Title: The Funny Bone: Short Stories and Amusing Anecdotes for a Dull Hour
Editor: Henry Martyn Kieffer
Release date: January 11, 2014 [eBook #44643]
Most recently updated: January 25, 2021
Language: English
Credits: Produced by David Edwards, Chuck Greif and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
SHORT STORIES AND AMUSING
ANECDOTES FOR A DULL HOUR
EDITED AND ARRANGED BY
HENRY MARTYN KIEFFER
Author of “The Recollections of a
Drummer Boy,” “It is to Laugh,” etc.
NEW YORK : : : DODGE
PUBLISHING COMPANY
214-220 East 23d Street
Copyright, 1910, by
DODGE PUBLISHING COMPANY
Tew brake a mule—commence at his head.
In shooting at a deer that looks like a calf, always aim so as to miss it if it iz a calf, and to hit it if it iz a deer.
Tew git rid of cock-roaches—sell yure house, and lot, and flee tew the mountains.
Tew pick out a good husband—shut up both eyes, grab hard, and trust in the Lord.
There ain’t nothing that iz a sure kure for laziness, but i hav known a second wife tew hurry it sum.
Josh Billings Allminax.
It was his first banquet, and they were making speeches. Everybody was being called on for a speech, and he was in mortal terror, for he had never made a speech in his life. An old-timer at his side cruelly suggested that he “get under the table—or say a prayer.” His name was called and he got up with fear and trembling, and said:
“My friends, I never made a speech in all my life, and I’m just scared nearly to death. A friend here beside me has suggested two things for me to do—to get under the table, or to pray. Well, I couldn’t get under the table without observation, and now that I am on my feet, I can’t think of any other prayer to say except one that I used to hear my sister Mary say in the morning when mother called us—‘O Lord, how I do hate to get up!’”
When Benjamin F. Butler lived in Lowell, Massachusetts, he had a little black-and-tan dog. One morning, as he was coming down the street, followed by the dog, a policeman stopped him and told him that, in accordance with an ordinance just passed, he must muzzle the dog.
“Very well,” said Butler.
Next morning he came along with the dog, and the policeman again told him of the muzzling ordinance and requested him to muzzle the dog.
“All right,” snorted Butler. “It is a fool ordinance, but I’ll muzzle him. Let me pass.”
Next morning the policeman was on the lookout. “I beg your pardon, General,” he said, “but I must arrest you. Your dog is not muzzled.”
“Not muzzled?” shouted Butler. “Not muzzled? Well, look at him.”
The policeman looked more carefully at the dog and found a tiny, toy muzzle tied to its tail.
“General,” he expostulated, “this dog is not properly muzzled.”
“Yes, he is, sir,” asserted Butler. “Yes, he is. I have examined that idiotic statute and I find it says that every dog must wear a muzzle. It doesn’t say where the dog shall wear the muzzle, and I choose to decorate the tail of my dog instead of the head with this infernal contraption.”
“One day,” said General Howard, “Mr. Lincoln saw Senator Fessenden coming toward his office room. Mr. Fessenden had received the promise of some appointment in Maine for one of his constituents. The case had been overlooked. As soon as Mr. Lincoln caught sight of the Senator he saw he was angry, and called out: ‘Say, Fessenden, aren’t you an Episcopalian?’ Mr. Fessenden, somewhat taken aback, answered, ‘Yes, I belong to that persuasion, Mr. President.’ Mr. Lincoln then said, ‘I thought so. You swear so much like Seward. Seward is an Episcopalian. But, you ought to hear Stanton swear. He can beat you both. He is a Presbyterian.’”
Some one once called on President Lincoln during the war to suggest some change of command for General B——, who did not seem to do well as a commander anywhere. “Well,” said Mr. Lincoln, “that’s so. General B—— doesn’t fit in well anywhere. He reminds me of an experience I once had with a piece of iron I found while at work in the woods. I thought it would make a good axe-head, and took it to a blacksmith. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘it’ll make a good axe.’ So he put it into the fire, made it red-hot and pounded away on it on his anvil. After hammering it a good while, he stopped and said, ‘No, it won’t make an axe, but I tell you, it’ll make a mighty good clevis.’ So I told him to make a clevis out of it. Then he heated it again, and again pounded away at it a great while, and then stopped and looked at it and said, ‘No, it won’t make a clevis neither. But,’ said he, holding it red-hot in his pincers over his tub of water, ‘I’ll tell you what it will make. It will make a blame’ good fizzle.’ And here he dropped it into the tub—and it fizzled.”
The occupants of a Pullman sleeper were diligently trying to get some rest, but could not. There was a very thirsty woman in one of the berths who kept the whole car awake by her perpetual song of—“Oh, I am so dry. I am so dry. My, but I am dry. Dear me, what shall I do? I am so dry.”
“Hello, Porter!” at last sang out a gentleman across the way, “For Heaven’s sake give that woman some ice water, and plenty of it. I want to get some sleep.”
