The judge had had his patience sorely tried by lawyers who wished to talk and by men who wished to evade jury service.

“Shudge!” cried a little German in the jury box.

“What is it?” demanded the judge.

“I t’ink I like to go home to my wife,” said the German.

“You can’t,” retorted the judge. “Sit down.”

“But, shudge,” persisted the German, “I don’t t’ink I make a good shuror.”

“You’re the best in the box,” said the judge. “Sit down.”

“What box?” said the German.

“Jury box,” said the judge.

“But, shudge,” persisted the little German, “I don’t speak good English.”

“You don’t have to speak any at all,” said the judge. “Sit down.”

The little German pointed at the lawyers to make his last desperate plea.

“Shudge,” he said, “I don’t make noddings of what these fellers say.”

It was the judge’s chance to get even for many annoyances.

“Neither can any one else,” he said. “Sit down.”

A parson, diminutive in size and his head covered with hair of the most fiery hue, officiated one Sunday for a friend in a colliery village near Nottingham. The old-fashioned pulpit had a high desk over which the parson’s red head was hardly visible. This was too much for a burly collier seated immediately under the pulpit, who when he heard the text, “I am the Light of the World,” exclaimed to the clerk, “Push him up a bit higher, mate; don’t let him burn in the socket.”

“Biddy,” said Pat timidly, “did ye iver think o’ marryin’?”’

“Shure, now,” said Biddy, looking demurely at her shoe—“shure, now, the subject has niver entered me mind at all, at all.”

“It’s sorry Oi am,” said Pat, and he turned away.

“Wan minute, Pat,” said Biddy softly. “Ye’ve set me thinkin’.”

From a French journal comes this little anecdote of a tutor and his royal pupil.

The lesson was in Roman history, and the prince was unprepared.

“We come now to the Emperor Caligula. What do you know about him, prince?”

The question was followed by a silence that was becoming awkward when it was broken by the diplomatic tutor. “Your highness is right,” he said, “perfectly right. The less said about this emperor the better.”

The following copies of queer advertisements have been collected and printed by club women:

“Bulldog for sale; will eat anything; is very fond of children.”

“Lost—Near Highgate Archway, an umbrella belonging to a gentleman with a bent rib and a bone handle.”

“Mr. Brown, furrier, begs to announce that he will make up gowns, capes and so forth, for ladies out of their own skin.”

“Wanted, a herder for 500 sheep that can speak Spanish fluently.”

“For Sale—House in good neighborhood, by an invalid lady three stories high and heated with furnace.”

A contemporary contains the startling news that “A carload of brick came in for a walk through the park.”

An error for which nervousness may have been responsible was that made by the boy who was told to take the Bishop’s shaving water to him one morning and cautioned to answer the Bishop’s inquiry “Who’s there?” by saying, “The boy, my Lord.” Whether from nervousness or not, the boy managed to transpose the words of this sentence with ludicrous effect, and the Bishop was surprised and perhaps alarmed to hear in response to his inquiry the answer, “The Lord, my boy.”

Tailor—“Do you want padded shoulders, my little man?”

Willie—“Naw; pad de pants! Dat’s where I need it most.”

Dr. Tupper does not hesitate to take examples from his own profession, as witness his curious story of the young clergyman who, after preaching a funeral sermon, wished to invite the mourners to view the remains, but became confused and exclaimed:

“We will now pass around the bier.”

“Wossatchoogot?”

“Afnoonnoos. Lassdition.”

“Enthinkinnut?”

“Naw. Nothninnut ’cept lasspeechrosefelt’s. Lottarot.”

“Donsayso? Wosswetherpredickshun?”

“Sesrain. Donbleevetho. Funthingthiswethernevkintellwossgunnado.”

“Thasright!”

President Eliot of Harvard recently visited a hotel in New York, and when he left the dining-room the colored man in charge of the hats picked up his tile without hesitation and handed it to him.

“How did you know that was my hat when you have a hundred there?” asked Mr. Eliot.

“I didn’t know it, sah,” said the negro.

“Didn’t know it was mine? Then why did you give it to me?”

“Because you gave it to me, sah.”

“How small have you felt?” she asked anxiously.

“Well,” he replied, “I have felt as small as a man in the presence of the head plumber.”

“That isn’t enough.”

“I have felt as small as the Prohibition nominee for Vice-President.”

She shook her head.

“Or as a man when his wife catches him in a lie.”

“That isn’t anything.”

“I have felt as small as the man who made a righteous complaint to the president of a trolley line.”

She shook her head again sadly.

“That isn’t anything to the way I feel,” she said. “You know I have never been to Europe, and I’ve been talking with a girl who has just returned.”

In one of the Atlanta Sunday-schools recently the lesson for the day had to do with Mammon and the corrupting influences of great riches.

Toward the close of the exercises the superintendent called upon the infant class to repeat the Golden Text, which had special reference to man’s inability to serve his Creator and the money-god at one and the same time. The class failed to respond as it should, when the superintendent, noticing his own young hopeful in the ranks, who had that very morning been drilled thoroughly on the text, called on him. The response was immediate, though a slight departure from the original, for in a voice that was distinctly heard in all parts of the room there came the following modification:

“Ye can not serve God and mama!”

“Any complaints, corporal?” said the colonel, making one morning a personal inspection.

“Yes, sir. Taste that, sir,” said the corporal promptly.

The colonel put the liquid to his lips. “Why,” he said, “that’s the best soup I ever tasted!”

“Yes, sir,” said the corporal, “and the cook wants to call it coffee.”

Reporter—“To what do you attribute your great age?”

Oldest Inhabitant—“I hain’t sure yet, sir. There be several o’ them patent-medicine companies as is bargainin’ with me.”

