AMONG THE HUMORISTS AND AFTER-DINNER SPEAKERS (continued 4)

“Mama, can’t I go up to the next block and play with the Jones boys?” asked Henry, a boy of six, who was being brought up very carefully.

“No, indeed!” answered his mother. “They are very bad boys.”

“Then can’t I go over to see Mrs. Smith’s little girls?”

“No, Henry; I’m afraid to let you go.”

The little fellow left the room; later, he stuck his head inside with, “Say, mama, I’m going over next door an’ play with the dog.”

The Right Reverend Chauncey B. Brewster, D.D., Bishop of Connecticut, tells a story which he says is Mrs. Brewster’s favorite. It seems the Bishop had caught a small boy stealing apples in his orchard; so, after reproving him severely for some time, he said, “And now, my boy, do you know why I tell you all this? There is One before whom even I am a crawling worm; do you know who?”

“Sure,” replied the boy, promptly; “the missus.”

A Bishop was once traveling third-class on a branch line in Devonshire, England. At one of the stations a countryman got in. After gazing at the Bishop’s attire in a puzzled manner for some time, he ventured the remark, “Be you a curate, sir?”

“Well,” said the Bishop meditatively, “I was once.”

“A-ah,” said the rustic, a comprehensive smile overspreading his face, “the drink, I suppose?”

A celebrated parson preached a rather long sermon from the text “Thou art weighed and found wanting.” After the congregation had listened about an hour, some began to get weary and went out; others soon followed, greatly to the annoyance of the minister. Another person was about to retire when the minister stopped his sermon and said: “That’s right, gentlemen; as fast as you are weighed, pass out.”

“Here, hold my horse a minute, will you?”

“Sir! I’m a Member of Congress!”

“Never mind. You look honest. I’ll take a chance.”

A red-faced man was holding the attention of a little group with some wonderful recitals.

“The most exciting chase I ever had,” he said, “happened a few years ago in Russia. One night, when sleighing about ten miles from my destination I discovered, to my intense horror, that I was being followed by a pack of wolves. I fired blindly into the pack, killing one of the brutes, and to my delight saw the others stop to devour it. After doing this, however, they still came on. I kept on repeating the dose, with the same result, and each occasion gave me an opportunity to whip up my horse. Finally there was only one wolf left, yet on it came, with its fierce eyes glowing in anticipation of a good, hot supper.”

Here the man who had been sitting in the corner burst forth into a fit of laughter.

“Why, man,” said he, “by your way of reckoning that last wolf must have had the rest of the pack inside him!”

“Ah!” said the red-faced man without a tremor, “now I remember, it did wobble a bit.”

Frederic Remington, the illustrator, fresh from a Western trip on which he had been making studies of Indians and cowpunchers and things outdoors, met an art editor who insisted upon dragging him up to an exhibition of very impressionistic pictures.

“You don’t seem enthusiastic,” remarked the editor as they were coming out. “Didn’t you like them?”

Remington, remembering what he had been told as a boy, counted ten before replying. Then:

“Like ’em? Say! I’ve got two maiden aunts in New Rochelle that can knit better pictures than those!”

The wife of General S. was doing some shopping one morning recently when, coming out of a store, she noticed a small country wagon draw up to the curb. In it sat a woman whom the lady recognized as a former servant in the family who had lost her husband some two or three years before. The woman was clad in deep mourning which had an air of newness about it. Mrs. S. hastened to greet the woman. “How is this, Bridget. I hope you haven’t met with any recent bereavement?”

“No, mem, not so racent—it’s for poor Mike. I allus said when I could I would—and so I am!”

Those who know a certain Southern Senator will picture his ample proportions when they read this story:

While journeying through the South, he was very much annoyed one day at the delay in getting food served in a certain café. He had given his order, and waited impatiently an unreasonable length of time, when the waiter appeared and was evidently looking for some one who must have gone out without waiting for his meal.

When asked by the Senator whom he was looking for he replied.

“A little boy who gave his order.”

The Senator replied: “I am that boy.”

Jack’s mother had been walking up and down the piazza with him repeating Mother Goose. She began the “Solomon Grundy” one, going through it rapidly without taking breath, ending laughingly:

Jack took his thumb out of his mouth, looked reprovingly at his mother and said:

“Don’t laugh, mama: that’s awful.”

“I’m a terror, I be,” announced the new arrival in Frozen Dog to one of the men behind the bar.

“Be ye?”

“Take three men to handle me, once I get started,” he went on.

“Oh, well,” he remarked, as he arose painfully and dusted off his clothes, “of course, if ye’re short-handed, I suppose two kin do it on a pinch.”

David B. Hill, former Governor of and Senator from New York, has a secluded hatter somewhere in the State who makes his high hats after elaborate plans drawn by Mr. Hill many years ago, and not changed since.

One night Governor Odell, of New York, was giving a reception in Albany, and President Roosevelt, then elected Vice-President, met Mr. Hill on the steps of the New York Executive mansion.

Roosevelt wore a black rough-rider hat and Hill had one of his peculiar sky-pieces.

“Senator,” said Roosevelt, “you should wear a hat like this one that I have on. They are much easier on the head, preserve the hair and are altogether better than silk ones.”

Mr. Hill looked at the coming Vice-President. “My dear sir,” he said, “I haven’t worn a hat like that since I went out of the show business.”

A negress was brought before a magistrate charged with cruelly treating her child. Evidence was clear that she had severely beaten the youngster, who was in court to exhibit his marks and bruises. Before imposing sentence the magistrate asked the woman if she had anything to say. “Kin Ah ask yo’ honah a question?” His honor nodded. “Well, yo’ honah, I’d like to ask yo’ whether yo’ was ever the father of a puffectly wuthless culled chile?”

A member of an eminent St. Louis law firm went to Chicago to consult a client. When he arrived he found that he had unaccountably forgotten the client’s name. He telegraphed his partner, “What is our client’s name?” The answer read, “Brown, Walter E. Yours is Allen, William B.”

A traveling man stopped at an Indiana hotel. The proprietor told him he had not a room in the house. The man said he must have a room. Finally the proprietor told him there was a room, a little room separated by a thin partition from a nervous man who had lived in the house for ten years.

“He is so nervous,” said the landlord, “I don’t dare put any one in that room. The least noise might give him a nervous spell that would endanger his life.”

“Oh, give me a room,” said the traveler. “I’ll be so quiet he’ll not know I’m there.”

The room was given the traveler. He slipped in noiselessly and began to disrobe. He took off one article of clothing after another as quietly as a burglar. At last he came to his shoes. He unlaced a shoe and dropped it.

The shoe fell to the floor with a great noise. The offending traveler, horrified at what he had done, waited to hear from the nervous man. Not a sound. He took off the second shoe and placed it noiselessly upon the floor; then in absolute silence finished undressing and crawled between the sheets.

Half an hour went by. He had dropped into a doze when there came a tremendous knocking on the partition.

The traveler sat up in bed trembling and dismayed. “Wh-wha-what’s the matter?” he asked.

Then came the voice of the nervous man:

“Hang you! Drop that other shoe, will you?”

There was once an Irishman, who sought employment as a diver, bringing with him his native enthusiasm and a certain amount of experience. Although he had never been beneath the water, he had crossed an ocean of one variety and swallowed nearly an ocean of another. But he had the Hibernian smile, which is convincing, and the firm chanced to need a new man. And so on the following Monday morning Pat hid his smile for the first time in a diving helmet.

Now, the job upon which the crew to which Pat had attached himself was working in comparatively shallow water, and Pat was provided with a pick and told to use it on a ledge below in a manner with which he was already familiar.

Down he went with his pick, and for about fifteen minutes nothing was heard from him. Then came a strong, determined, deliberate pull on the signal rope, indicating that Pat had a very decided wish to come to the top. The assistants pulled him hastily to the raft and removed his helmet.

“Take off the rest of it,” said Pat.

“Take off the rest of it?”

“Yis,” said Pat, “Oi’ll worruk no longer in a dark place where Oi can’t spit on me hands.”

On the first day that a young man began his duties as reporter on a popular paper a report came from a near-by town that there was a terrible fire raging. The editor of the paper immediately sent the new reporter to the place, and, upon arriving there, he found that the firemen were unable to get control of the fire, so he sent this telegram to the editor: “Fire still raging. What shall I do?” The editor was so mad that he wired back at once: “Find out where the fire is the hottest and jump in.”

“One day,” related Denny to his friend Jerry, “when Oi had wandered too far inland on me shore leave Oi suddenly found thot there was a great big haythen, tin feet tall, chasin’ me wid a knife as long as yer ar-rm. Oi took to me heels an’ for fifty miles along the road we had it nip an’ tuck. Thin Oi turned into the woods an’ we run for one hundhred an’ twinty miles more, wid him gainin’ on me steadily, owin’ to his knowledge of the counthry. Finally, just as Oi could feel his hot breath burnin’ on the back of me neck, we came to a big lake. Wid one great leap Oi landed safe on the opposite shore, leavin’ me pursuer confounded and impotent wid rage.”

“Faith an’ thot was no great jump,” commented Jerry, “considerin’ the runnin’ sthart ye had.”

Quite recently an old friend of the Browns went to see them at their new country home. As he approached the house a large dog ran out to the gate and began barking at him through the fence.

As he hesitated about opening the gate, Brown’s wife came to the door and exclaimed: “How do you do! Come right in. Don’t mind the dog.”

“But won’t he bite?” exclaimed the friend, not anxious to meet the canine without some assurance of his personal safety.

“That’s just what I want to find out,” exclaimed Mrs. Brown. “I just bought him this morning.”

The late Julian Ralph, one of the most gifted newspaper men of his generation, while being shaved one day, was forced to listen to many of the barber’s anecdotes.