The Porter brought a glass of water. He brought a second glass. She drank them both—and took up her song afresh—
“My, but I was dry. I was so dry. I never was so dry in all my life. Dear me, but I was dry.”
“Oh, Great Scott, woman,” sang out the man across the way, “dry up, and let me sleep!”
In the good old days of the rod of birch a Philadelphia school teacher was very partial to one of his boys, and very severe to another. One day they were both tardy. Rod in hand he called them both up on the floor. “James, my boy,” said he to the favorite regretfully, but kindly, “why were you late to-day?” “You see, sir,” replied James, “I was asleep, sir, and I dreamed I was going to California, and I was down on the wharf, and I thought the school-bell was the bell of the steamboat.” “That will do, my boy,” said the teacher, glad of an excuse to shield his favorite, “always tell the truth, my boy. And now, sir,” said he to the other sternly, “and where were you?” “You, see, sir,” said the other candidly, “I was down on the wharf waitin’ to see Jim off!”
Annie had a beau. She also had a small brother of the proverbially troublesome age of five. One day at the dinner table they were teasing Annie about Mr. Lovejoy—that was the beau’s name—and Annie declared that she didn’t like him one bit, and said moreover that Mr. Lovejoy “had a soft spot in his head.” That called off the dogs, for a time at least, but her brother Bobbie took note.
The next evening Mr. Lovejoy called to see Annie. They were both in the parlor. He was sitting on the sofa, and she occupied a chair on the other side of the room. Bobbie strolled into the room, climbed up on the sofa and began a very diligent examination of Mr. Lovejoy’s head. He felt all over it, and looked puzzled. Mr. Lovejoy was puzzled likewise, and at length said, “Why, Bobbie, what are you examining my head for? Are you studying phrenology?” “No,” said the boy, “Sister Annie says you have a soft spot on your head somewhere, and I was just trying to find it!”
They made it up somehow, and Mr. Lovejoy began to call again, evidently with better results. For, one rainy day the father of the household was looking everywhere in the hall for his umbrella. “Where’s my umbrella, Annie?” asked he. “I believe somebody has carried it off.” And Bobbie said, “Annie’s beau stole it.” And Annie said, “Bobbie! how dare you say such a thing of Mr. Lovejoy?” And Bobbie said, “I know he did, because when he was giving you good-night at the hat-rack last night, I heard him say as plain as could be, ‘I’m going to steal just one!’”
Two Irish hod-carriers were arguing about their ability to carry their hods safely to the top of a high building. One said he could carry a tumbler of water on top of his load without spilling a drop. And Pat said, “Ach! a tumbler of water! Why, Mike, I could carry you in my hod to the top of this ten-story buildin’ without spillin’ you.” And Mike said, “I bet you tin dollars you can’t.” “Done!” said Pat. “Get into my hod.”
Mike got in, and up Pat went quickly and safely until he came to the sixth floor, when all of a sudden his foot slipped off the rung of the ladder and his hod pitched, threatening to deposit its cargo on the sidewalk seventy-five feet below. But with a mighty effort he steadied himself, grasped his hod tight and proceeded to the top safely, where he deposited Mike on the floor of the scaffolding with, “There, Mike, I’ve won the bet. Out wid yer tin dollars.” “Sure, ye did, Pat,” said Mike, “the tin is yours, but whin ye got to the sixth flure, an’ stoombled—be gob, I thought I had ye!”
In a sleeping car one morning not long ago a Vermont man was accosted by his neighbor opposite, who was putting on his shoes, with the inquiry: “My friend, allow me to inquire, are you a rich man?” The Vermonter looked astonished, but answered the pleasant-faced, tired-looking gentleman with a “Yes, I am tolerably rich.” A pause occurred, and then came another question, “How rich are you?” He answered, “Oh—about seven or eight hundred thousand. Why?” “Well,” said the weary-looking old man, “if I were as rich as you say you are, and went traveling, and snored as loud as I know you do, I’d hire a whole sleeper all for myself every time I went traveling.”
An old darkey who was asked if in his experience prayer was ever answered, replied: “Well, sah, some pra’rs is ansud an’ some isn’t—’pends on what yo’ asks fo’? Jest arter de wah, w’en it was mighty hard scratchin’ fo’ de cullud brudren, I ’bsarved dat w’enebber I pway de Lo’d to sen’ one o’ Massa Peyton’s fat turkeys fo’ de ole man, dere was no notice took o’ de partition; but—w’en I pway dat he would sen’ de ole man fo’ de turkey, de ting was ’tended to befo’ sunup nex’ mornin’ dead sartain.”
A lonely traveler on horseback, riding through a dreary section of the far West, eagerly scanned the horizon for some signs of a human habitation. At last away in the distance he spied a cabin, put his horse to a trot, only to find the house deserted. Nailed on the front door was a sheet of paper on which he read the following pathetic story:
Five miles from water.