Mr. Choate, ex-Ambassador of the United States at London, tells of the address made by an Irish officer to his men who had just returned from a fruitless expedition.

Rising to his feet with the utmost solemnity and seriousness, the officer said:

“My men, I am fully aware of the fact that many of you brave fellows are disappointed because in this campaign you were afforded little opportunity to fight; but, my brave boys, reflect upon this: that had there been any fighting, there would have been many absent faces here to-day!”

“Young man (23) with five years’ experience in leading publishers, desires to better his position.”

But what better position could there be than that of leading our publishers?

From Children’s Chat, by “Grandma” in the “Times” of Natal:

“I want you, my dears, to write me a short snake story, something that really happened to some one you know; and if you can tell me of a child being really bitten I shall be glad to hear about it.”

Truly it is said that a child’s best friend is his grandma.

Wandering over Salisbury Plain on Whit Monday, a correspondent came across a large stone inscribed: “Turn me over.” After much difficulty he succeeded in turning it over, and found on the under side of the stone the words: “Now turn me back again, so that I can catch some other idiot.”

He—“Dearest, if I had known this tunnel was so long, I’d have given you a jolly hug.”

She—“Didn’t you? Why—why—”

Timid Lady (going up the Washington Monument elevator).—“Conductor, what if the rope breaks that holds us?”

Conductor—“Oh, there are a number more attached as safety ropes.”

Timid Lady—“But if they all break, where shall we go?”

Conductor—“Oh, well, m’m, that all depends upon what kind of a life you have been living before.”

Elmer, though only a little boy, was the oldest child of an already numerous family. He was invited to go in and see a little baby sister. Asked by his mother what he thought of the baby, he said, “W’y, mama, it’s real nice. But do you think we needed it?”

Time: 2 a.m.

“Ma, I want a drink!”

“Hush, darling; turn over and go to sleep.”

“I want a drink!”

“No, you are restless. Turn over, dear, and go to sleep.”

(After five minutes.) “Ma, I want a drink.”

“Lie still, Ethel, and go to sleep.”

“But I want a drink!”

“No, you don’t want a drink; you had a drink just before you went to bed. Now be still and go right to sleep.”

(After five minutes.) “Ma, won’t you please give me a drink?”

“If you say another word I’ll get up and spank you. Now go to sleep. You are a naughty girl.”

(After two minutes.) “Ma, when you get up to spank me will you give me a drink?”

Once upon a time there was a young married man who had some slight bickerings with the woman of his choice. These having occurred with great frequency, he went to his father, who was older and much more married.

“Father,” he said, “is it not meet that I should be the ringmaster in my own wickiup? Or must I kowtow to the old lady?”

Whereat the old man smiled wisely and said:

“My son, yonder are a hundred chickens and here a fine team of horses. Do you place the feathered tribe on this wagon, hitch up the team, and start out. Wherever you find a man and his wife living together, make diligent investigation to find out who the commanding officer is, and where it is the woman give her a chicken. If you find a man running a house give him one of the horses.”

So the young man loaded up the fowls and started out upon his pilgrimage of self-education. And when he had but seven chickens left, he approached a habitation with his forlorn inquiry, to which the man replied:

“I’m the ace-high cockalorum of this outfit.”

And the wife, without fear or favor, corroborated the statement. Then the young man said:

“Take your choice of the horses. Either one you fancy is yours.” And after the man had walked around the team several times and looked in their mouths, he said, “Well, I’ll take the bay.”

Now, the wife didn’t like bay horses, and she called John aside, and after whispering in his ear she allowed him to return.

“I guess I’ll take the black horse,” he said.

“Not a bit of it,” said the pilgrim. “You’ll take a chicken.”

They were talking over the engagement of one of the daughters of the family when the negro servant came in. One of the girls asked: “Cindy, have you seen Edith’s fiancé?” “No’m, honey, hit ain’t been in de wash yit.”

In the late financial stringency a clerk in one of the New York banks was trying to explain to a stolid old Dutchman why the bank could not pay cash to depositors as formerly, and was insisting that he be satisfied with Clearing House checks. But the old man could not grasp the situation, and finally the president of the bank was called upon to enlighten the dissatisfied customer. After a detailed explanation of the financial situation the president concluded, “Now, my good man, you understand, don’t you?”

“Yes,” dubiously replied the Dutchman, “I tinks I understand. It’s just like this; ven my baby vakes up in der night und cries for milk, I give her a milk ticket.”

Levinsky, despairing of his life, made an appointment with a famous specialist. He was surprised to find fifteen or twenty people in the waiting-room.

After a few minutes he leaned over to a gentleman near him and whispered, “Say, mine frient, this must be a pretty goot doctor, ain’t he?”

“One of the best,” the gentleman told him.

Levinsky seemed to be worrying over something.

“Vell, say,” he whispered again, “he must be pretty exbensive, then, ain’t he? Vat does he charge?”

The stranger was annoyed by Levinsky’s questions and answered rather shortly: “Fifty dollars for the first consultation and twenty-five dollars for each visit thereafter.”

“Mine Gott!” gasped Levinsky. “Fifty tollars the first time und twenty-five tollars each time afterwards!”

For several minutes he seemed undecided whether to go or to wait. “Und twenty-five tollars each time afterward,” he kept muttering. Finally, just as he was called into the office, he was seized with a brilliant inspiration. He rushed toward the doctor with outstretched hands.

“Hello, doctor,” he said effusively. “Vell, here I am again.”

A clergyman who was holding a children’s service at a Continental winter resort had occasion to catechize his hearers on the parable of the unjust steward. “What is a steward?” he asked. A little boy who had arrived from England a few days before held up his hand. “He is a man, sir,” he replied, “who brings you a basin.”