Stopping to strop his razor, and prepared, with brush in hand to recommence, he said, “Shall I go over it again?”

“No, thanks,” drawled Ralph, “It’s hardly necessary. I think I can remember every word.”

The following is a typical Ian Maclaren story:

“Who had this place last year?” asked a Southern shooting tenant of his keeper.

“Well,” said Donald, “I’m not denyin’ that he wass an Englishman, but he wass a good man whatever. Oh, yess, he went to kirk and he shot very well, but he wass narrow, very narrow.”

“Narrow,” said the other in amazement, for he supposed he meant bigoted, and the charge was generally the other way about. “What was he narrow in?”

“Well,” said Donald, “I will be tellin’ you, and it wass this way. The twelfth [the beginning of the grouse shooting] wass a very good day, and we had fifty-two brace. But it wass warm, oh! yess, very warm, and when we came back to the Lodge, the gentleman will say to me, ‘It is warm.’ and I will not be contradicting him. Then he will be saying, ‘Maybe you are thirsty,’ and I will not be contradicting him. Afterwards he will take out his flask and be speaking about a dram. I will not be contradicting him, but will just say, ‘Toots, toots.’ Then he will be pouring it out, and when the glass wass maybe half-full I will say, just for politeness, ‘Stop.’ And he stopped. Oh! yess, a very narrow man.”

Mark Twain as a humorist is no respecter of persons, and a story is told of him and Bishop Doane which is worth repeating. It occurred when Mark Twain was living in Hartford, where Mr. Doane was then rector of an Episcopal church. Twain had listened to one of the doctor’s best sermons, on Sunday morning, when he approached him and said politely: “I have enjoyed your sermon this morning. I welcomed it as I would an old friend. I have a book in my library that contains every word of it.” “Impossible, sir,” replied the rector, indignantly. “Not at all. I assure you it is true,” said Twain. “Then I shall trouble you to send me that book,” rejoined the rector with dignity. The next morning Dr. Doane received, with Mark Twain’s compliments, a dictionary.

A friend of Mark Twain’s tells of an amusing incident in connection with the first meeting between the humorist and the late James McNeil Whistler, the artist.

The friend having facetiously warned Clemens that the painter was a confirmed joker, Mark solemnly averred that he would get the better of Whistler should the latter attempt “any funny business.” Furthermore, Twain determined to anticipate Whistler, if possible.

So, when the two had been introduced, which event took place in Whistler’s studio, Clemens, assuming an air of hopeless stupidity, approached a just-completed painting, and said:

“Not at all bad, Mr. Whistler, not at all bad. Only,” he added, reflectively, with a motion as if to rub out a cloud effect, “if I were you I’d do away with that cloud.”

“Great Heavens, sir!” exclaimed Whistler, almost beside himself. “Do be careful not to touch that; the paint is not yet dry!”

“Oh, I don’t mind that,” responded Twain, with an air of perfect nonchalance; “I am wearing gloves.”

This is a story of Italian revenge. A vender of plaster statuettes saw a chance for a sale in a well-dressed, bibulous man who was tacking down the street.

“You buy-a de statuette?” he asked, alluringly holding out his choicest offering. “Gar-r-ribaldi—I sell-a him verra cheep. De gr-reat-a Gar-r-ribaldi—only thirta cents!”

“Oh, t’ell with Garibaldi,” said the bibulous one, making a swipe with his arm that sent Garibaldi crashing to the sidewalk.

For a moment the Italian regarded the fragments. Then, his eyes flashing fire, he seized from his stock a statuette of George Washington. “You t’ell-a with my Gar-r-ribaldi?” he hissed between his teeth. “So.” He raised the immortal George high above his head and—crash! it flew into fragments alongside of the ill-fated Garibaldi. “Ha! I to hell-a wid your George-a Wash! Ha, ha!”

Patrick arrived home much the worse for wear. One eye was closed, his nose was broken, and his face looked as though it had been stung by bees.

“Glory be!” exclaimed his wife.

“Thot Dutchman Schwartzheimer—’twas him,” explained Patrick.

“Shame on ye!” exploded his wife without sympathy. “A big shpalpeen the loikes of you to get bate up by a little omadhoun of a Dootchman the size of him! Why—”

“Whist, Nora,” said Patrick, “don’t spake disrespectfully of the dead!”

One day a teacher in a kindergarten school in New York, preparatory to giving out an exercise said, “Now children I want you all to be very quiet, so quiet that you could hear a pin drop.” Everything had quieted down nicely and the teacher was about to speak when a little voice in the rear of the room said, “Go ahead, teacher, and let her drop.”

It appears that the late Senator John T. Morgan, who was quite near-sighted, while at dessert one evening in a hotel at Hot Springs, Virginia, experienced considerable difficulty in separating from the plate passed him by the colored waiter what he thought was a chocolate eclair. It stuck fast, so Senator Morgan pushed his fork quite under it, and tried again and again to pry it up.

Suddenly he became aware that his friends at the table were convulsed with laughter, which much mystified him. But his surprise was even greater when the waiter quietly remarked:

“Pardon me, Senator, but that’s my thumb!”

A doctor named Brown had been the adorer for many years of a Miss White. Unluckily his ardent love was not reciprocated. He had a reputation for ready wit and did not allow even his unfortunate love affair to stand in the way of his exercising it. One night over a glass of wine in the club the good doctor frequented a wag remarked, “What do you say, doctor, to my giving the toast of Miss White, your old flame?” “You may, and you’ll not do any harm either to her or to me by toasting her as often as you please, for I’ve toasted her all these years and there are still no symptoms of her turning Brown.”

Minister (who struggles to exist on $600 a year with wife and six children)—“We are giving up meat as a little experiment, Mrs. Dasher.”

Wealthy parishioner—“Oh, yes! One can live so well on fish, poultry, game, and plenty of nourishing wines.”

A woman who traveled a great deal in the West was known as the most inveterate “kicker” a certain hotel had ever known.

One evening after she had been served with dessert this lady, who was always complaining, asked the waiter why the dish served her was called “ice-cream pudding.”

“If you don’t like it, ma’am, I’ll bring you something else,” suggested the polite negro.

“Oh, it’s very nice,” responded the lady. “What I object to is that it should be called ice-cream pudding. It’s wrongly named. There should be ice cream served with it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” replied the waiter, “but that’s jest our name for it. Lots o’ dishes that way. Dey don’t bring you a cottage with cottage pudding, you know.”

During a certain cruise the first mate of a ship got to drinking to excess and was intoxicated for several days. One day, after having come out of this state, he examined the log book to see what had passed during his period of semi-forgetfulness. He was horrified to find entered in the book for the three days consecutively, “The first mate is drunk to-day.” He did not want this to stand as it would hardly be a good recommendation for him to the ship owners and asked the captain to remove the entries.

The captain replied, “It is the truth, is it not?” “Yes, but—” replied the mate. The captain interrupted him, “If it is the truth, the truth must stand. It is written in ink and can not be removed without injuring the book.”

A short time afterward the captain was taken ill and remained so for a week, and it devolved upon the mate to keep the log book. The captain on recovering from his illness got the book to examine it to see how the mate had done his duty. Imagine his consternation when he read in each of the seven days’ entries, “The captain is sober to-day.”

The captain immediately called the mate and indignantly questioned him in regard to these entries. The mate replied, “It is the truth, is it not?” “Yes, but—” replied the captain. The mate interrupted him, “If it is the truth, the truth must stand, must it not? I have your word that the writing in ink can not be erased.”

“It was the first week of his honeymoon,” said the hotel barber, “and he came in and sat down near the door to wait his turn. I yelled ‘Next’ at him two or three times when my chair was vacant, but he was dreaming and didn’t hear me. Finally I touched him on the shoulder and told him I was ready for him.

“‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked.

“‘Why, get in the chair if you want anything,’ I replied. ‘This is a barber shop.’

“‘Oh, yes,’ he said, and then he got into the chair. He leaned back, so I let the chair down and shaved him. He didn’t have a word to say. When I finished him up he got out of the chair and took the check over to the cashier. He paid and started out. When halfway through the door he stopped.

“‘Say,’ he said to me, ‘what did you do to me?’

“‘I shaved you,’ I said.

“‘Darn the luck,’ he replied, ‘I wanted a haircut.’”

The little daughter of a homeopathic physician received a ring with a pearl in it on the Christmas tree. Two days later she poked her head tearfully in at the door of her father’s office.

“Papa,” she sobbed, “Papa, I’ve lost the little pill out of my ring.”

He was from Pittsburg, Pa., and was stopping at the Manhattan Hotel. He wanted to telephone to a town about thirty miles away. He asked the girl on the switchboard to get him long-distance, and followed it up with asking the price.

“It will cost you 50 cents for three minutes,” she said sweetly.

“Fifty cents! Ye gods!” cried the man. “I don’t want to buy stock in the telephone company. I only want to talk a minute or so. Why—why—out in Pittsburg we can call up all Hades for 50 cents!”

“Yes, I know, sir,” replied the girl, “but isn’t that within your city limits?”

General St. Clair Mulholland, veteran and historian of the civil war, tells an incident showing the utter worthlessness of Confederate paper money at the close of the war. “Shortly after Lee’s surrender,” says the General, “I was a short distance from Richmond. The Confederate soldiers were going home to become men of peace again and were thinking about their farms. One had a lame, broken-down horse which he viewed with pride. ‘Wish I had him, Jim,’ said the other. ‘What’ll you take for him? I’ll give you $20,000 for him.’ ‘No,’ said Jim. ‘Give you $50,000.’ ‘No,’ said Jim. ‘Give you $100,000,’ his friend said. ‘Not much,’ replied Jim, ‘I just gave $120,000 to have him shod.’”