Ten miles from timber.
A hundred miles from a neighbor.
A hundred and fifty miles from a post office.
Two hundred and fifty from a railroad.
God bless our home!
We have gone East to spend the winter with my wife’s folks.
Bobbie was taken to church for the first time, and his dear Aunt Lou, who took him there, “just wondered how he would behave.” She soon discovered, for Bobbie was no sooner seated in the pew than he observed a very bald-headed man two seats to the front, and exclaimed in a loud whisper which set everybody smiling, “Oh, Aunt Lou! there’s a man with a skinned head!” Aunt Lou’s face was crimson, and she shook him, but it did little good, for when the minister took his place in the chancel, the boy remarked, “Another man with a skinned head!” Things were getting uncomfortable, and reached their climax when the boy, seeing the choir up in the gallery, called out, “Oh, Aunt Lou! what are all those people doing up there on the mantel-piece?”
Once upon a time there was a minister, a very orthodox man, and he was very fond of pepper-sauce, and he liked it piping hot, the very strongest kind on the market. Distrusting that furnished by the hotels, he always carried with him on his travels a bottle of his favorite brand. One day as he was seated at the dinner table of a hotel, a man on the other side of the table asked him to “please pass the pepper-sauce.” “Certainly,” said he, “with pleasure. This bottle is my own private property, I always carry it with me. I think you will find it very good.” The man helped himself freely, and when he had got done coughing and had recovered enough breath to enable him to speak, he said: “Pardon me, sir. I believe you are a preacher?” “Yes, that is my calling in life.” “An orthodox preacher, I presume?” “Yes, sir.” “And you really believe in hell-fire?” “Yes—I feel it my duty to warn the inpenitent of their danger.” “And you do preach and believe in a literal hell-fire?” “I cannot do otherwise with the Scriptures before me.” “Well”—said the man, “I have met a good many preachers in my time who believe and preach just as you do, sir, but I must say I never before met a man who carries his samples with him.”
“When I get to heaven,” said Brown, as he laid down the book he had been reading—“when I get to heaven, the very first person I want to see will be Shakespeare.”
“And what do you want to see Shakespeare for?” inquired his wife.
“Why, I just want to ask him whether he wrote his own plays, or whether he got some one else to write them for him, and have this question settled.”
“Well, but”—objected his wife, “how do you know he’ll be there? Not all people will get to heaven.”
“That’s so, that’s so,” said Brown meditatively. “Well, I’ll tell you what we’ll do—if he isn’t there, then suppose you ask him?”
At a criminal trial both judge and counsel had a deal of trouble to make the timid witnesses speak loud enough to be heard by the jury, and it is possible that the temper of the counsel may thereby have been turned from the even tenor of its way. After this gentleman had gone through the various stages of bar pleading, and had coaxed, threatened and even bullied the witnesses, there was called into the box a young hostler who appeared to be simplicity itself.
“Now, sir,” said the counsel, in a tone that would at any other time have been denounced as vulgarly loud, “I hope we shall have no difficulty in making you speak out.”
“I hope not, sir,” was shouted, or rather bellowed out, by the witness in tones which almost shook the building, and would certainly have alarmed any timid or nervous person.
“How dare you speak in that way, sir?” demanded the counsel.
“Please, sir, I can’t speak no louder,” roared the perplexed witness, evidently thinking that fault was found with him for speaking too softly.
“Pray, have you been drinking this morning?” shouted the counsel, who had now thoroughly lost the last remnant of his temper.
“Yes, sir,” was the stentorian reply.
“And what have you been drinking?”
“Corfee, sir.”
“And what did you have in your coffee?”
“A spune, sir,” bawled the witness in his highest key amidst the roars of the court.
It occurred in an Ohio college, in the early days when the small college was struggling for an existence, and the students were struggling for an education. Many of the boys were very poor, and had to board themselves, doing all their cooking, sleeping and studying in the same room. To economize space they were used to keep their little store of groceries and provisions under the bed, and the bed was of the old bed-cord kind. The two particular boys of whom we write, for some reason or other, at this particular time, had a pan full of molasses under the bed.
Boys will be boys, poor as well as rich, and college boys the world over are full of all manner of tricks. These two chaps had concocted a very neat little scheme for getting on to the nerves of Professor John, who had charge of the building in which they were domiciled. For days and days they had been secretly carrying a lot of stones up into their room and depositing them in an empty barrel. When the barrel was full, the trick was ready to be pulled off just at bedtime, the trick consisting of simply rolling the barrel to the top of the corkscrew staircase, and letting her go Gallagher, when the perpetrators would skip to their room hard by, dive into bed and be sound asleep before Professor John could say Jack Robinson.