A teacher giving a lecture on the rhinoceros found his class was not giving him all the attention it should. “Now, gentlemen,” he said, “if you want to realize the true hideous nature of this animal you must keep your eyes fixed on me.”

A negro had made several ineffectual efforts to propose to the object of his affections, but on each occasion his courage failed him at the last moment. After thinking the matter over he finally decided to telephone, which he did. “Is that you, Samantha?” he inquired upon being given the proper number. “Yes, it’s me,” returned the lady. “Will you marry me, Samantha, and marry me quick?” “Yes, I will,” was the reply; “who’s speaking?”

He was a big, black, good-hearted, old negro, stranded near Boston, and he had decided, after considerable “cogitation,” to work his way back to, the South, where he would feel more at home. In Boston, in Springfield, in Hartford, in New Haven, it was always the same. When he rang a bell and asked for work and a bite to eat the answer usually was, “I’m very sorry, but there’s not a thing to be done here to-day.” There were occasional exceptions, of course, or uncle could never have got on, but the thing most to be counted upon was pleasing politeness coupled with nothing else.

At last the old man left New York and then Philadelphia behind, and one day found himself in Baltimore. His knowledge of geography was nil, but he thought he ought soon to be getting into “de Souf,” and with that hope at heart rang the bell of a fine house on Charles Street. The door was opened by the host himself, who, after an instant’s survey of the figure before him, blurted out:

“Why, yo’ —— black rascal! How dare yo’ ring this bell? Get off mah steps this secon’, befo’ I brek yo’ haid!”

“’Deed I will, boss; ’deed I will,” came the hurried answer. “I wuz on’y lookin’ fer a bite to eat, boss.”

“A bite to eat!” repeated the other. “An’ don’t yo’ know whar to go for all yo’ want? Get yo’self round back, an’ they’ll feed yo’ full—but cyart yo’ good-for-nuthin’ black carcass off these steps, I say.”

And as uncle went around to the side door he raised his hands to heaven, and with tears of rejoicing running down his furrowed cheeks, said:

“Bress de Lord! I’s back agin among mah own folks!”

A little boy who had just joined Sunday-school was asked by his mother how he liked it.

“Why!” exclaimed Charlie disgustedly, “they don’t know much. The teacher asked what was the collec’, and I was the only one who knew.”

“And what did you say, dear?”

“Why, I told them pretty quick that it was a pain in the stomach.”

Travelers’ tales which often add charm to the conversation of an agreeable person frequently render a bore more tiresome than ever, a fact that was amusingly illustrated by an occurrence in a Baltimore clubhouse not long ago.

“There I stood, gentlemen,” the long-winded narrator was saying, after droning on for an hour with reference to his trip to Switzerland—“there I stood, with the abyss yawning in front of me.”

“Pardon me,” hastily interjected one of the unfortunate men who had been obliged to listen to the story, “but was that abyss yawning before you got there?”

After a lesson on digestion the teacher, anxious to know how much her instruction had been understood, questioned the class. The first answer was rather discouraging, as the girl called upon made this startling statement:

“Digestion begins in the mouth and ends in the big and little testament.”

It was the same teacher who received the following note:

“Pleas teacher do not tel Mary any more about her incides it makes her so proud.”

When Sam Jones was holding his meetings in Dallas, on one occasion he said: “There’s no such thing as a perfect man. Anybody present who has ever known a perfect man stand up.”

Nobody stood up.

“Those who have ever known a perfect woman, stand up.”

One demure little woman stood up.

“Did you ever know an absolutely perfect woman?” asked Sam, somewhat amazed.

“I didn’t know her personally,” replied the little old woman, “but I have heard a great deal about her. She was my husband’s first wife.”

Former President Scott, of the Cincinnati Southern Railroad, was greatly annoyed, when he first took hold of the road, by the claims for horses and cattle killed by trains on their way through Kentucky. It seemed as though it were not possible for a train to run north or south through Kentucky without killing either a horse or a cow. And every animal killed, however scrawny, scrubby, or miserable it may have been before the accident, always figured in the claims subsequently presented as of the best blood in Kentucky. “Well,” said Scott one day, after examining a claim, “I don’t know anything that improves stock in Kentucky like crossing it with a locomotive.”

One of a loving couple (watching a pile-driver at work)—“Dear, I feel so sorry for those poor men. They have been trying for the last half hour to lift that thing out, and every time they get it almost to the top, it falls back again.”

Sentinel (on guard)—“Halt! Who comes there?”

The Colonel—“Fool!”

Sentinel—“Advance, fool, and give the countersign.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry I could not come to your ‘At Home’ yesterday.”

“Dear me, weren’t you there?”

“Why of course I was—how very silly of me—I quite forgot.”

A theological student was sent one Sunday to supply a vacant pulpit in a Connecticut valley town. A few days after he received a copy of the weekly paper of that place with the following item marked:

“Rev. —— of the senior class at Yale Seminary supplied the pulpit at the Congregational Church last Sunday, and the church will now be closed three weeks for repairs.”

A Certain Ohio lady with a large sense of religious duty was recently importuned by a tramp. The good religionist, after considerable hesitation, produced a piece of dry bread which she delivered with the following formula, evidently prepared for such occasion:

“Now, sir, not for your sake, nor for my sake, but for God’s sake, I give you this bread.”

The tramp accepted the offering and had got as far as the gate when he suddenly turned and came back where his benefactress was waiting to see him safely out.

“Say, miss,” he drawled, “not for your sake, nor for my sake, but for God’s sake put some butter on it.”

“Mother, mother, mother, turn the hose on me!” sang little Willie, as his mama was dressing him one morning.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“You’ve put my stockin’s on wrong side out,” he said.

