Volume 3 — Questions and Answers

Dear Capt. Billy—If your pedigreed bull is a thoroughbred, why not have him registered?—Simon Simple.

No use to register him; he couldn’t vote anyway.

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Dear Capt. Billy—My wife is getting too strenuous. The other day she broke a plate over my head. What would you advise me to do?—Nyce Boise.

You might try cast iron plates.

* * *

Dear Capt. Bill—Please define love?—Amorous Annabelle.

Love is the psychology of youth; the subtle sympathy that blends the world into a thing of joy and pleasure unrestrained.

* * *

Dear Bill—Is “The Eternal Triangle” a play or a book?—Innocent Imogene.

It’s a heart-throbbing and soul-stirring play, Imogene, in which all humans have at some time or other enacted a leading part—Adam and Eve excepted. In fact I feel certain that neither Adam or Eve ever “Cribbed” in the University of Paradise with its rapturous courses of enchantment. There’s a reason.

* * *

Dear Skipper—What epidemics were suffered by United States troops during the World War?—Si Frever.

Spanish influenza and American Shavetails. Both were rather annoying at times, as any doughboy will tell you.

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Dear Farmer Bill—Being as how you are a tiller of the soil, I suppose you’re familiar with the “Black Eye Susan?”—Nick Nack.

No, Nick, I never met the lady, but I know the gentlemen who gave it to her.

* * *

Dear Bill—Is there very much difference in women as a whole?—King Young.

They’re all alike, young man, except they’ve got different names.

* * *

Dear Skipper—What is meant by “The Port of Missing Men?”—Berry M. Deep.

Ladies’ night in a Turkish bath.

* * *

Dear Skipper—Who are the leading Turkish rulers?—Jack Sellers.

Pasha Hat, Mustapha Beer and Esaad Enuf.

* * *

Dear Capt. Billy—What is your best definition of a diplomat?—Phillis Fullabunk.

A diplomat, Phillis, is a man who, when he gets home late, sneaks into bed backwards so that if his wife awakes he can tell her he is just getting up.

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Dear Capt. Billy—Will you please tell me who invented apple sauce?—Anna Nyas.

William Tell. He shot the apple off his son’s head and they all had apple sauce for supper.

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Dear Captain Bill—Don’t you think a woman is everything in the world?—Tiddledewinks.

Yes, indeed—everything I can think of.

* * *

Dear Capt. Billy—What is the easiest way to drive a nail without smashing my fingers?—Ab Doman.

Hold the hammer in both hands.

* * *

Dear Whiz Bang Bill—What is your idea of the height of absentmindedness?—Lou Z. Lizzie.

The professor who woke up at daylight and found a fair lady beside him, much to his astonishment, having forgotten that he had married the night before.

* * *

Dear Capt. Billy—Can you give me a good remedy for toothache?—Holey G. Macknaw.

Fill the mouth with cold water and sit on a hot stove till the water boils.

* * *

Dear Capt. Billy—What is good to keep hair in?—Baldy Bozo.

A cigar box.

* * *

Preacher—Take up the collection before I start preaching.

Why?

Preacher—Because I’m going to preach on thrift.

* * *

Sunday School Teacher—“Percy, what must we do before our sins can be forgiven?”

Percy—“Sin.”

* * *

Proudie! Proudie!

A well-known actor was introduced to a chap who didn’t strike him particularly because he was prejudiced against men who talk in soprano voices. The next time they met he ignored the fellow entirely. A few days later he ran across the fellow again, but his face was still frozen.

The fourth meeting occurred in a cafe, and he of the soprano voice waltzed up to the disgusted actor’s table.

“Do you know,” he said, “we have met three times and you weally haven’t noticed me?” Then with a sibilant lisp in a high C that nobody in the cafe could miss, he gave the actor three little dabs on the shoulder and squeaked, “Proudie! Proudie! Proudie!”

* * *

Parlor Story

One day an inspector of a New York tenement house found four families living in one room, chalk lines having been drawn in such a manner as to mark out a quarter for each family.

“How do you get along here?” inquired the inspector.

“Very well,” was the reply. “Only the man in the farthest corner keeps boarders.”

* * *

Some kind-hearted man of money moves the motion that Manhattan’s mackerel munching macaroons be deported to Waikiki Beach to indulge in the popular Hawaiian pastime of poi-eating.

* * *

Another Nut Story

“Mine is a sad case, Lady,” said the solemn visaged inmate of the asylum to the visitor.

“My parents fed me Gripe nuts; made me sleep up in the garret among the rats, in a ‘buggy’ bed and beneath a crazy quilt. My only pet was a squirrel, and my only toys, the wheels from a cuckoo clock.”

And striking a Napoleonic attitude, he strode out in search of Josephine.

* * *

Oh, Doc Crafts!

Some people are so dry that talking to them is like chewing a blotter.

* * *

This Ain’t Very Hot

The Meanest Man bought his bride a nickel’s worth of candy as a wedding present, then took her on a trolley ride honeymoon.

After they got off the car he said, “Let’s save some of that candy for the children.”

* * *

Lampoon’s Stuff

He got on at Park and sat in the last car.

She got on at Park and sat in the last car.