But—Professor John knew about all the possible combinations of the college boy, and could smell a hatching trick a mile away. Knowing that something was in the air, he had quietly stationed himself in a dark niche in the wall at the head of the staircase, and was watching the two night-begowned boys as they tugged with all their strength at the heavy barrel of stones, gently rolling it to the top of the stairs. “Don’t make a noise,” hoarsely whispered the one who was bossing the job, “and don’t let her go till all is ready and I give the word.”
When all was about ready to heave away, out stepped Professor John with a terrible “What’s—all—this!”
Away went the boys pell-mell to their room. They tried to slam the door shut, but the Professor’s foot got there first, and they dived into bed.
But alas! there had been a trick within a trick. Some one had cut the bed-cords! And as the two went down to the floor, one pitifully called out “Oh—we’re in the molasses!”
Professor John knew what that meant. He leaned up against the wall and laughed till he cried. “Let them go, poor fellows,” he said, as he went to his room, “they have been punished enough.”
In a lecture on Carlyle, Moncure D. Conway related how the great writer was interviewed one morning by a very rough man in his neighborhood. A great revival being in progress in the vicinity, this man, well known as a very rough and profane fellow, had been attending the meetings and was “under conviction,” as the phrase went. Thinking that perhaps Mr. Carlyle might be able to give him some good and godly advice, he made a morning call on the celebrated writer, who unfortunately was just then enduring a most grievous attack of dyspepsia.
“Good morning, Mr. Carlyle,” said the man.
“Morning,” growled Carlyle.
“Mr. Carlyle,” said he, “I have come to see you this morning about my soul——“
“And what has gone wrong with your soul, then?” interrupted the man of letters.
“Why, Mr. Carlyle, I’ve been such an awful bad man that I’m afraid, if I were to die, I’d go straight to hell.”
“Very likely,” was the prompt answer. “Very likely indeed. And, what is more—you may be very thankful you have a hell to go to, too.”
“Now, James,” said a business man to his ten-year-old boy, “you are going to be a business man, and it is time that we should begin to give you some practical lessons in the art and science of investing money. Here’s a half dollar. You take it and go down town and invest it on your own hook and to the best advantage. I don’t care where you put it in, only so you put it where it will be safe and where you will get a good interest for your money.”
The boy took the silver and started off. In an hour he returned, reporting that he had made a good investment, and was going to get a hundred per cent. interest.
“Splendid!” said the admiring father. “Where did you put it in?”
“Well,” said the boy, “I went down town and walked around a while, wondering where I should find a good place, and by and by I came by a church, and there was a meeting, and they were singing, and I went in. It was a missionary meeting, and the man was begging money for Missions, and he said if you gave him your money why the Lord would send it back to you doubled—He would pay you a hundred per cent.”
“I hope,” expostulated his father, “you didn’t put that half dollar on the collection plate?” “Yes, I did, father,” said the boy, “and the man he said that the Lord is a good paymaster and that He’d send it back doubled.”
“And you believed him! O pshaw, I’m utterly disappointed in you, James. You’ll never make a business man. The idea of your believing such stuff like that. Why, that half dollar—you’ll never see it again, and that man—why, he’s nothing but a fakir. O well—pshaw! I’ll give you another chance, and see that you do better this time. Here’s a dollar. Now you steer clear of all churches and missionary meetings this time——“
“Why, father!” exclaimed the boy as he took the dollar, “why, that man was right after all. The Lord did send my half dollar back, and sooner than I looked for it—and doubled, too!”
Josh Billings concluded his celebrated lecture on “Milk” with these memorable words—“Remember the poor. It costs nothing.”
A town meeting had been called to devise ways and means to provide for the poor of the community. After many speeches had been made, and many recommendations offered, and much time wasted and nothing done, a benevolent German arose in the back part of the hall and said:
“Mister Chairman, I move, before we adjourn, we all shtand oop undt gif three cheers for de poor!”
The first Temperance Society organized in this country, in the year 1808, provided that “No member shall be intoxicated under a penalty of fifty cents, and no member shall ask another person to take a drink under a penalty of twenty-five cents.”
There was a Temperance Society in the State of Maine, prior to the year 1825, which had the following remarkable plank in its platform: “If any member of this Society shall get drunk, he shall be obliged to stand treat for the whole Society all round!”
A hundred years ago the virtues of rum were set forth in an English publication after the following fashion:
“It sloweth age, it strengthened youth, it helpeth digestion, it cutteth phlegme, it abandoneth melancholy, it relisheth the heart, it lighteneth the mind, it quickeneth the spirits, it cureth the hydupsia, it healeth the strangurie, it pounceth the stone, it expelleth the gravel, it puffeth away ventosity; it keepeth and preserveth the head from whirling, the tongue from lisping, the mouth from snaffling, the teeth from chattering and the throat from rattling. It keepeth the weasen from stiffling, the stomach from wambling and the heart from swelling. It keepeth the hands from shivering, the sinews from shrinking, the veins from crumbling, the bones from aching, and the marrow from soaking.”