The will of Stephen Girard provided that no clergyman should ever be allowed to enter the splendid Girard College at Philadelphia.

One day a very clerical looking man, with immaculate white cravat and choker, approached the entrance.

“You can’t come in here,” said the janitor.

“The —— I can’t!” said the stranger.

“Oh,” said the janitor, “excuse me. Step right in.”

It is said that the visitor was the late State Senator Sessions, of Western New York.

The following anecdote of ex-President Roosevelt’s youth is told:

When Roosevelt was a student at Harvard he was required to recite a poem in public declamation. He got as far as a line which read:

“When Greece her knees in suppliance bent,” when he stuck there.

Again he tried:

“When Greece her knees...,” but could get no farther.

The teacher waited patiently, finally remarking:

“Grease her knees again, Roosevelt, then perhaps she’ll go.”

A Young graduate in law, who had had some experience in New York City, wrote to a prominent practitioner in Arkansas to inquire what chance there was in that section for such a one as he described himself to be. He said: “I am a Republican in politics, and an honest young lawyer.” The reply that came seemed encouraging in its interest: “If you are a Republican the game laws here will protect you, and if you are an honest lawyer you will have no competition.”

Brown—“Ah! they’ve just dropped the anchor.”

Mrs. B.—“And served ’em right! It’s been dangling outside all the morning!”

As the immaculate young woman and the tired but happy-looking young man entered the Pullman, followed by a grinning porter, the other passengers became “wise” in a moment. The stout drummer leaned over to the man behind him and remarked:

“Bride and groom—100 to 1.”

Every one turned to view the newcomers, who had deposited themselves vis-à-vis in No. 4. As if unconscious of any scrutiny, the young man said, in a high, nasal voice:

“Well, do as you like about it; either increase the margin or let it go. You didn’t follow my advice in the first place, but if you want to pull out, you’d better do it now.”

“Oh, I know,” the woman replied. “What’s the use of going all over it again?”

“Huh!” said the stout man’s companion. “Guess you lose. Been playing the market. Not much bride and groom talk in that.”

The rest of the passengers sniffed and then turned their backs on the new couple. Whereat the young man smiled at the young woman, and they softly joined hands as he whispered:

“Millicent, dear, my shoes are full of rice.”

A Short time ago an old lady went on board Nelson’s flag-ship, the Victory. The different objects of interest were duly shown her, and on reaching the spot where the great naval hero was wounded (which is marked by a raised brass plate), the officer remarked: “Here Nelson fell.” “And no wonder!” exclaimed the old lady; “I nearly fell there myself.”

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.”

Stopping on the second floor, where this man also said he lived, he opened the door and pushed him in. As he again 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’.”

Husband comes in to find his wife turning everything topsy-turvy.

“Good gracious! Isabel, what are you doing?”

“I just received a telegram from Aunt Jane saying she’ll be here at 6.30 and I can’t find her photograph anywhere.”

At the school at which the writer was educated there was a certain assistant master who invariably “put his foot in it” when he got the chance. On one occasion, being exasperated by the conduct of a boy, he turned to him and said, “Look here, X., I’ll take care that you won’t be the biggest fool in the class as long as I’m here.”

Mrs. Barron was one of the new “summer folk,” and not acquainted with the vernacular. Consequently, she was somewhat surprised, upon sending an order for a roast of lamb to the nearest butcher, to receive the following note in reply: “Dear Mam. I am sorry I have not killed myself this week, but I can get you a leg off my brother (the butcher at the farther end of the town). He’s full up of what you want. I seen him last night with five legs. Yours respectful. George Gunton.”

An artist employed in repairing the properties of an old church in Belgium, being refused payment in a lump sum, was asked for details, and sent in his bill as follows:-

1. Corrected the Ten Commandments, £1 10 0 2. Embellished Pontius Pilate and put a ribbon in his bonnet, 0 8 1 3. Put a New Tail on the Rooster of St. Peter and mended his Comb, 0 12 0 4. Re-plumed and Gilded the Left Wing of the Guardian Angel, 0 15 6 5. Washed the Servant of the High Priest and put carmine on his cheek, 0 1 0 6. Renewed Heaven, adjusted two Stars, and cleaned the Moon, 1 16 0 7. Re-animated the Flames of Purgatory and restored Souls, 6 7 0 8. Revived the Flames of Hell, put a New Tail on the Devil, mended his left hoof, and did several jobs for the damned, 1 16 6 9. Re-bordering the Robe of Herod and re-adjusting his Wig, 0 17 3 10. Put new Spotted Dashes on the Son of Tobias and dressing on his sack 0 7 6 11. Cleaned the Ears of Balaam’s Ass and shod him, 0 9 0 12. Put Earrings in the Ears of Sarah, 0 9 2 13. Put a New Stone in David’s Sling, enlarged the Head of Goliath, and extended his Legs, 0 8 8 14. Decorated Noah’s Ark, 0 17 6 15. Mended the Shirt of the Prodigal Son and cleaned his ears, 0 15 3 —P. Sylvester, Summerfield, Warham ———— Road, Croydon. £17 10 5

Shortly after two o’clock one bitter winter morning a physician drove four miles in answer to a telephone call. On his arrival the man who had summoned him said:

“Doctor, I ain’t in any particular pain, but somehow or other I’ve got a feeling that death is nigh.”

The doctor felt the man’s pulse and listened to his heart.

“Have you made your will?”

The man turned pale.

“Why, no, doctor, at my age—oh, Doc, it ain’t true is it? It can’t be true!”

“Who’s your lawyer?”

“Higginbotham.”

“Well, you’d better send for him at once.”

The patient, white and trembling, went to the ’phone.