When he went over the bridge he smiled. She laughed aloud. At Kendall she crossed her legs. He crossed his fingers. At Central he had her phone number. She had his watch. When they reached Harvard he offered to take her home. He kissed on the front porch. Then he went back to Ridgely Annex and cut one more notch in his shoe trees.

“I guess it’s my personality,” he thought as he tumbled into bed.

“I guess it’s my smile,” she thought as she tumbled into bed.

* * *

Fido, Quit Your Pekin

“Marie is so modest she puts her pet dog out of the room while she is changing her gown!”

“The idea!”

“Well—it’s a Pekingese.”

* * *

There are two classes of people: those who sit and think, and those who sit.

* * *

The Crap Shooter’s Wedding

Preacher—Rastus, do yo’ take dis here woman for better or for worse?

Rastus (from habit)—Pahson, Ah shoots de works!

* * *

The Program

* * *

Knockem On the Kiss

He—Do you like indoor sports?

She—Yes, if they go home early.

* * *

“Will you please insert this obituary notice?” asked an old gentleman of Pedigreed Bull Smith of the Minneapolis Journal. “I make bold to ask it because the deceased had a great many friends about here who’d be glad to hear of his death.”

* * *

Irish Pot Pourri

As the old saying goes—you’ll find no Chinese laundries where the River Shannon flows.

* * *

If everything we did in life was printed on our foreheads there would not be so many reformers out in the daytime.

* * *

The Fireless Telephone

In Hades: “Hell-o!”

In Heaven: “Hal-o!”

* * *

“Were you ever pinched for going too fast?”

“No, but I’ve been slapped.”

* * *

* * *

“Sir,” writes a correspondent, “When I was in Butte I dropped my meal ticket on the floor and one of those miners with hob-nailed shoes stepped on it and punched out a week’s board.”

* * *

Sandy Lost His Ball

Sandy McDugal was a great golf enthusiast. In many months he never missed a morning. Then the inevitable happened—Sandy was absent. His fellow golfers, worried lest Sandy be ill, sought him out.

They found the old Highlander in apparently good health. Sandy refused to explain his absence from the course until after vigorous questioning.

“Weel,” drawled Sandy unwillingly, “if ye must know, I lost me ball.”

* * *

There are two things that I can’t understand. A locoed cow and a love-sick man.

* * *

This Can’t Be True

A traveling man had missed his train and went back to his home. He took his pass keys out of his pocket, opened the door, and to his great surprise his wife was sitting on his best friend’s lap, and kissing him.

“Smith, I’ve set a trap for you and caught you,” shouted the irate husband.

Smith replied, “With bait like this, you can catch me any time!”

* * *

On Picket Duty

“That was a striking gown your girl wore last night.”

“Yes; that was her union suit.”

* * *

When Mrs. Murphy saw her husband hanging in the stable she said, “so that’s where my clothes line went!”

* * *

A Thing of Beauty is an expense forever.

* * *

Where Words Failed

The new guard was not familiar with a certain railway run in Wales. Came a station which rejoiced in the name of Llanfairfeshanpwllgogerych. For a few minutes he stood looking at the sign board in mute helplessness. Then, pointing to the board and waving his other arm toward the carriages, he called, “If there’s anybody there for here, this is it.”—Western Christian Advocate.

* * *

Mr. Harper’s Special

A Darky and his brown sweetheart, followed by three pickaninnies, applied to the clerk of a Southern court house for a license to wed.

The clerk eyed the assemblage doubtfully. “Whose children are these?” he asked.

“Dey our’n,” was the ready response from the man.

The clerk was scandalized, being new at his post. “You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, waiting to get married till you have a family half grown—”

“Jedge, you’ll have to excuse dat,” interrupted the “bride,” sweetly. “De roads out our way is so bad!”

* * *

It’s a New One On Us

Elizabeth—Say, daddie, what is that thing under your nose?

Daddie—Why! That’s my mustache. Why do you ask?

Elizabeth—I just wondered what you called it. Mamma’s got one of them things under her arm.

* * *

Dot’s Right

Cohen—Ikey, what for you go up dem shtairs two at a time?

Ikey—To safe my shoes, fader.

Cohen—Dot’s right, my son; but look out you don’t shplit your pandts.

* * *

Not First Class

The late Peter Cooper Hewitt, millionaire inventor of New York, had a very intimate knowledge of high society in the world’s capitals.

Mr. Cooper Hewitt, discussing the English professional beauties of the ’80’s, said one day:

“A famous, or rather a notorious professional beauty, visited Constantinople. Her charms worked havoc among the Turkish nobility. The sultan himself was smitten.

“At a dinner party on her return, King Edward, then the Prince of Wales, questioned her about her Turkish conquests.

“‘You made a great hit with the sultan, I believe?’ he said.

“‘The sultan,’ she answered with enthusiasm, ‘is a dear. He conferred this decoration on me.’

“And she displayed a jeweled emblem which glistened on her white bosom royally.

“‘It’s the order of virtue,’ she explained, and then, lowering her eyes, she added—‘of the second class.’”

* * *

Did you ever sit in the parlor with your best girl and hold each other’s hands ’til they got all “perspiry” and then let go and rub off and get a fresh hold again?

* * *

When I die I want to be cremated so I can carry my remains around in my vest pocket.