When Sherman’s army was making its great march through Georgia the colored people were, of course, very much excited over the news of the approach of the Northern army. They had very little idea of what Northern soldiers looked like, but had commonly heard them spoken of as “the dam Yankees.” In a certain part of Georgia, when they heard of the approach of the great army, the darkies held a prayer-meeting, and one old fellow prayed—“O Lawd, bress Massa Linkum, an’ bress Gin’l Sherman. O Lawd, he’s one o’ us. He got a white skin, but he got a black heart, he one o’ us. An’, O Lawd, bress all dem dam Yankees!”
A circus came to town down in Kentucky. The tents were set up and the cages put in, and the people gathered about to look. “There, ladies and gentlemen,” shouted the barker, “is the Royal Lion, the king of beasts. He can whip any other animal in the world.”
“He kin, kin he?” queried a gawky Kentuckian. “I’ll bet you five dollars I have an animal at home that’ll lick him the very first round.”
“Can’t take your bet,” said the barker. “Too little money. Couldn’t think of letting him fight for five dollars, but I’ll take a bet of twenty-five dollars.”
“I ain’t got that much,” said Kentuck, “but I’ll borrow it of my friends, an’ we’ll have a fight.”
The bystanders made up the money, and the stakes were duly put up. Kentuck went to his home, and by and by returned with a bag over his shoulder.
“What you got in that bag?” asked the showman.
“A snolligoster,” answered Kentuck.
“A snolligoster? What’s that? Let’s see it.”
“No, you don’t,” answered Kentuck. “You open the top of your cage and I’ll put my animile in, the money’s put up, you know.”
So the cage was opened and Kentuck climbed up to the hole in the top and, opening his bag, shook out of it a big snapping turtle. The turtle stood on the defensive. The lion came up to smell him. He took only one smell, gave a yell of pain and retired to his corner to howl the snapper loose if he could.
“Take him off,” yelled the showman.
“Take him off yerself, if ye want to,” said Kentuck. “The fightin’s just commenced. First blood for my snolligoster.”
Two human Whetstones met on the street.
“Queer, isn’t it?”
“What’s queer?”
“The night falls——“
“Yes.”
“——but it doesn’t break.”
“No.”
“And the day breaks——“
“Yes.”
“But it doesn’t fall?”
“No—but it’s getting very warm.”
“Yes, it is.”
“There would be a big thaw but for one thing——“
“And what’s that?”
“There’s nothing froze.”
And they parted.
A missionary in the Far West, residing near an Indian reservation, relates how one day there came to his house an Indian and a squaw wishing to “get married white man’s way.” Everything being in order they were duly made man and wife according to the service of the Church. “I was a little apprehensive,” said the minister, laughing, “that it might not turn out well with them. They had such queer names. His name was ‘Little Red Horse,’ and hers was ‘Jane-kick-a-hole-in-the-sky.”
“Who was the strongest man?” asked the Sunday-school teacher. One boy said “Samson, cause he choked a lion to death.” “Naw,” said another boy, “g’wan, it wasn’t Samson. It was Jonah, ’cause a whale couldn’t keep him down.”
Postal cards having been sent out to all the married men in a certain town in Western New York carrying the question, “Why did you marry?” the following are some of the answers returned:
“That’s what I’ve been trying for eleven years to find out.”
“Married to get even with her mother—but never have.”
“Was freckle-faced and thought it was my last chance. I’ve found out, however, that freckles ain’t near as bad as henspeck.”
“Because I was too lazy to work.”
“Because Sarah told me that five other young fellows had proposed to her. Lucky dogs!”
“The old man thought eight years courtin’ was long enough.”
“I was lonesome and melancholy, and wanted some one to make me lively. N. B. She makes me lively, you bet!”
“I was tired of buying ice cream and candies and going to theatres and church, and wanted a rest. Have saved money.”
“Please don’t stir me up!”
“Because I thought she was one among a thousand; now I sometimes think she is a thousand among one.”
“Because I did not then have the experience I now have.”
“The Governor was going to give me his foot, so I took his daughter’s hand.”
“I thought it would be cheaper than a breach-of-promise suit.”
“That’s the same fool question all my friends and neighbors ask.”
“Because I had more money than I knew what to do with. And now I have more to do with than I have money.”
“I wanted a companion of the opposite sex. P. S. She is still opposite.”
“Don’t mention it!”
“Had difficulty in unlocking the door at night, and wanted somebody in the house to let me in.”
“Because it is just my luck.”
“I didn’t intend to go and do it.”
“I yearned for company. We now have company all the time—her folks.”
“I married to get the best wife in the world.”
“Because I asked her if she’d have me. She said she would. I think she’s got me!”