“Who’s your pastor?” continued the doctor.

“The Rev. Kellogg M. Brown,” mumbled the patient. “But, doctor, do you think—”

“Send for him immediately. Your father, too, should be summoned; also your—”

“Say, doctor, do you really think I’m going to die?” The man began to blubber softly.

The doctor looked at him hard.

“No, I don’t,” he replied grimly. “There’s nothing at all the matter with you. But I’d hate to be the only man you’ve made a fool of on a night like this.”

Dr. L. E. Wilson, a wealthy young Baltimore physician, was awakened one stormy night by a man who declared the doctor’s services were wanted three miles out in the country. Just before the doctor called up the stable for his horse, the visitor asked what the charge would be. “Three dollars,” was the reply. When the house containing the supposed patient was reached, the man alighted first, and, handing the doctor three dollars, remarked: “That will be all, doctor. I couldn’t find a hackman who would do it for less than six dollars.”

A certain prosy preacher recently gave an endless discourse on the prophets. First he dwelt at length on the minor prophets. At last he finished them, and the congregation gave a sigh of relief. He took a long breath and continued: “Now I shall proceed to the major prophets.”

After the major prophets had received more than ample attention the congregation gave another sigh of relief.

“Now that I have finished with the minor prophets and the major prophets, what about Jeremiah? Where is Jeremiah’s place?”

At this point a tall man arose in the back of the church. “Jeremiah can have my place,” he said; “I’m going home.”

Any one who has traveled on the New York subway in rush hours can easily appreciate the following:

A little man, wedged into the middle of a car, suddenly thought of pickpockets, and quite as suddenly remembered that he had some money in his overcoat. He plunged his hand into his pocket and was somewhat shocked upon encountering the fist of a fat fellow-passenger.

“Aha” snorted the latter. “I caught you that time!”

“Leggo!” snarled the little man. “Leggo my hand!”

“Pickpocket!” hissed the fat man.

“Scoundrel!” retorted the little one.

Just then a tall man in their vicinity glanced up from his paper.

“I’d like to get off here,” he drawled, “if you fellows don’t mind taking your hands out of my pocket.”

Aunt Mahaly, an old negress with a worthless husband, was relating her troubles to her minister. The usual condolences were offered by the latter and remedies suggested, but at each one Aunt Mahaly shook a doubting head—she had tried them all without avail.

The minister sighed and pondered, and at last had an inspiration. He leaned to Aunt Mahaly, who brightened visibly.

“Sis’ Mahaly,” he said, “hab you eber tried heapin’ coals er fire on his haid?”

The gleam of hope faded from Aunt Mahaly’s face.

“No, Bre’r Jackson, I ain’t never done dat, but I’s tried po’in’ hot water ovuh him.”

A barber in South Bend, having been out late the night before, had a shaky hand the next morning and cut a patron’s cheek four times. After each accident the barber said, as he sponged away the blood: “Oh, dear me, how careless!”

The patron took all these gashes in grave silence. But when the shave was over he filled a glass at the water-cooler, took a mouthful of water, and, with compressed lips, proceeded to shake his head from side to side.

“What is the matter?” the barber asked. “You ain’t got the toothache, have you?”

“No,” said the customer; “I only wanted to see if my mouth would still hold water without leaking.”

At one of the lectures by Professor George Kirchwey, dean of Columbia Law College, New York, the students were uneasy. There was something wrong in the air. Books were dropped, chairs were pushed along the floor. There were various interruptions. The nerves of all were on edge. The members of the class kept their eyes on the clock and awaited the conclusion of the hour of the lecture. The clock beat Professor Kirchwey by perhaps a minute, but at the expiration of the schedule time the students started to their feet and prepared to leave. “Wait a minute,” objected Professor Kirchwey; “don’t go just yet. I have a few more pearls to cast.”

Mrs. Flint always demanded instant and unquestioning obedience from her children. One afternoon a storm came up and she sent her son John to close the trapdoor leading to the roof.

“But mother—” said John.

“John, I told you to shut the trapdoor.”

“Yes, but, Mother—”

“John, shut that trapdoor.”

“All right, Mother, if you say so, but—”

“John!”

John slowly climbed the stairs and shut the trapdoor. The storm howled and raged. Two hours later the family gathered for tea. When the meal was half over Aunt Mary had not appeared, and Mrs. Flint started an investigation. She did not have to ask many questions; John answered the first one:

“Please, Mother, she is up on the roof.”

An absent-minded scientist, in the employ of the government at Washington, recently met his physician in the street.

“I don’t know what’s the matter with me, Doctor,” said the man of science. “I am limping badly to-day. Do you think it’s locomotor ataxia?”

“Scarcely that,” replied the physician. “You are walking with one foot on the curb and the other in the gutter.”

One Sunday John Wanamaker visited the Sunday-school classes in which he was greatly interested, and after talking the lesson over told the pupils he would try to answer any questions the boys or girls wanted to ask him.

One little girl raised her hand, and spoke out timidly: “Will you please tell me, Mr. Wanamaker, how much those large French dolls are that you have in your show-window?”

Judge—“Have you been arrested before?”

Prisoner—“No, sir.”

Judge—“Have you been in this court before?”

Prisoner—“No, sir.”

Judge—“Are you certain?”

Prisoner—“I am, sir.”

Judge—“But your face looks decidedly familiar. Where have I seen it before?”

Prisoner—“I’m the bartender in the saloon across the way, sir.”

Henry Guy Carleton, wit, journalist, and playwright, has an impediment in his speech about which he is not in the least sensitive. Meeting Nat Goodwin one day he asked:

“G-g-goodwin, c-c-an you g-g-give m-m-me f-f-fifteen m-m-minutes?”