The Magistrate—“You seem to have committed a very grave assault on the defendant just because he differed from you in an argument.”

The Defendant—“There was no help for it, your worship. The man is a perfect idiot.”

The Magistrate—“Well, you must pay a fine of 50 francs and costs, and in future you should try and understand that idiots are human beings, the same as you and I.”

Sentimental Young Lady—“Ah Professor! what would this old oak say if it could talk?”

Professor—“It would say, ‘I am an elm.’”

“You needn’t begin jollying me,” said the gruff man to the man who had land to sell. “I’m not a man that can be affected by flattery. When I—”

“That’s just what I said to my boss,” interrupted the agent. “I told him, when he suggested your name to me, that it was a relief to call on a man who did not expect to be praised and flattered to his face all the time. I tell you, Mr. Grump, this city has mighty few men such as you. Nine men out of ten are simply dying to have some one tell them how great they are, but you are above such weakness. Any one can see that at a glance. I’m glad of it. It’s helpful to me to meet a man who rises superior to the petty tactics of the average solicitor. It’s a real and lasting benefit, and an instructive experience.”

Ten minutes later, after a few more such comments on the part of the agent, the man who could not be flattered into signing the contract was asking which line his name should be written upon.

Billy Martin, aged four, came to his mother and in great ecstasy exclaimed, “Oh, mother! Louise and Carberry found such a nice dead cat, and they are going to have a funeral, and can I go?” Permission was given, and when Billy returned he was questioned as to the outcome of the funeral.

“They did not have it at all.”

“And why not?”

“Mother,” was the answer, “the cat was too dead.”

The late H. C. Bunner when editor of “Puck,” once received a letter accompanying a number of would-be jokes in which the writer asked: “What will you give me for these?” “Ten yards start,” was Bunner’s generous offer, written beneath the query.

One day Riley was riding on top of a ’bus in London with his friend Casey. He was nearly worn out with several hours’ sight-seeing and the bustle and excitement of the London street, the hoi polloi, the Billingsgate and the din and rattle were becoming almost unbearable when they came in sight of Westminster Abbey. Just as they did so, the chimes burst forth in joyous melody, and he said to Casey, “Isn’t it sublime? Isn’t it glorious to hear those chimes pealing and doesn’t it inspire one with renewed vigor?” Casey leaned over, with hand to his ear, and said, “You’ll have to speak a little louder, Riley; I can’t hear you.” Riley continued, “Those magnificent chimes. Do you not hear them pealing? Do they not imbue you with a feeling of almost reverence? Do they not awaken tender memories of the past?” Casey again leaned forward and said, “I can’t hear you. You’ll have to speak louder.” Riley got as close to him as possible and said, “Do you not hear the melodious pealing of the chimes? Do they not recall the salutation of old Trinity on a Sabbath morning? Do they not take you back into the dim vistas of the past when the world was young, and touch your heart with a feeling of pathos?” Casey put his mouth close to Riley’s ear and said, “Those d— bells are making such a racket, Riley, that I can’t hear you.”

Four grinning urchins sat on the street curb eulogizing ex-President Roosevelt.

“Say, dat guy Roosevelt ’ll fight at de drop of de hat!” declared one youngster. “I read dat durin’ a talk at de White House one of de party said somethin’ the President wouldn’ stan’ for an’ he leans over an gets de guy’s ear!”

“Have you ever had any experience in canvassing for subscription books?” asked the man at the desk.

“No, sir,” said the applicant for a job, “but I can put up a good talk.”

“Well, take a copy of this work and go and see if you can get an order. I’ll give you half a day to make the trial.”

The applicant went away.

In an hour or two he returned.

“What luck?” inquired the man at the desk.

“I’ve got an order for this book in full morocco from your wife, sir.”

“You’ll do, young man.”

In Alabama they tell this story to illustrate Senator Morgan’s ability as an advocate. A negro of well-known thieving proclivities was on trial for stealing a mule. Morgan defended and cleared him. As lawyer and client were walking out of the courtroom Mr. Morgan said: “Rastus, did you steal the mule?” “Well, Marse Morgan, it was jes like dis: I really thought I did steal dat mule, but after what you said to the jury I was convince’ I didn’t.”

Uncle Walter, with his little niece Ruth in his lap, was about to telephone a message to a distant city. While waiting for the connection to be made little Ruth asked if she might talk over the open wire. The young lady operator heard the question and said, “Yes, please let her.”

Ruth, taking the receiver, first told her name. Then the operator asked her where she was, and to this Ruth replied:

“I am in Uncle Walter’s lap—don’t you wish you were?”

Apropos of vanity, Senator Root told at Yale about a politician who, the day before he was to make a certain speech, sent a forty-one-page report of it to all the papers. On page 20 appeared this paragraph: “But the hour grows late, and I must close. (No, no! Go on! Go on!)”

Two women from the country were at the circus for the first time. They were greatly taken with the menagerie. At last they came to the hippopotamus, and stood for several minutes in silent wonder, then one turned to the other and said, “My, Mandy, ain’t—he—plain?”

Senator Ingalls was always quick at retort, although he was himself a subject of some sharp shafts. Once he was attacked by Senator Eli Saulsbury, of Delaware, the second smallest State in the Union. He disposed of the whole matter by saying, “I thank the gentleman from that great State, which has three counties at low tide and two counties at high tide, for his advice.”

A young and bashful professor was frequently embarrassed by jokes his girl pupils would play on him. These jokes were so frequent that he decided to punish the next perpetrators, and the result of this decision was that two girls were detained an hour after school, and made to work some difficult problems, as punishment.

It was the custom to answer the roll-call with quotations, so the following morning, when Miss A’s name was called, she rose, and, looking straight in the professor’s eye, repeated: “With all thy faults I love thee still,” while Miss B’s quotation was: “The hours I spend with thee, dear heart, are as a string of pearls to me.”

Archbishop Patrick J. Ryan, of Philadelphia, once received a call from Wayne McVeagh, in company with Mr. Roberts, president of the Pennsylvania system at the time that McVeagh was counsel for that railroad. “Your Grace,” said Mr. McVeagh, “Mr. Roberts, who always travels with his counsel, will, undoubtedly, get you passes over all the railroads in the United States, if in return you will get him a pass to Paradise.” “I would do so gladly,” flashed the archbishop, “if it were not for separating him from his counsel.”

On one of his collecting trips through Scotland the eminent English geologist, Hugh Miller, at the end of the day gave to a servant his bag of specimen stones which he had labored all day to collect, to be carried some miles to his home. Later, while sitting unobserved in a corner of the village inn, he heard the man communicating to a friend in Gaelic his experience with the “mad Englishman,” as he called him, in the following manner:

“He gave me his bag to carry home by a short-cut across the hills while he walked by another road. I was wondering why it was so fearfully heavy, and when I got out of his sight I made up my mind to see what was in it. I opened it, and what do you think it was? Stones!”

“Stones!” exclaimed his companion, opening his eyes. “Stones! Well, that beats all I ever heard or knew of one of them. And did you carry it?”

“Carry it! Do you think I was as mad as himself? No, no. I emptied them all out of the bag, but I filled it again from the stone-heap near the house, and gave him good measure for his money.”

Former Representative Gibson, of Tennessee, had a voice that would play tricks with him. It would work all right for a few minutes, and then it would stop entirely, and Gibson would be left gasping for a moment or two, high and dry in the middle of his argument, until his voice came back again. He was making a tariff speech one day, sailing along in fine shape. “Why, Mr. Speaker,” he shouted, “the tariff is like a pair of suspenders. Uncle Sam needs it to keep up his—”

Right there his voice broke. Gibson couldn’t say a word.

“Trousers!” yelled one member.

“Pants!”

“Breeches!”

By that time the voice came back—“to keep up his revenues,” said Gibson, glaring around at his tormentors.

Senator Tillman not long ago piloted a plain farmer-constituent around the Capitol for a while, and then, having some work to do on the floor, conducted him to the Senate gallery.

After an hour or so the visitor approached a gallery doorkeeper and said: “My name is Swate. I am a friend of Senator Tillman. He brought me here and I want to go out and look around a bit. I thought I would tell you so I can get back in.”

“That’s all right,” said the doorkeeper, “but I may not be here when you return. In order to prevent any mistake I will give you the password so you can get your seat again.”

Swate’s eyes rather popped out at this. “What’s the word?” he asked.

“Idiosyncrasy.”

“What?”

“Idiosyncrasy.”

“I guess I’ll stay in,” said Swate.

The Willoughbys had said good-by to Mrs. Kent. Then Mr. Willoughby spoke thoughtfully:

“It was pleasant of her to say that about wishing she could see more of people like us, who are interested in real things, instead of the foolish round of gaiety that takes up so much of her time and gives her so little satisfaction, wasn’t it?”

His wife stole a sidewise glance at his gratified face and a satirical smile crossed her own countenance.

“Very pleasant, George,” she said clearly. “But what I knew she meant, and what she knew that I knew she meant, was that my walking-skirt is an inch too long and my sleeves are old style, and your coat, poor dear, is beginning to look shiny in the back.”

“Why—what—how—” began Mr. Willoughby helplessly; then he shook his head and gave it up.

Mrs. Wharton, the novelist, has never described any blunder of the so-called smart set quite as pathetic as one that actually happened to herself. A young man of a particularly old family, who sat next to her at dinner, said: “I’m terribly frightened to meet you, Mrs. Wharton,” and when asked the origin of his terrors, explained: “I’ve always heard you’re such a frightful blackleg.”