It is related of the late William Travers of New York City, who was used at times to make merry of his own incurable and distressing infirmity, that he was on one occasion asked by a woman in a street car, “Would he be so good as to tell her whether it was nine o’clock yet?” Pulling his timepiece out of his pocket and looking at it a moment, he began, “N—n—no, M—m—madam, it isn’t n—n—nine oc—oc—o’clock yet, b—b—but it will be by—by—by the time I can g—g—get it out.”
On another occasion he was asked some question by an entire stranger on the street, who stammered quite as painfully as he himself did, and when he stuttered out a laborious answer, the man thinking Travers was mocking him, grew angry and exclaimed:
“How d—dare y—y—you m—make sport of m—m—m—my inf—infirmity?”
And Travers replied, “I wasn’t m—m—making f—f—fun of your in—inf—infirmity. I stut—tut—tut—tutter myself. W—w—why don’t you go to Doctor B—B—Brown? He—cu—cuc—cured me!”
Two men once went squirrel shooting. One of them was a notorious stammerer. He had no load in his gun when he saw a squirrel running up a tree, and wishing to call the attention of his companion to it he began:
“J—J—James! I see a—a—a—a sq—sq—sq—Oh, by George he’s gone into his hole!”
Once in traveling the Rev. Dr. Bledsoe was exceedingly annoyed by a pedantic bore who forced himself upon him, and made a great parade of his shallow learning. The doctor endured it as long as he could, but at length, looking at the man, said: “My friend, you and I know all that is to be known.” “Why, how is that?” asked the man, much pleased with what he thought a very complimentary association. “Why,” blandly replied the doctor, “you know everything in this world, except that you are a fool—and I know that.”
When the pious deacon, riding a very poor horse, pulled up at the cross-roads and asked a farmer’s boy to tell him which road to take, the boy asked him who he was and where it was he was going?
“My boy,” replied the deacon with a pious gaze heavenward, “I am a follower of the Lord.”
“A follower of the Lord!” exclaimed the lad. “I reckon, mister, you’d better buy another nag, for you’ll never catch up to him on that old horse of yourn!”
Stooping down to wash his hands in a creek, the darkey couldn’t, of course, observe the peculiar motions of a goat right behind him. When he scrambled out of the water and was asked how it happened, he answered: “I dunno zacktly. ’Peared as if de shore kinder histed an’ frowed me.”
During the trying days of drafting in Civil War times, a farmer from away out West called on President Lincoln. As soon as he got near enough to the President he slapped him familiarly on the back and said, “Hello, old hoss, how are ye?”
“You call me an old hoss,” said Mr. Lincoln; “may I inquire what kind of a hoss I am?” “Why—an old Draft hoss, to be sure. Ha, ha!”
Somehow or other there were many more queer things happening in church in the olden time than occur in these sober and decorous days. In old St. Paul’s, Newburyport, for example, some very amusing things are recorded to have happened during the hours of service. Uncle Nat Bailey was the sexton, and it was his duty to attend to the new stove which had just been put in. But one Sunday morning Uncle Nat was engaged in ringing the bell, and the last comers were hurrying in, and the clerk, Harvey, perceived that the stove needed attention. Taking the sexton’s duty, he poked the fire, chucked in more wood, shut the door and returned to his place at his desk. Unfortunately he had got his hand all black with soot, and unwittingly he had smeared the soot all over his face. The congregation broadly smiled a few minutes later when he solemnly rose at his desk and gave out the first hymn, “Behold the beauties of my face.”
Lighting as well as heating gave trouble in those days. Candles guttered, or went out, and kept the attentive sextons busy tiptoeing about, snuffing or relighting them. Sexton Currier—pronounced in country speech “Kiah”—of Parson Milton’s church in the same old town, once neglected this duty during an evening service.
Parson Milton, from his tremendous, booming voice nicknamed “Thundering Milton,” was an excellent pastor, but very singular and abrupt in his ways. Observing the condition of the lights, he quite upset the congregation by proclaiming at the top of his voice, without the slightest break between the sentences:
“The Lord said unto Moses, Kiah, snuff the candles.”
He it was, too, who, when a worthy parishioner whose Christian name was Mark once dropped off into a doze in his pew, recalled him to his duty in a marvelous fashion. Leaning forward in the middle of the sermon, and apparently addressing himself directly to the offender, he exclaimed in quick, sharp tones, “Mark!”
At the sound of his name, the man opened his eyes and sat hastily erect, while the preacher, resuming his normal voice, concluded the sentence—“the perfect man, and behold the upright.”
On a very cold day, when the church was inadequately warmed, another minister preached from a very hot text. At the conclusion of the service he leaned over the pulpit and said, in a tone audible to all the congregation:
“Deacon Craig, do, I pray you, see to it that this church is properly warmed this afternoon. What’s the use of my preaching to a parcel of sinners about the danger of hell-fire when the church is as cold as a barn?”