“Certainly,” replied the comedian, “what is it?”

“I w-w-want to have f-f-five m-m-minutes’ c-c-conversation with you.”

A German pedler rapped timidly at the kitchen entrance. Mrs. Kelly, angry at being interrupted in her washing, flung open the door and glowered at him.

“Did yez wish to see me?” she demanded in threatening tones.

The pedler backed off a few steps.

“Vell, if I did,” he assured her with an apologetic grin, “I got my vish, thank you.”

A lady from South America possessed of a decidedly quick temper came to New York with a very incomplete knowledge of the English language. At her hotel she rang for the chambermaid. But a waiter came instead. Having ascertained that the name of the chambermaid was Susan, the lady marshaled her meager knowledge of English in a desperate effort to make the waiter understand that he should call the chambermaid. What she said to him, however, was:

“Call me Susan!”

The waiter leaned against the wall much alarmed.

“Call me Susan!” shouted the South American.

The waiter became appalled.

“Call me Susan!” roared the lady, her eyes flashing furiously.

“Susan, then—if you will have it!” exclaimed the poor waiter. Then he fled precipitately.

“Please, mum,” began the aged hero in appealing tones, as he stood at the kitchen-door on washday, “I’ve lost my leg—”

“Well, I ain’t got it,” snapped the woman, slamming the door.

In the absence of the regularly appointed spokesman, Mr. Makinbrakes had reluctantly consented to make a presentation speech.

“Miss Higham,” he said, “unfortunately it is my—er—fortunate lot to fulfill the embarrassing—the pleasant duty of—of inflicting a few remarks upon this occasion—which is highly appreciated, I assure you, and by none more so than myself, for the reason that—in short, as I may say, it falls to my lot to convey, so to speak, the assurances of—that is, with the assurances of those to whom—to whom I have occasion to refer to—more or less—in this connection, together with the best wishes, if I may so express myself, of those who have clubbed together—who have associated themselves—not that you need anything of the kind, of course, but as a token of—as a token of—of—with which few remarks, Miss Higham, it is my—my pleasant surprise to hand you this gold watch and chain. I—I thank you.”

The reputed affinity between the Southern negro and unguarded poultry is the subject of a story told by Senator Bacon, of Georgia. An old colored man, notorious for his evil ways, after attending a revival meeting, desired to lead a better life. At a later meeting he was called up to be questioned.

“Well, Rastus,” said the revivalist, “I hope you are now trying to live a Christian life in accordance with the rules of the Church. Have you been stealing any chickens lately?”

“No, sah! I ain’t stole no chicken ob late.”

“Any turkeys or pigs?”

Rastus, grieved, replied: “No, sah!”

“I am very glad to hear that you have been doing better lately,” replied the evangelist. “Continue to lead a holy and Christian life, Rastus.”

After the meeting was over, Rastus drew a long breath of relief, and turning to his wife exclaimed:

“Mandy, if he’d said ducks I’d been a lost nigger, suah!”

The late Moses Coit Tyler, so long Professor of History in Cornell, was at one time a popular professor in the University of Michigan. One raw February morning as he was calling the roll of an 8 o’clock class in English, he called “Mr. Robbins,” and receiving no answer called again: “Mr. Robbins?” Still no reply. “Ah,” said Professor Tyler, looking around upon the class in his inimitable manner, “it is rather early for robins.”

He—“Isn’t dinner ready yet?”

She—“No, dear. I got it according to the time you set the clock when you came in last night, and dinner will be ready in four hours.”

A foreigner, meeting an American friend, said to him, “How are you?” The latter replied, “Out of sight.”

The man considered this very clever, and decided to use the expression on the next occasion. Shortly after he was met by a friend, who asked, “How are you?” With visible pride he answered, “You don’t see me.”

There is a clerk in the employ of a Philadelphia business man who, while a fair worker, is yet an individual of pronounced eccentricity.

One day a wire basket fell off the top of the clerk’s desk and scratched his cheek. Not having any court plaster at hand, he slapped on three two-cent postage stamps and continued his work.

A few minutes later he had occasion to take some papers to his employer’s private office. When he entered, the “old man” observing the postage stamps on his cheek fixed him with an astonished stare. “Look here, Jenkins!” he exclaimed. “You are carrying too much postage for second-class matter!”

“I suppose,” said the facetious stranger, watching a workman spread a carpet from the church door to the curb, “that’s the high road to heaven you’re fixing there?”

“No,” replied the man; “this is merely a bridal path.”

“I hope my little Tommy has taken to heart mama’s talk of last night about charity and usefulness,” said a fond mother. “How many acts of kindness has he done? How many hearts has my Tommy made grateful and glad?”

Her Tommy replied:

“I’ve done a lot of good, ma; I gave your new hat to a beggar woman, and I gave the cook’s shoes to a little girl in busted rubbers what I seen on the street, and I gave a poor, lame shoe-string seller pa’s black suit, the open front one that he hardly ever wears.”

Charles Francis Adams was escorting a literary friend about Boston. They were viewing the different objects of attraction and finally came to Bunker Hill. They stood looking at the splendid monument when

Adams remarked: “This is the place, sir, where Warren fell.”

“Ah!” replied the Englishman, evidently not very familiar with American history. “Was he seriously hurt by his fall?”

Mr. Adams looked at his friend. “Hurt!” said he. “He was killed, sir.”

“Ah, indeed,” the Englishman replied, still eying the monument and commencing to compute its height in his own mind. “Well, I should think he might have been—falling so far.”

“Darling,” said his bride, “I had a terrible feeling of sadness come over me this afternoon—a sort of feeling that you were doing something that would break my heart if I knew of it. Think, sweet, what were you doing this afternoon at four o’clock?”