Rosenthal, the pianist, speaks eight or ten languages. But his knowledge of idiomatic English has not always been sufficient to enable him to follow all the critics have said about his pyrotechnic playing. The other day, reading over the latest batch of clippings in the manager’s office, he suddenly asked: “Vat iss ‘Fourt’ of July interpretation?”

“Fourth of July?” was the reply, “Don’t you know the Fourth of July? Why, the national holiday—everything noble and patriotic—George Washington—Battle of Bunker Hill—the Declaration of Independence—” “Ah! I see,” said the pianist, “Un grand compliment!”

Representative Cushman, of Washington, once came to Speaker Cannon with a letter written by the speaker himself.

“Mr. Speaker,” he said, “I got this letter from you yesterday and I couldn’t read it. I showed it to twenty or thirty fellows in the House and, between us, we have spelled out all but the last three words.” Uncle Joe took the letter and studied it, “The last three words,” he said, “are ‘Personal and Confidential.’”

At a banquet held in a room the walls of which were adorned with many beautiful paintings, a well-known college president was called upon to respond to a toast. In the course of his remarks, wishing to pay a compliment to the ladies present, and designating the paintings with one of his characteristic gestures, he said: “What need is there of these painted beauties when we have so many with us at this table?”

The late Charles Eliot Norton was wont to deplore the modern youth’s preference of brawn to brain. He used to tell of a football game he once witnessed: “Princeton had a splendid player in Poe—you will remember little Poe?” and Professor Norton, thinking of “The Raven” and “Annabel Lee,” said to the lad at his side: “He plays well, that Poe!”

“Doesn’t he?” the youth cried. “Is he,” said Professor Norton, “any relation to the great Poe?”

“Any relation?” said the youth. “Why, he is the great Poe.”

A fire broke out one day in Francis Wilson’s dressing-room at the theater where he was playing.

He had some of his books around him, and in an agony of despair asked himself:

“Which shall I save?” He glanced at his precious Chaucer, at some Shakespearean volumes, when:

“Come, Mr. Wilson,” broke in at the door from a fireman, “you have not a moment to lose.”

“Yes, yes. Coming,” replied Wilson absently.

He was looking for a special illuminated volume very dear to him.

“Come, Wilson,” cried his manager; “come, get out!”

“All right, all right,” said Wilson, and, grabbing some clothes in one hand, he snatched with the other the nearest volume and ran to the street. There he looked at the huge volume in his arms. It was the city directory.

A city gentleman was recently invited down to the country for “a day with the birds.” His aim was not remarkable for its accuracy, to the great disgust of the man in attendance, whose tip was generally regulated by the size of the bag.

“Dear me!” at last exclaimed the sportsman, “but the birds seem exceptionally strong on the wing this year.”

“Not all of ’em, sir,” was the answer. “You’ve shot at the same bird about a dozen times. ’E’s a-follerin’ you about, sir.”

“Following me about? Nonsense! Why should a bird do that?”

“Well, sir,” came the reply. “I dunno, I’m sure, unless ’e’s ’angin’ ’round you for safety.”

A lady was calling on some friends one summer afternoon. The talk buzzed along briskly, fans waved and the daughter of the house kept twitching uncomfortably, frowning and making little smothered exclamations of annoyance. Finally, with a sigh, she rose and left the room.

“Your daughter,” said the visitor, “seems to be suffering from the heat.”

“No,” said the hostess. “She is just back home from college and she is suffering from the family grammar.”

“It ain’t everybody I’d put to sleep in this room,” said old Mrs. Jinks to the fastidious and extremely nervous young minister who was spending a night at her house.

“This here room is full of sacred associations to me,” she went on, as she bustled around opening shutters and arranging the curtains. “My first husband died in that bed with his head on these very pillers, and poor Mr. Jinks died settin’ right in that corner. Sometimes when I come into the room in the dark I think I see him settin’ there still.

“My own father died layin’ right on that lounge under the winder. Poor pa! He was a Speeritualist, and he allus said he’d appear in this room after he died, and sometimes I’m foolish enough to look for him. If you should see anything of him to-night you’d better not tell me; for it’d be a sign to me that there was something in Speeritualism, and I’d hate to think that.

“My son by my first man fell dead of heart disease right where you stand. He was a doctor, and there’s two skeletons in that closet that belonged to him, and half a dozen skulls in that lower drawer.

“There, I guess you’ll be comfortable.

“Well, good night, and pleasant dreams.”

A woman suffrage lecturer brought down the house with the following argument: “I have no vote, but my groom has, but I am sure if I were to go to him and say, ‘John, will you exercise the franchise?’ he would reply, ‘Please, mum, which horse be that?’”

“Maude was afraid the girls wouldn’t notice her engagement ring.” “Did they?” “Did they? Six of them recognized it at once.”

Mr. George Broadhurst, author of the play, “The Man of the Hour,” is an Englishman, and recently made a visit to his native country. After having lived a week at one of the large hotels in London, he was surprised on the evening of his departure, although at a very late hour, to see an endless procession of waiters, maids, porters, and pages come forward with the expectant smile and empty hand. When each and all had been well bestowed, even boots and under-boots and then another boots, he dashed for the four-wheeler that was to carry him safely away.

Settling himself with a sigh of relief, he was about to be off when a page popped his head into the window and breathlessly exclaimed:

“I beg pardon, sir, but the night-lift man says he’s waiting for a message from you, sir.”

“A message from me?”

“Yes, sir; he says he cawn’t go to sleep without a message from you, sir.”

“Really, he can’t go to sleep without a message from me?”

“No, sir.”

“How touching. Then tell him, ‘Pleasant dreams.’”

Representative Tawney, of Minnesota, chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, sent out some of his quota of garden seeds to his constituents not long ago. One man in Winona wrote to Tawney: “Dear Jim: I received your seeds, but I don’t care much for them. If you really want to do something for me, please send me up a suit of union underwear.”

In his younger days Thomas Bailey Aldrich was not a little of a dandy. This foible led an unusually energetic Boston bluestocking to refer to him in a caustic style on one occasion as “effeminate.”

When a friend told the poet of her remark he smiled grimly.

“So I am,” he assented, “compared with her.”

Tennyson’s customary manner toward women was one of grave and stately courtesy. One evening at Aldworth, Sir Edward Hamley, the soldier and expert writer on the art of war, who had been visiting through the day, rose to take leave. Tennyson pressed him to stay over night, adding: “There are three ladies who wish it,” meaning Mrs. Tennyson and the two guests who were in the house.

“There are three other ladies who oppose it,” Sir Edward answered.

“Who are they?” Tennyson asked.

“The Fates,” Sir Edward replied.

“The Fates may be on one side,” Tennyson rejoined, “but the Graces are on the other.”

Douglas Jerrold’s genius for repartee is perhaps best shown in his most famous reply to Albert Smith, whom he disliked and frequently abused. Smith grew tired of being made the butt of the other’s wit, and one day plaintively remarked: “After all, Jerrold, we row in the same boat.” “Yes,” came the answer, “but not with the same skulls.”

Mr. Brown, a Kansas gentleman, is the proprietor of a boarding-house. Around his table at a recent dinner sat his wife, Mrs. Brown; the village milliner, Mrs. Andrews; Mr. Black, the baker; Mr. Jordan, a carpenter; and Mr. Hadley, a flour, feed, and lumber merchant. Mr. Brown took a ten-dollar bill out of his pocketbook and handed it to Mrs. Brown, with the remark that there was ten dollars toward the twenty he had promised her. Mrs. Brown handed the bill to Mrs. Andrews, the milliner, saying, “That pays for my new bonnet.” Mrs. Andrews, in turn, passed it on to Mr. Jordan, remarking that it would pay for the carpentry work he had done for her. Mr. Jordan handed it to Mr. Hadley, requesting his receipted bill for flour, feed, and lumber. Mr. Hadley gave the bill back to Mr. Brown, saying, “That pays ten dollars on my board.” Mr. Brown again passed it to Mrs. Brown, remarking that he had now paid her the twenty dollars he had promised her. She, in turn, paid it to Mr. Black to settle her bread and pastry account. Mr. Black handed it to Mr. Hadley, asking credit for the amount on his flour bill, Mr. Hadley again returning it to Mr. Brown, with the remark that it settled for that month’s board; whereupon Brown put it back into his pocketbook, observing that he had not supposed a greenback would go so far.

A doctor came up to a patient in an insane asylum, slapped him on the back, and said: “Well, old man, you’re all right, you can run along and write your folks that you’ll be back home in two weeks as good as new.” The patient went off gaily to write his letter. He had it finished and sealed, but when he was licking the stamp it slipped through his fingers to the floor, lighted on the back of a cockroach that was passing and stuck. The patient hadn’t seen the cockroach—what he did see was his escaped postage stamp zig-zagging aimlessly across the floor to the baseboard, wavering up over the baseboard and following a crooked track up the wall and across the ceiling. In depressed silence he tore up the letter and dropped the pieces on the floor. “Two weeks! Hell!” he said. “I won’t be out of here in three years.”

A Bostonian, arriving at the gate of Heaven, asked for admittance.

“Where are you from?” inquired the genial Saint.

“Boston.”

“Well, you can come in, but you won’t like it.”

A well-known bishop, after a long journey to conduct a service in a distant village, was asked by the spokesman of the reception committee if he would like a whisky and soda to keep out the cold. “No,” he replied, “for three reasons. First, because I am chairman of the Temperance Society; secondly, I am just going to enter a church; and—thirdly, because—I have just had one.”

A frivolous young English girl, with no love for the Stars and Stripes, once exclaimed at a celebration where the American flag was very much in evidence: “Oh, what a silly-looking thing the American flag is! It suggests nothing but checker-berry candy.”

“Yes,” replied a bystander, “the kind of candy that has made everybody sick who ever tried to lick it.”