They were both musical, and of course became engaged. One evening the young man was late in paying his visit. The young lady was anxious and getting nervous. The whole family sympathized with the poor girl as she waited for the bell to ring. Suddenly the bell rang, and the calm blue sky of peace reappeared in the young girl’s eyes as she exclaimed rapturously even if ungrammatically, “That’s him! How exquisite his technique is on the bell-pull, and oh! the breadth and compass of his ring!”
Three street boys were brought by the city missionary into a downtown Sunday-school, and placed in Mr. B——’s class. “What is your first name?” he asked of one. “Lem,” was the reply. “Ah, Lemuel,” corrected the teacher. “And yours, my boy?” he asked of the next. “Sam,” yelled the urchin. “Ah, Samuel,” rejoined Mr. B——. “And what may I call you?” he kindly asked of the third. “My name is—Jimuel,” said he.
That English clergyman had no tact who vehemently declared his parishioners to be “a set of unmitigated asses.” One of the Long-Eared standing by ventured to inquire whether that was the reason his reverence addressed them every Sunday morning as “Dearly beloved Brethren?”
But here was another English clergyman who had tact. On one occasion he was traveling in a stage-coach in company with a noisy talker who persisted in thrusting upon his fellow-passengers the fact that he did not believe in the Bible. In particular he was severe upon the writer who had alleged that Joshua had commanded the sun to stand still and look on while he wiped out the heathen. The clergyman had been measuring up his companion, and at this point he spoke out——
“Did you ever read the further explanation of that great miracle as given in the First Book of Zorobbabel?”
“Yes, I have,” snapped the learned infidel, “and that doesn’t throw any light on it either. In fact, it makes it worse——“
The general roar of laughter which followed this confession of ignorance ended the controversy, and bottled up the agnostic.
On another occasion this same clergyman was annoyed by a bustling preacher who walked up to him in public, and, in a voice that arrested the attention of all within hearing, challenged him to a controversy on Apostolic Succession. The challenged man turned sharply and said: “Can you repeat the Lord’s Prayer, sir?” “But—“ stammered the man, “I want to discuss—“ “Sir,” said the other, “I repeat, say the Lord’s Prayer, if you can.” The man was so taken aback by this unexpected flank movement that, if he ever knew the Lord’s Prayer, every petition of it had vanished from his memory, and he became red-faced and silent. Then his dignified antagonist turned in a stately way to the group of amused auditors, and said, “Sir, I will leave it to this intelligent assemblage to decide whether a man who is unable to repeat the Lord’s Prayer is competent to discuss Apostolic Succession.”
A tourist was told by a guide that the echo on a Killarney lake was very fine. So, off went the tourist to hear it, and hired two men to row him out, accomplishing the transaction so swiftly that there was no time for them to arrange for the usual echo to be in attendance. The echo wasn’t working. What was to be done? In despair of a better expedient, the men that were rowing broke an oar, and one swam ashore to fetch another—and while he was gone, the echo began to work!
“Good morning,” cried the tourist.
“Good marning,” said the echo, with a charming brogue.
“Fine day, sir.”
“Foine day, sir,” improved the echo.
“Will you take a drink?” cried the tourist.
“Begorra, an’ that I will!” roared the echo.
Jack and his friend Mickey were walking uptown one morning and Jack said, “Mickey, I bet you a dollar I can prove to you that you are on the other side of the street.”
“Done,” said Mickey, “I’m the man for your money.”
“Well,” continued Jack, pointing to the opposite side of the street, “that is one side of the street, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Mickey.
“And this side is the other side, isn’t it? And you are on the other side. And I’ll take your dollar, please.”
Mickey passed out the dollar, but scratched his head. He resolved to win that dollar back, and later in the day waylaid a man with, “I say—I bet you a dollar I can prove to you that you are on the other side of the street.” “Done,” said the man. “I’d as soon make a dollar easy as not.”
“Well,” said Mickey, “this is one side of the street, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that can’t be disputed.”
“And over there is the other side, isn’t it?”
“Yes—but I ain’t on that side—and I’ll take your dollar, please.”
And Mickey walked home scratching his head and wondering how it came that “the dang thing didn’t work?”
This is how the colonel and the lieutenant-colonel of a French regiment in Algeria were lionized. The major of the regiment one day came across a lion suffering grievous pain from a thorn in his paw. Pitying the poor animal, the major extracted the thorn. Considering what he could do in return for the kindness, the grateful lion secured a copy of the army register, ran his eye over the list of officers in the gentle major’s regiment, and waylaid and devoured both the colonel and the lieutenant-colonel, so that his friend, the major, could be promoted.
In the course of a sermon on “The Soul,” a certain minister once said: “They are saying these days that the soul is nothing but electricity. Now, brethren, just to show you how utterly ridiculous this modern conceit is, suppose we substitute the word ‘electricity’ for the words ‘the soul’ wherever they occur in the Bible, and see how it will read. For instance: ‘What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his—electricity. Or what shall a man give in exchange for his—electricity.’ Ridiculous, perfectly ridiculous!”