“Dearest,” replied her husband, tenderly and reassuringly, “at that hour I was licking stamps and pasting them on envelopes.”

A few years ago a dear old lady, who formerly lived in Ipswich, and was a relative of the poet Whittier, had occasion to go on a journey which necessitated a night’s ride in a sleeping car. Being subject to attacks of acute indigestion, she took the precaution to place a few leaves of the commercial mustard plaster in her hand bag.

During the night, pains, either real or imaginary, warned her of trouble and prevented sleep. Deciding upon the application of a plaster, she reached in the dark for the hand bag, and, having secured it, proceeded to put one of the leaves where it would do the most good, and immediately felt comforted and enjoyed a refreshing sleep until morning.

Upon removing the plaster, what was her astonishment to find that it was a $10 bank note that had brought such speedy relief.

Beerbohm Tree was once endeavoring to get a well-known actor back into his company. He invited the man to call and received him in his dressing room as he was making-up. “How much would you want to come back to me?” inquired Mr. Tree, busy with his paint pots. The other named an exorbitant salary to which Tree merely retorted as he went on making up: “Don’t slam the door when you go out, will you?”

“Oh, mama,” she cried, rushing into her mother’s room, and flinging her arms around her mother’s neck, “He loves me! He loves me!”

“My dear child, I’m so glad! Has he told you? Has he asked you to be his wife?”

“No, but he’s down in the library learning to play chess with papa.”

“If I had only known that this pleasure was in store for me,” said the doctor, as he shook hands cordially with his wife’s cousins, “I should certainly have arranged my business so as to be home earlier.”

“Why, pa,” piped up little Tommy, “don’t you remember that ma told you they were coming, and you said, ‘Oh, the devil!’”

A minister of a fashionable church had always left the greeting of strangers to be attended to by the ushers until he read some newspaper articles in reference to the matter.

“Suppose a representative should visit our church,” said his wife. “Wouldn’t it be awful?”

“It would,” the minister admitted.

The following Sunday evening he noticed a plainly dressed woman in one of the free pews. She sat alone and was clearly not a member of the flock. After the benediction the minister hastened and intercepted her at the door.

“How do you do?” he said, offering his hand. “I am very glad to have you with us.”

“Thank you,” replied the young woman.

“I hope we may see you often in our church home,” he went on. “We are always glad to welcome new faces.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you live in this parish?” he asked.

The girl looked blank.

“If you will give me your address my wife and I will call on you some evening.”

“You wouldn’t need to go far, sir,” said the young woman. “I’m your cook.”

The mission-workers on the East Side frequently see the humorous as well as the sadder side of life. A man prominent in reform work in New York City recounts the experience of a certain young woman, new to the task, who set about posting herself as to conditions in a neighborhood near Avenue A.

The ambitious missionary had entered the house of an Irishwoman, and had made some preliminary inquiries, when she was suddenly interrupted by the woman, who said:

“Say, youse is fresh at dis business, ain’t youse?”

The amateur in mission work blushingly admitted such to be the case, adding, “I have never visited you before, Mrs. Muldoon.”

“Thin,” explained the Irishwoman, “I tell ye what to do. Ye sit down in that chair there, ye read me a short psalm, ye gives me fifty cints, an’ thin ye goes.”

The following conversation was overheard during a hunting trip in Scotland:

Fitz—“I say, are all your beaters out of the wood?”

Keeper—“Yes, sir.”

Fitz—“Are you sure?”

Keeper—“Yes, sir.”

Fitz—“Have you counted them?”

Keeper—“No, sir; but I know they’re all right.”

Fitz—“Then I’ve shot a deer!”

Joe—“I love you; I love you. Won’t you be my wife?”

Jess—“You must see mama first.”

Joe—“I have seen her several times, but I love you just the same.”

Long after the victories of Washington over the French and English had made his name familiar to all Europe, Benjamin Franklin chanced to dine with the English and French Ambassadors, when the following toasts were drunk:

“‘England’—The Sun, whose bright beams enlighten and fructify the remotest corners of the earth.”

The French Ambassador, filled with national pride, but too polite to dispute the previous toast, offered the following:

“‘France’—The Moon, whose mild, steady and cheering rays are the delight of all nations, consoling them in darkness and making their dreariness beautiful.”

Doctor Franklin then arose, and, with his usual dignified simplicity, said:

“‘George Washington’—The Joshua who commanded the Sun and Moon to stand still, and they obeyed him.”

The following appeal of a Western editor is still going the rounds, although it is to be hoped that by this time the writer’s only trouble is in having his vest made large enough:

“We see by an esteemed contemporary that a young lady in Chicago is so particular that she kneads bread with her gloves on. What of that? The editor of this paper needs bread with his coat on; he needs bread with his trousers on; in fact he needs bread with all of his clothes on. And if some of his debtors don’t pay up pretty quick he’ll need bread without anything at all on, and this Western climate is no Garden of Eden.”

The unconscious humors of country journalism, says William Allen White, are often more amusing than the best efforts of the alleged “funny man.”

According to Mr. White there once appeared in a Kansas paper the following “personal notice”:

“Our prominent townsman Theodore Monkton is seriously ill. He is being attended twice a day by Doctor Smith, in consultation with Doctor Morgan. His recovery, therefore, is in great doubt.”

A crowd of small boys were gathered about the entrance of a circus tent in one of the small cities in New Hampshire one day, trying to get a glimpse of the interior. A man standing near watched them for a few moments, then walking up to the ticket-taker he said:

“Let all these boys in, and count them as they pass.”

The man did as requested, and when the last one had gone, he turned and said, “Twenty-eight.”

“Good!” said the man, “I guessed just right,” and walked off.