A hungry Irishman went into a restaurant on Friday and said to the waiter:

“Have yez any whale?”

“No.”

“Have yez any shark?”

“No.”

“Have yez any swordfish?”

“No.”

“Have yez any jellyfish?”

“No.”

“All right,” said the Irishman. “Then bring me ham and eggs and a beefsteak smothered wid onions. The Lord knows I asked for fish.”

Mr. Halloran returned from a political meeting with his interest aroused. “There’s eight nations represented in this ward of ours,” he said, as he began to count them off on his fingers. “There’s Irish, Frinch, Eyetalians, Poles, Germans, Rooshians, Greeks, an’—” Mr. Halloran stopped and began again: “There’s Irish, Frinch, Eyetalians, Poles, Germans, Rooshians, Greeks, an’—I can’t seem to remember the other wan. There’s Irish, Frinch—” “Maybe ’twas Americans,” suggested Mrs. Halloran. “Sure, that’s it, I couldn’t think.”

The solemnity of the meeting was somewhat disturbed when the eloquent young theologian pictured in glowing words the selfishness of men who spend their evenings at the club, leaving their wives in loneliness at home at the holiday season. “Think, my hearers,” said he, “of a poor, neglected wife, all alone in the great, dreary house, rocking the cradle of her sleeping babe with one foot and wiping away her tears with the other!”

Two charming girls with Mr. Danvers, who was very shy, were watching the dancing waves. Conversation was carried on with difficulty. Finally Maude ventured the remark:

“Don’t you hate the seaside, Mr. Danvers, with its glare and noise and general vulgarity?”

Mr. Danvers replied fervently with a smile and downcast eyes: “Oh, d-d-d-don’t I, that’s all!”

Then Miss Lilian followed up the subject and said: “What, hate the seaside, Mr. Danvers?—with the fresh air and blue waves, and the delightful lounge after bathing, and the lawn-tennis and the Cinderella dances! I dote on it, and I should have thought you did, too!”

Whereupon Mr. Danvers stammered still more fervently: “Oh—I-I-I should think I did!”

And the waves kept on splashing merrily.

Just before the collection was taken up one Sunday morning a negro clergyman announced that he regretted to state that a certain brother had forgotten to lock the door of his chicken-house the night before, and as a result in the morning he found that most of the fowls had disappeared. “I doan’ want to be pussonal, bredr’n,” he added, “but I hab my s’picions as to who stole dem chickens. I also hab reason fo’ b’lievin’ dat if I am right in dose s’picions dat pusson won’t put any money in de plate which will now be passed around.”

The result was a fine collection; not a single member of the congregation feigned sleep. After it was counted the old parson came forward.

“Now, bredr’n,” he said, “I doan’ want your dinners to be spoilt by wonderin’ where dat brudder lives who doan’ lock his chickens up at night. Dat brudder doan’ exist, mah friends. He was a parable gotten up fo’ purpose of finances.”

A minister in a Western town was called upon one afternoon to perform the marriage ceremony between a negro couple—the negro preacher of the town being absent from home.

After the ceremony the groom asked the price of the service.

“Oh, well,” said the minister, “you can pay me whatever you think it is worth to you.”

The negro turned and silently looked his bride over from head to foot, then slowly rolling up the whites of his eyes, said:

“Lawd, sah, you has done ruined me for life, you has, for shuah.”

A professor of sciences, well known for his absent-mindedness, was engaged in a deep controversy one day with a fellow-student when his wife hurriedly entered the room. “Oh, my dear,” she cried, “I’ve swallowed a pin.”

The Professor smiled. “Don’t worry about it, my dear,” he said in a soothing tone. “It is of no consequence. Here”—he fumbled at his lapel—“Here is another pin.”

The late Theodore Thomas was rehearsing the Chicago Orchestra on the stage of the Auditorium Theater. He was disturbed by the whistling of Burridge, the well-known scene painter, who was at work in the loft above the stage. A few minutes later Mr. Thomas’s librarian appeared on the “bridge,” where Mr. Burridge, merrily whistling, was at work. “Mr. Thomas’s compliments,” said the librarian, “and he requests me to say that if Mr. Burridge wishes to whistle he will be glad to discontinue his rehearsal.” To which Mr. Burridge replied suavely: “Mr. Burridge’s compliments to Mr. Thomas; and please inform Mr. Thomas that, if Mr. Burridge can not whistle with the orchestra, he won’t whistle at all.”

When trouble was more general and more destructive in Ireland than at present, an Irish priest, a very good man, was disturbed by the inroads which strong drink was making on his flock. He preached a strong sermon against it. “What is it,” he cried, “that keeps you poor? It’s the drink. What is it keeps your children half-starved? The drink. What is it keeps your children half-clothed? The drink! The drink. What is it causes you to shoot at your landlords—and miss them? The drink.”

Goff, the famous London barrister, has a humor peculiarly his own. He looks at the world in a half-amused, half-indulgent manner sometimes very annoying to his friends. One day, when in town, he dropped into a restaurant for lunch. It was a tidy, although not a pretentious establishment. After a good meal he called to the waitress and inquired what kind of pie could be had.

“Apple pie mince pie raisin pie blueberry pie custard pie peach pie and strawberry shortcake,” the young woman repeated glibly.

“Will you please say that again?” he asked, leaning a trifle forward.

The girl went through the list at lightning rate. “And strawberry shortcake,” she concluded with emphasis.

“Would you mind doing it once more?” he said.

The waitress looked her disgust, and started in a third time pronouncing the words in a defiantly clear tone.

“Thank you,” he remarked when she had finished. “For the life of me I can not see how you do it. But I like to hear it. It’s very interesting, very. Give me apple pie, please, and thank you very much.”

An elderly Bishop, a bachelor, who was very fastidious about his toilet, was especially fond of his bath, and requested particular care of his tub from the maid.

When about to leave town one day he gave strict orders to the housemaid about his “bawth-tub” and said that no one was to be allowed the use of it.

Alas! the temptation grew on the girl and she took a plunge.

The Bishop returned unexpectedly, and finding traces of the recent stolen bath, questioned the maid so closely that she had to confess she was the culprit, and was very sorry.

“I hope you do not think it a sin, Bishop?” asked Mary in tears.

Eying her sternly, he said: “Mary your using my tub is not a sin, but what distresses me most is that you would do anything behind my back that you would not do before my face.”

Senator Dawes, in his young manhood, was a very poor speaker. One time he was in an important law case, and for his opponent he had an older attorney whose eloquence attracted a crowd that packed the courtroom.

The day was very hot and the judge on the bench was freely perspiring. Finally the judge, drawing off his coat in the midst of the lawyer’s eloquent address, said:

“Mr. Attorney, excuse me, but suppose you sit down and let Dawes begin to speak. I want to thin out this crowd.”

A doctor spending a rare and somewhat dull night at his own fireside received the following message from three fellow practitioners:

“Please step over to the club and join us at a rubber of whist.”

“Jane, dear,” he said to his wife, “I am called away again. It appears to be a difficult case—there are three other doctors on the spot already.”

George, the four-year-old grandson of an extremely pious and devout grandfather, came rushing into the house in a state of wild excitement. “Grandpa! Grandpa!” he called. “Mr. Barton’s cow is dead! God called her home!”

Philander C. Knox tells this story of Roosevelt: “Roosevelt,” he said, “was surprised by a Kansas delegation at Oyster Bay one summer. The President appeared with his coat and collar off, trousers hitched by belt, and mopping his forehead. ‘Ah, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘delighted to see you, delighted. But I am very busy putting in my hay, you know. Just come down to the barn with me and we’ll talk it over while I work.’ Down to the barn hustled the delegation and Mr. Roosevelt seized a pitchfork. But, behold there was no hay on the floor! ‘John,’ shouted the President to sounds in the hayloft; ‘where’s all the hay?’ ‘I ain’t had time to throw it back since you threw it up yesterday, sir.’”

Before the President of a certain Western college had attained his present high position, a boy entering college was recommended to his consideration.

“Try to draw the boy out, Professor; criticise him, and tell us what you think,” the parents said.

To facilitate acquaintance the Professor took the boy for a walk. After ten minutes’ silence the youth ventured: “Fine day, Professor.”

“Yes,” with a far-away look.

Ten minutes more, and the young man, squirming uncomfortably, said: “This is a pleasant walk, Professor.”

“Yes.”

Another silence, and then the young man blurted out that he thought they might have rain.

“Yes,” and this time the Professor went on saying, “Young man, we have been walking together for half an hour, and you have said nothing which was not commonplace and stupid.”

“Yes,” said the boy, his irritation getting the better of his modesty, “and you endorsed every word I said.”

Word from the Professor to the parents was to the effect that the boy was all right.

A dear old citizen went to the cars the other day to see his daughter off on a journey. Securing her a seat he passed out of the car and went around to the car window to say a last parting word. While he was leaving the car the daughter crossed the aisle to speak to a friend, and at the same time a grim old maid took the seat and moved up to the window.

Unaware of the change the old gentleman hurriedly put his head up to the window and said: “One more kiss, pet.”

In another instant the point of a cotton umbrella was thrust from the window, followed by the wrathful injunction: “Scat, you gray-headed wretch!”

There is a young physician who has never been able to smoke a cigar. “Just one poisons me,” says the youthful doctor.

Recently the doctor was invited to a large dinner-party. When the women had left the table cigars were accepted by all the men except the physician. Seeing his friend refuse the cigar the host in astonishment exclaimed:

“What, not smoking? Why, my dear fellow, you lose half your dinner!”

“Yes, I know I do,” meekly replied the doctor, “but if I smoked one I should lose the whole of it!”