The editor of a rural newspaper determined to adopt the idea of posting bulletins on a bulletin board for all important events that happened in the town. Soon afterward he was told one morning by the local physician that Deacon Jones was seriously ill. The deacon was a man of some distinction in the community, so the editor posted a series of bulletins as follows:

10 a. m.—Deacon Jones no better.

11 a. m.—Deacon Jones has relapse.

12.30 p. m.—Deacon Jones weaker. Pulse failing.

1 p. m.—Deacon Jones has slight rally.

2.15 p. m.—Deacon Jones’s family has been summoned.

3.10 p. m.—Deacon Jones has died and gone to heaven.

Later in the afternoon a traveling salesman happened by, stopped to read the bulletins, and going to the bulletin board, made another report concerning the deceased. It was:

4.10 p. m.—Great excitement in heaven. Deacon Jones has not yet arrived.

A group of drummers were trading yarns on the subject of hospitality, when one, a little Virginian with humorous eyes and a delightful drawl, took up his parable thus:

“I was down in Louisiana last month, travelin’ ‘cross country with a friend, when we kinder got lost in a mighty lonesome sort of road just about dark. We rode along a right good piece after sundown, and when we saw a light ahead, I tell you it looked first-rate. We drove up to the light, finding ’twas a house, and when I hollered like a lost calf the man came out and we asked him to take us in for the night. He looked at us mighty hard, then said:

“‘Wal, I reckon I kin stand it if you kin.’

“So we went in and found ’twas only a two-room shanty, just swarmin’ with children. He had six, from four to eleven years old; as there didn’t seem to be but one bed, me an’ Stony wondered what in thunder would become of us.

“They gave us supper, good hog and hominy, the best they had, and then the old woman put the two youngest kids to bed. They went straight to sleep. Then she took those out, laid them over in the corner, put the next two to bed, and so on.

“After all the children were asleep on the floor the old folk went in the other room and told us we could go to bed if we wanted to, and bein’ powerful tired out, we did.

“Well, sir, the next morning when we woke up we were lying over in the corner with the kids, and the old man and the old woman had the bed.”

“Waiter, what have you got?” said May Irwin in one of her plays.

“Well, I’ve got pig’s feet—”

“Never mind telling me your troubles, I want to know what you’ve got to eat?”

As every one knows, the great Von Moltke never wasted words and despised anything that approached garrulity in others. German army officers are fond of telling an anecdote illustrative of this peculiarity:

Von Moltke was leaving Berlin on a railway journey. Just before the train pulled out of the station a captain of hussars entered the general’s compartment and, recognizing him, saluted with “Guten Morgen, Excellenz!”

Two hours later the train slowed up at a way station. The captain arose, saluted, and with another “Guten Morgen, Excellenz!” left the train.

Turning to one of his companions, Von Moltke said, with an expression of the greatest disgust, “Intolerable gas-bag!”

A gentleman gave a large dinner party in Dublin once and invited Mr. O’Connor, one of the wittiest men in the Emerald Isle, to amuse and divert his guests. Mr. O’Connor accepted the invitation with pleasure. But from the beginning to the end of dinner he preserved a solemn and serious face. The host thought this very strange, and just before rising from the table remarked to him jestingly, “Why, O’Connor, old fellow, I don’t believe the biggest fool in Ireland could make you laugh to-night.” Whereupon his guest answered in a solemn tone, speaking his first word that evening, “Try.”

Governor Guild of Massachusetts, who served in the Spanish War, tells a story of a New York regiment, many of whose members were recruited on the East Side. They were spoiling for a fight, and it became necessary to post a sentry to preserve order.

A big husky Bowery recruit, of pugilistic propensities, was put on guard outside, and given special orders to see that quiet reigned, and above all things, if trouble came his way, not to lose possession of his rifle.

Soon a general row began, growing in proportions as the minutes passed. The soldier walked his post nervously, without interrupting, until the corporal of the guard appeared on the scene with reenforcements.

“Why didn’t you stop this row?” shouted the corporal.

The sentry, balancing his rifle on his shoulder, raised his arms to the correct boxing position, and replied:

“Sure, phwat could I do wid this gun in me hands!”

A New Jersey man recently reached the conclusion that his eight-year-old boy is a trifle too bright.

At dinner one evening the father had been entertaining a number of friends from Philadelphia with a funny story. This was at dessert. The youngster had been very quiet throughout the previous courses; but here he arose to the occasion in fine style.

When the laughter induced by his father’s humor had ceased, the boy, with a fine affectation of delight, said:

“Now, dad, do tell the other one!”

The June bride frowned.

“These tomatoes,” she said, “are just twice as dear as those across the street. Why is it?”

“Ah, ma’am, these”—and the grocer smiled—“these are hand-picked.”

She blushed.

“Of course,” she said, hastily; “I might have known. Give me a bushel, please.”

Mistress—“Jane, I saw the milkman kiss you this morning. In the future I will take the milk in.”

Jane—“’Twouldn’t be no use, mum. He’s promised never to kiss anybody but me.”

Not long ago a man was charged with shooting a number of pigeons, the property of a farmer. In giving his evidence the farmer was exceedingly careful, even nervous, and the solicitor for the defense endeavored to frighten him. “Now,” he remarked, “are you prepared to swear that this man shot your pigeons?” “I didn’t say he did shoot ’em,” was the reply. “I said I suspected him o’ doing it.” “Ah! now we’re coming to it. What made you suspect that man?” “Well, firstly, I caught him on my land wi’ a gun. Secondly, I heerd a gun go off an’ saw some pigeons fall. Thirdly, I found four o’ my pigeons in his pocket—an’ I don’t think them birds flew there and committed suicide.”