Once, when Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes was at a charitable fair, he was asked to furnish a letter for the “post-office.” So he placed a one-dollar note inside a sheet of paper and wrote on the first page:

When the page was turned the one-dollar bill was revealed, and on the second page he wrote this verse:

As several travelers got into the station ’bus one of the men (who was quite a portly fellow) noticed that a certain young woman had a grip exactly like his, but that it was placed with the rest of the luggage, on top. Thinking there might be some mistake made he kept his inside and placed it at his feet. He was soon engrossed in his paper, and did not notice the young woman reach over and draw the grip close to her side. Being of a humorous turn of mind he waited until she was occupied with a book and then pulled the grip to its former position, the rest of the travelers looking on with amused expressions.

In turning over a leaf she looked down and suddenly became aware of the removal of the grip. She was quite indignant, and with some force in her voice and manner said, “That is mine!” and jerked it back close to her feet.

Touching his hat politely the owner said, with a merry twinkle in his eye: “All right, madam; but may I please get my pipe and nightshirt out? You are welcome to the rest of the things!”

President Eliot, of Harvard, is not a believer in spelling reform. Not long ago there was a student who was a candidate for the degree of doctor of philosophy. This student had adopted spelling reform as his particular line of work, and as commencement day drew near he went to President Eliot with a request. “You know, Mr. President,” he said “that you are proposing to make me a Ph.D. Now I have made a specialty of spelling reform and I always spell philosophy with an ‘f.’ I therefore called to ask you if you could not make my degree F. D., instead of Ph.D.”

“Certainly,” replied the President. “In fact, if you insist, we shall make it a D. F.”

The following letter was received by the Post-office Department. It came from a Western postmaster at a small office and read: “In accordance with the rules of the department, I write you to inform you that on next Saturday I will close the post-office for one day, as I am going on a bear hunt. I am not asking your permission to close up and don’t give a damn if you discharge me; but I will advise now, that I am the only man in the county who can read and write.”

A young lady at a summer hotel asked an artist friend, who was spending his vacation there, if he would mind doing a small favor for her.

“Certainly not,” he said eagerly; “what is it?”

“Thank you so much,” she exclaimed gratefully. “I wish you would stop at Mrs. Gannon’s little shop and get three large bone buttons, the kind with two small holes in them. They’re for my new bathing suit, you know. Just tell her who I am and it will be all right. You needn’t pay for them.”

Now the artist was a bachelor, and had never bought anything but collar buttons before. So on the way to the store he kept repeating the instructions that he had received. Eager to relieve his mind he rushed up to Mrs. Gannon and reeled off this surprising speech: “I want three bone buttons for a small bathing suit with two large holes in it. Just tell me who I am and it will be all right.”

There was not even standing room in the six-o’clock crowded car, but one more passenger, a young woman, wedged her way along just inside the doorway. Each time the car took a sudden lurch forward she fell helplessly back, and three times she landed in the arms of a large, comfortable man on the back platform. The third time it happened he said quietly: “Hadn’t you better stay here now?”

The principal of one of Washington’s high schools relates an incident in connection with the last commencement day. A clever girl had taken one of the principal prizes. At the close of the exercises her friends crowded about her to offer congratulations.

“Weren’t you awfully afraid you wouldn’t get it, Hattie?” asked one, “when there were so many contestants?”

“Oh, no!” cheerily exclaimed Hattie. “Because I knew when it came to English composition I had ’em all skinned.”

The Guards’ Band was playing on the terrace at Windsor Castle during luncheon, and the Queen was so pleased with a lively march that she sent a maid of honor to inquire what it was. The maid of honor blushed deeply as she answered on her return: “‘Come where the Booze is Cheaper,’ your Majesty.”

Mark Twain once wrote to Andrew Carnegie as follows:

“My dear Mr. Carnegie: I see by the papers that you are very prosperous. I want to get a hymn-book. It costs two dollars. I will bless you, God will bless you, and it will do a great deal of good. Yours truly, Mark Twain.”

“P. S.—Don’t send the hymn-book; send me the two dollars.”

A physician started a model insane asylum, says the New York “Sun,” and set apart one ward especially for crazy motorists and chauffeurs. Taking a friend through the building he pointed out with particular pride the automobile ward and called attention to its elegant furnishings and equipment.

“But,” said the friend, “the place is empty; I don’t see any patients.”

“Oh, they are all under the cots fixing the slats,” explained the physician.

An aged, gray-haired and very wrinkled old woman, arrayed in the outlandish calico costume of the mountains, was summoned as a witness in court to tell what she knew about a fight in her house. She took the witness-stand with evidences of backwardness and proverbial Bourbon verdancy. The Judge asked her in a kindly voice what took place. She insisted it did not amount to much, but the Judge by his persistency finally got her to tell the story of the bloody fracas.

“Now, I tell ye, Jedge, it didn’t amount to nuthn’. The fust I knowed about it was when Bill Saunder called Tom Smith a liar, en Tom knocked him down with a stick o’ wood. One o’ Bill’s friends then cut Tom with a knife, slicin’ a big chunk out o’ him. Then Sam Jones, who was a friend of Tom’s, shot the other feller and two more shot him, en three or four others got cut right smart by somebody. That nachly caused some excitement, Jedge, en then they commenced fightin’.”

One morning, as Mr. Clemens returned from a neighborhood call, sans necktie, his wife met him at the door with the exclamation: “There, Sam, you have been over to the Stowes’s again without a necktie! It’s really disgraceful the way you neglect your dress!”

Her husband said nothing, but went up to his room.

A few minutes later his neighbor—Mrs. S.—was summoned to the door by a messenger, who presented her with a small box neatly done up. She opened it and found a black silk necktie, accompanied by the following note: “Here is a necktie. Take it out and look at it. I think I stayed half an hour this morning. At the end of that time will you kindly return it, as it is the only one I have?—Mark Twain.”

The teacher was teaching a class in the infant Sabbath-school room and was making her pupils finish each sentence to show that they understood her.

“The idol had eyes,” the teacher said, “but it could not—”

“See,” cried the children.

“It had ears, but it could not—”

“Hear,” was the answer.

“It had lips,” she said, “but it could not—”

“Speak,” once more replied the children.

“It had a nose, but it could not—”

“Wipe it,” shouted the children; and the lesson had to stop a moment.

She was the dearest and most affectionate little woman in the world, and so thoughtful of her husband’s comfort and his needs. One evening, when company was expected, she inquired solicitously:

“Aren’t you going to wear that necktie I gave you on Christmas, dearie?”

“Of course I am, Henrietta,” responded dearie. “I was saving it up. I am going to wear that red necktie, and my Nile-green smoking-jacket, and my purple and yellow socks, and open that box of cigars you gave me, all at once—to-night.”

When J. M. Barrie addressed an audience of one thousand girls at Smith College during an American visit, a friend asked him how he had found the experience.

“Well,” replied Mr. Barrie, “to tell you the truth I’d much rather talk one thousand times to one girl than to talk one time to a thousand girls.”

The Rev. Mr. Goodman (inspecting himself in mirror)—“Caroline, I don’t really believe I ought to wear this wig. It looks like living a lie.”

“Bless your heart, Avery,” said his better half, “don’t let that trouble you. That wig will never fool anybody for one moment.”

A young man had been calling now and then on a young lady, when one night as he sat in the parlor waiting for her to come down, her mother entered the room instead and asked in a grave, stern way what his intentions were. He was about to stammer a reply, when suddenly the young lady called down from the head of the stairs, “Oh, mama, that isn’t the one.”

A woman hurried up to a policeman at the corner of Twenty-third Street in New York City.

“Does this crosstown car take you down to the Bridge toward Brooklyn?” she demanded.

“Why, madam,” returned the policeman, “do you want to go to Brooklyn?”

“No, I don’t want to,” the woman replied, “but I have to.”

Walter Appleton Clark, whose artistic career was cut short by an untimely death, had a strong sense of humor. In going through a millionaire’s stables, where the floors and walls were of white tiles, drinking fountains of marble, mahogany mangers, silver trimmings, and so forth and so on, “Well,” said the millionaire proudly, “is there anything lacking?” “I can think of nothing,” said Clark, “except a sofa for each horse.”

Oliver Herford, equally famous as poet, illustrator, and brilliant wit, was entertaining four magazine editors at luncheon when the bell rang, and a maid entered with the mail.

“Oh,” said an editor, “an epistle.”

“No,” said Mr. Herford, tearing open the envelope, “not an epistle, a collect.”

An old gentleman on board one of the numerous steamers which ply between Holyhead and the Irish coast missed his handkerchief, and accused a soldier standing by his side of stealing it, which the soldier, an Irishman, denied. Some few minutes afterward the gentleman found the missing article in his hat; he was then most profuse in his apologies to the soldier.

“Not another wurrd,” said Pat; “it was a misthake on both sides—ye took me for a thafe, and I took ye for a gintlemon.”

The family were gathered in the library enjoying a magnificent thunder-storm when the mother thought of Dorothy alone in the nursery. Fearing lest the little daughter should be awakened and feel afraid, she slipped away to quiet her. Pausing at the door, however, in a vivid flash of lightning that illuminated the whole room, she saw the little girl sitting up in bed clapping her hands in excitement and shouting, “Bang it again, God! Bang it again!”

A little girl ate at a feast a great quantity of chocolate eggs and bananas and cakes and peanuts and things of that sort, and finally the time came for her to go.

“But you will have a little more cake before you go?” her hostess said politely.

“No, thank you, ma’am. I’m full,” said the little girl.

“Then,” said the hostess, “you’ll put some nuts and candies in your pockets, won’t you?”

The little girl shook her head regretfully.

“They’re full, too,” she said.

“My dear, I couldn’t match that dress goods.”

“You couldn’t?”

“No, and after what the various clerks said to me, I can’t see why a person in tolerable circumstances should want to match it.”

A boy in a certain school would persist in saying “have went.” One day the teacher kept him in, saying, “While I am out of the room you may write ‘have gone’ fifty times.” When the teacher returned she found he had dutifully performed the task, but on the other side of the paper was a message from the absent one: “I have went. John White.”

On one of his trips abroad Mr. Evarts landed at Liverpool. The steamer was proceeding slowly up the river to the wharf, and Mr. Evarts, after looking at the muddy waters of the Mersey, said to his companion, “Evidently the quality of mercy is not strained.”

Once, at breakfast at a friend’s, Phillips Brooks noticed the diminutive but amusingly dignified daughter of the house having constant trouble with the large fork that she was vainly trying to handle properly with her tiny fingers. In a spirit of kindness, mingled with mischief, the Bishop said:

“Why don’t you give up the fork, my dear, and use your fingers? You know, fingers were made before forks.”

Quick as a flash came the crushing retort: “Mine weren’t.”

Two stout old Germans were enjoying their pipes and placidly listening to the strains of the summer-garden orchestra. One of them in tipping his chair back stepped on a parlor match, which exploded with a bang.

“Dot vas not on de program,” he said, turning to his companion.

“Vat was not?”

“Vy, dot match.”

“Vat match?”

“De match I valked on.”

“Vell, I didn’t see no match; vat aboud it?”

“Vy, I valked on a match and it vent bang, and I said it vas not on de program.”

The other picked up his program and read it through very carefully. “I don’t see it on de program,” he said.

“Vell, I said it vas not on the program, didn’t I?”

“Vell, vat has it got to do mit de program, anyvay? Egsplain yourself.”

Charles Dana Gibson, the creator of the “Gibson girl,” is one of the tallest men in his profession, standing six feet two inches tall and weighing two hundred pounds.

A fellow-illustrator, called upon Mr. Gibson in his studio one day and found him working at a specially constructed table accommodated to his height and breadth. He shook hands cordially with his visitor, but his frank face revealed deep discontent. His visitor expressed the fear that his visit was untimely.

“Not at all, my dear fellow,” Mr. Gibson responded. “But I was just looking at this as you came in,” and he showed him a very small pen, called a crow-quill, with which illustrators make their sketches. The crow-quill is smaller than the ordinary pen and holder, a fragile, perishable, and insignificant instrument.

“Just look at it,” complained Mr. Gibson, “and think of a man of my size earning his living with a thing like that!”

Going into a port where the water was very deep—Rio de Janeiro, I believe—relates Captain A. T. Mahan, the chain cables “got away,” as the expression is, control was lost, and shackle after shackle tore out of the hawse-holes with tremendous rattling and roaring. The admiral was on deck at the moment, and when the chain had been stopped and secured he said to the captain: “Alfred, send for the young man in charge of those chains and give him a good setting-down. Ask him what he means by letting such things happen.” Alfred was a mild person, and clearly did not like his job; he could not have come up to the admiral’s standard. The latter saw it, and said: “Perhaps you had better leave it to me. I’ll settle him.” Fixing his eyes on the offender, he said, sternly: “What do you mean by this, sir? Why the hell didn’t you stop that chain?” The culprit looked quietly at him and said: “How the hell could I?” After a moment the admiral turned to the captain and said meekly: “That’s true, Alfred; how the hell could he?”

An old darky of the Blue Grass State was looking at the high steppers belonging to his new master, who said, “I suppose your master down South had a good many horses?” “’Deed we did, sah, dat we did; an’ ole massa had ’em all name’ Bible names. Faith, Hope, and Charity, Bustle, Stays, and Crinoline was all one spring’s colts!”

The wife of a well-known judge lost her cook, and since she had no other recourse she rolled up her sleeves and for a week provided such meals as the judge had not enjoyed since those happy days when they didn’t keep a cook. The judge’s delight was so great that by way of acknowledgment he presented his wife with a beautiful ermine coat. Naturally the incident was noised about among their acquaintances and a spirit of envious emulation was developed in certain quarters. Mrs. Jerome, after reciting the story to her husband, asked, “What do I get, Jerry, if I will do the cooking for a week?”

“At the end of the week, dear, you’ll get one of those long crêpe veils.”

Perhaps one of Lord Beaconsfield’s brightest flings was at the wife of his bitterest political foe. Mrs. Gladstone passed the Prime Minister one day, and he cast a glance at her over his shoulder, saying: “There goes a woman without one redeeming fault.”

A private, anxious to secure leave of absence, sought his captain with a most convincing tale about a sick wife breaking her heart for his presence.

The officer, familiar with the soldier’s ways, replied:

“I am afraid you are not telling the truth. I have just received a letter from your wife urging me not to let you come home because you get drunk, and mistreat her shamefully.”

The private saluted and started to leave the room. He paused at the door, asking: “Sor, may I spake to you, not as an officer, but as mon to mon?”

“Yes, what is it?”

“You and I are two of the most illigant liars the Lord ever made. I’m not married at all.”

A very prosy gentleman, who was in the habit of waylaying Douglas Jerrold, met his victim and, planting himself in the way, said: “Well, Jerrold, what is going on to-day?”

Jerrold replied, darting past the inquirer, “I am!”

Foote, the English actor, was once praising the hospitality of the Irish, after one of his trips to Ireland. A gentleman in his audience asked him whether he had ever been at Cork. “No, sir,” replied Foote; “but I have seen many drawings of it.”

A lady one day meeting a girl who had formerly been in her employ inquired, “Well Mary, where do you live now?” “Please ma’am, I don’t live nowhere now,” rejoined the girl; “I am married.”

When a Mr. Wilberforce was a candidate for election in Hull, England, his sister, an amiable and witty young lady offered to make a present of a new gown to each of the wives of the men who voted for her brother. Upon hearing this, the crowd whom she was addressing broke out into cries of “Miss Wilberforce forever.” “I thank you gentlemen,” the young lady replied, “but I do not wish to be Miss Wilberforce forever!”

“How do you define ‘black as your hat?’” said a schoolmaster to one of his pupils.

“Darkness that may be felt,” replied the budding genius.

She—“He married her for her money. Wasn’t that awful?”

He—“Did he get it?”

She—“No.”

He—“It was.”

“My, but it is hot in your office,” said a client to his lawyer.

“It ought to be,” replied the lawyer, “I make my bread here.”

The town council of a small German community met to inspect a new site for a cemetery. They assembled at a chapel, and as it was a warm day some one suggested they leave their coats there.

“Some one can stay behind and watch them,” suggested Herr Botteles.

“What for?” demanded Herr Ehrlich. “If we are all going out together what need is there for any one to watch the clothes?”

After a brief two weeks’ acquaintance he invited her to go to the ball-game with him.

“There’s Jarvis! He’s a good one. He’s a pitcher for your life. And that’s Johnson, over there. He’s going to be our best man in a few weeks.”

“Oh, Walter! He’ll do, all right,” she lisped hurriedly, “but it is so sudden, dear.”

Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson, of Concord, is fond of telling of an old servant whose heart was exceedingly kind, and in whom the qualities of pity and compassion were developed nearly to perfection. He was once driving his master and Emerson through the country. As they approached a new house that the master was building, they saw an old woman sneaking away with a bundle of wood. “Jabez, Jabez,” cried the master, “do you see that old woman taking my wood?” Jabez looked with pity at the old woman, then with scorn at his master. “No, sir,” he said stoutly, “I don’t see her, and I didn’t think that you would see her either.”

“They said that we would never be happy,” moaned the young bride.

“But you are happy.”

“But now they say it won’t last.”

“That fellow,” said Alfred Henry Lewis, the other day, when a certain well-known Tammany man was mentioned, “puts up a good bluff, but there is nothing to him. Open the front door and you are in his back yard.”

Little Paul trying on his grandmother’s glasses—“Grandma, what is it between my eyes and the glasses, I can’t see anything.”

“Eighty years, my dear.”

To Richard Mansfield an enthusiastic woman admirer had paid tribute of praise, adding: “I suppose, sir, that when in the spirit of those great rôles you forget your real self for days.”

“Yes, madam, for days, as well as nights. It is then I do those dreadful things—trample on the upturned features of my leading lady and hurl tenderloin steaks at waiters.”

“And you do not know of it at all?”

“Not a solitary thing, until I read the papers the next day,” said Mr. Mansfield solemnly.

When Marquis Ito was in the United States, in 1901, an inexperienced St. Paul reporter sought an interview with him. He met Ito’s secretary, and made known his mission. “Me newspaper man. Me writee news. Me heardee marquis velly ill. He better to-day? You savve?” began the reporter, to the secretary’s amazement. But the latter was equal to the occasion. “Me savve,” he said gravely. “Marquis he no better. Belly blad. Catchee cold. Doctor him no lettee him leave bled to-day. You savve?” The interview proceeded in this way, but at its termination the secretary, with a twinkle in his eye, remarked: “The marquis is greatly fatigued by his arduous journey, but—” But the reporter had fled.

Professor Phelps, who disliked mathematics, was once walking with Professor Newton, who began discussing a problem so deep that his companion could not follow it. He fell into a brown study, from which he was aroused by Newton’s emphatic assertion, “And that, you see, gives us x!” “Does it?” asked Mr. Phelps, politely. “Why, doesn’t it?” exclaimed the professor, excitedly, alarmed at the possibility of a flaw in his calculations. Quickly his mind ran back and detected a mistake. “You are right, Mr. Phelps. You are right!” shouted the professor. “It doesn’t give us x; it gives us y.” And from that time Professor Phelps was looked upon as a mathematical prodigy, the first man who ever tripped Newton.

Ambassador Choate and his daughter visited the restaurant made famous by Dr. Samuel Johnson. It is the custom there to give the guests lark pie, such as Johnson used to eat, and the Choates were served with one of the pasties. Choate was in the chair that Johnson was wont to occupy, and had just begun his meal, when his daughter exclaimed: “Isn’t it funny, papa? You are in Johnson’s chair and eating a tradition.” “Eating a tradition!” retorted the ambassador struggling valiantly; “I have got hold of one of Johnson’s larks.”

A New England school-teacher recited “The Landing of the Pilgrims” to her pupils, then asked each of them to draw from their imagination a picture of Plymouth Rock. One little fellow hesitated and then raised his hand. “Well, Willie, what is it?” asked the teacher. “Please teacher, do you want us to draw a hen or a rooster?”

An English gentleman had sent a private note to a marquis, on a personal matter, by hand, and on the return of the man questioned him as to his reception. “Ah, sir,” said the man, “there’s no use writing him any letter, he can’t see to read them. He’s blind.”

“Blind!”

“Yes, sir. He asked me twice where my hat was, and I had it on my head all the time.”

A magician was performing in a Kentucky town, and during the evening announced that in his next trick he would need a pint flask of whisky. No move was made to supply the liquor. “Perhaps you did not understand me. Will some gentleman kindly loan me a pint flask of whisky?” Then a lank man in the rear of the hall arose. “Mistah,” said he, “will a quart flask do?” “Just as well, sir,” replied the magician, and every gentleman in the hall arose with flask extended.

“Phœbe,” said a mistress in reproof to her colored servant whom she found smoking a short pipe after having repeatedly threatened to discharge her if again caught in the act, “if you won’t stop that bad habit for any other reason do so because it is right. You are a good church member—and, don’t you know that smoking makes the breath unpleasant, and that nothing unclean can enter Heaven?” “’Deed, missie, I does,” said the woman, “but bress’ yo’ heart, when I go to Heaben I’ll leave my bref behin’.”

It was the custom of a certain deacon, when dining at the home of one of his best friends, to drink a glass of milk, as a prelude to his dinner. One day when the minister was scheduled to appear, instead of the rich, foamy glass of milk, his friend placed beside his plate a glass of milk punch. After the blessing, the deacon seized his glass and drank to the last drop, and then exclaimed as he closed his eyes and smacked his lips, “Oh, what a cow!”

Dean Hole of Rochester, England, told of a very innocent and obliging curate who went to a Yorkshire parish where many of the parishioners bred horses and sometimes raced them. A few Sundays after his arrival he was asked to invite the prayers of the congregation for Lucy Grey. He did so. They prayed for three Sundays for her. On the fourth, the church clerk told the curate that he need not do it any more. “Why,” he asked, “is she dead?” “No,” said the clerk, “she’s won the steeplechase.”

The late Richard Henry Stoddard while endeavoring to procure an impromptu luncheon for a number of his friends after his wife and the servants had retired, found a box of sardines. His vigorous remarks, inspired by the sardine-can’s objections to the “open sesame” of a dull jack-knife, attracted the attention of Mrs. Stoddard on the floor above.

“What are you doing?” she called down.

“Opening a can of sardines.”

“With what?”

“A dashed old jack-knife,” cried the exasperated poet; “what did you think I was opening it with?”

“Well, dear,” she answered, “I didn’t think you were opening it with prayer.”

“What is the matter with your father, Gladys?” asked the child’s aunt.

“He’s awful sick with a headache,” the little girl answered, “an’ he’s hurt, too, ‘cause mama said he’s broke his resolution.”

Colored people are proverbially fond of funerals, and Mrs. Walker’s cook was trying to make her mistress realize what she had missed by not attending the funeral of a prominent citizen of their village.

“Mis’ Fanny,” she said, “you sholy orto hev been thar. I ain’ nevvah seen sech a big funril in dis heah town. Dey had all de kerridges fum bofe liberty stables, ’mos’ all de private conveniences, an’ dat new fambly fum de North was dere in a two-hoss syringe!”

William Bourke Cochran took his seat in Congress on the day that the House went into turmoil over the special report on post-office affairs. “I suppose it looks like old times to you, Cochran,” said a friend, who, with others, had crowded around to welcome him back. Just then such epithets as “coward,” “knave,” “scoundrel,” and “liar,” hurtled across the chamber. “Well, I can’t say it looks much like old times,” replied Cochran, “too many new faces for that. But it certainly sounds like old times.”

This happened in Scotland: The last edition of the newspapers had been sold out and the newsboys were calculating their takings. “Hallo,” said Jimmy, in alarm, “I’m a ’a’penny short!” “Well, wats the use of ’arpin’ on it?” growled Dick, as he calmly cracked a nut; “you don’t think I took it, do you?” “I don’t say you ’ave. But there it is, I’m a ’a’penny short, and you’re eatin’ nuts.”

In the “Diary of a Frenchman” by Flandrau, he makes a student say to his chum: “I’ve an idea that we’re going to have ‘je suis bon’ in French to-day. I wish you would write out a few tenses for me.”

Whereupon his friend wrote:

Tolstoy told Isabel Habgard, who has translated many of his books, a good story of one of his ancestors, an army officer, who was an excellent mimic. One day he was impersonating the Emperor Paul to a group of his friends, when Paul himself entered, and for some moments looked on, unperceived, at the antics of the young man. Tolstoy finally turned, and beholding the emperor, bowed his head and was silent. “Go on, sir,” said Paul; “continue the performance.” The young man hesitated a moment, and then, folding his arms and imitating every gesture and intonation of his sovereign, he said: “Tolstoy, you deserve to be degraded, but I remember the thoughtlessness of youth, and you are pardoned.” The czar smiling, said, “Well, be it so.”

When President Nicholas Murray Butler was at college, certain freshmen of his time made no scruple of stealing a pail of milk which a dairyman daily placed outside the door of Mr. Butler’s room while the occupant was in class. In order to foil the boys, Mr. Butler printed a sign in big letters, “I have poisoned this milk with arsenic.” Upon his return he found the milk intact, but added to the notice were these words: “So have we.”

There is an amusing story told of a clergyman, who, upon one of his trips through the West, observed that almost every man he met and spoke with used profanity. Finally he found one man who talked to him for twenty minutes without using an oath. The clergyman shook hands with him at parting and said: “You don’t know how glad I am to have a chance to have a talk with a man like you. You are the first man I have met for three days who could talk for five minutes without swearing.” The stranger, shocked, instantly and innocently ejaculated: “Well, I’ll be d——d!”

The other day, while shopping, a lady accidentally picked up another lady’s umbrella from the counter, and had the mistake pointed out to her in a rather frigid manner. She returned the umbrella with apologies, and then remembered that she had no umbrella with her.

As it had begun to rain, she bought one, as well as one for a birthday present for a friend. With the two umbrellas in her hand, she boarded a car and, as luck would have it, sat down opposite the lady whose umbrella she had picked up earlier in the store. As the latter swept out of the car she smiled again frigidly, and remarked to the lady of the umbrellas, “I see you have had a successful day.”

“If a fairy should appear to you and offer you three wishes,” said the imaginative young woman, “what would you do?” “I’d sign the pledge,” answered the matter-of-fact young man.

A summer tourist was passing through a German village in the West recently, when a stout German girl came to the front door and called to a small girl playing in front. “Gusty! Gusty!” she said, “come in and eat yourself. Ma’s on the table, and pa’s half et!”

A university of Illinois professor is very popular among the students. He was entertaining a group of them at his residence one night. Taking down a magnificent sword that hung over the fireplace, he brandished it about, exclaiming, “Never will I forget the day I drew this blade for the first time.” “Where did you draw it, sir?” an awe-struck freshman asked. “At a raffle,” said the professor.

In the vicinity of Germantown there lived a worthy old lady and her son John, who were once called upon to entertain a number of ladies at dinner during Quarterly meeting. As John began to carve the broiled chickens, he entered upon a flowery speech of welcome, but in the midst of his flattering utterances his mother, who was somewhat deaf, piped up from the other end of the table: “You needn’t be praisin’ of ’em up, John, I’m afraid they’re a lot of tough old hens, every one of ’em.”

One of Père Ollivier’s flock, a very beautiful and handsomely dressed woman, coming very late to church one Sunday morning, caused some disturbance and stir among the worshipers by her entrance and interrupted the flow of eloquence of the worthy father, who, very irritable and easily put out, said: “Madame perhaps waited to take her chocolate before coming to church?” To this, madame, unabashed, graciously replied: “Yes, mon père; and two rolls with it.”

Of late years the House of Commons has seen some lively times. Many of them have been brought about by the irascible but delightful Irish member, Dr. Tanner. On one occasion, when he had been indulging rather freely and his ever ready tongue being loosened, he met Sir Ellis Ashmead Bartlett in the lobby, and taking him to one side he said, in the greatest confidence, and without the slightest tinge of anger, but with a world of meaning: “Bartlett, you are a fool.” “You are drunk,” retorted the knight. “That’s all right,” replied Dr. Tanner. “To-morrow I shall be sober, but you will still be a fool.”

A reader for a New York publishing house gives the following, quoted from a story submitted by an Indiana authoress, as being about the choicest bit he has come across in many years:

“Reginald was bewitched. Never had the baroness seemed to him so beautiful as at this moment, when, in her dumb grief, she hid her face.”

An old negro living in Carrollton was taken ill recently, and called in a physician of his race to prescribe for him. But the old man did not seem to be getting any better, and finally a white physician was called. Soon after arriving Dr. S—— felt the darky’s pulse for a moment, and then examined his tongue. “Did your other doctor take your temperature?” he asked. “I don’t know, sah,” he answered, feebly; “I haint missed nuthin’ but mah watch yit, boss.”