There was a farmer who had a balky mule and he couldn’t make the mule go. A stranger came along and offered to help, and the farmer told him to go right ahead. The stranger had a bottle of turpentine, and he opened the mule’s mouth and pushed back his head and poured about half of the bottle into the mule’s stomach. The mule gave one startled gasp and struck out across the prairie, and was lost to sight. The surprised farmer stood for a while immersed in deep thought, and then he said, “Stranger, please give me the rest of that turpentine; I’ve got to catch my mule.”
Many children are so crammed with everything that they really know nothing.
In proof of this, read these veritable specimens of definitions, written by public school children:
“Stability is taking care of a stable.”
“A mosquito is the child of black and white parents.”
“Tocsin is something to do with getting drunk.”
“Expostulation is to have the smallpox.”
“Monastery is the place for monsters.”
“Cannibal is two brothers who killed each other in the Bible.”
“Anatomy is the human body, which consists of three parts, the head, the chist and the stummick. The head contains the eyes and brains, if any. The chist contains the lungs and a piece of the liver. The stummick is devoted to the bowels, of which there are five, a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes w and y.”
Some amusing “baptismal experiences” of a “well-known clergyman” are printed in the columns of an exchange. A boy born on January 3, 1863, was dubbed Emancipation Proclamation Baxter. Another he christened Perseverance Jones. When the minister endeavored to dissuade the father he replied that the child’s mother was named Patience, and he saw no reason why the boy should not be called Perseverance, because the two always went together. But the richest of his reminiscences had to do with twins:
“What names will you call them?” I inquired.
“Cherubim and Seraphim,” replied their mother.
“Why?” I asked, in astonishment.
“Because,” she replied, “de pra’er book says, ‘De cherubim and seraphim continually do cry,’ an’ dese yere chil’en do nuffin’ else.”
As the newspaper man put it: “A late invoice from Boston to Africa included three missionaries and eighty-three casks of rum—salvation in the cabin, damnation in the hold, and Old Glory floating over both.”
This fine bit of ecclesiastical sarcasm is further illustrated by a fact concerning a church in the city of Edinburgh, which city is noted for its Scottish brand of “religion and whiskey,” and of which wits have spoken as being “the most spiritually minded city in the Kingdom.” Well—there is said to be a church there, so built as to include a spacious basement adapted for storage purposes, which the pious elders, with a business eye to revenue, did not scruple to rent for the storage of casks of wine and other spirits in considerable bulk. Well—along comes some clever wit with a facile pen and writes on the door of the basement of that Edinburgh church the following lines. The authorship is unknown, but Macready is suspected:
A Southern politician, in rehearsing some of the stories with which he made many Democratic votes during a campaign, related the following as having probably been the most effective:
A darkey had a dream and thought he went to the bad place. The next day he told his friends what he had dreamed, and they asked him a great many questions.
“Did you see ole Satan down dar?” one of them asked.
“Oh, yes; I seed ole Satan dar, an’ Belzybub, an’ Pollyun an’ de hull lot. Dey was jist standin’ roun’ an’ tendin’ to de bisniss, pokin’ de fires an’ makin’ it hot fer de folks.”
“Was dey—was dey any niggahs down dar?”
“Oh, yes, dey was lots an’ lots o’ niggahs, heaps on ’em.”
“An’ white folks?”
“Oh, yes, lots o’ white folks, too; scores an’ scores on ’em.”
“Oh, yes, plenty Democrats.”
“An’ ’Publicans?”
“Oh, yes. De ’Publicans dey was in one pen by deyselves, an’ de Democrats dey was all in a pen, too.”
“Was de white an’ de black ’Publicans in de same pen?”
“Yes, dey was all togedder in de same pen.”
“What was dey all a-doin’?”
“Well, I ’clar to goodness, w’en I looked in dat ar pen an’ seed ’em, it peered like ebbery blame white ’Publikin had a niggah in his arms a-holdin’ him up ’twixt him an’ de fire to cotch de heft o’ de heat.”
“I estimate that this story,” said the politician, “was good for at least twelve hundred colored votes on our side in this campaign.”
The guests were all gathered in the parlor laughing and talking, when the host was suddenly summoned by his wife for a brief consultation in the dining-room before dinner was served.
“Tom,” said she, in evident alarm, “what shall I do? I have nothing for dessert but brandied peaches, and there’s Dr. Brown, the Methodist minister, in the company. I never thought about him—you know he’s such a strict temperance person.”
Tom said he was sorry, but it was evidently too late to change the schedule, and that they would just have to trust to luck.
They did—and luck did not fail them. For when it came to the dessert, the Rev. Mr. Brown evidently enjoyed the peaches very much, very much. Dear innocent soul! he thought he had never tasted anything half so good. And when the hostess sweetly asked him, “Could she not have the pleasure of serving him with another peach?” he hesitatingly replied, “No—thank you—thank you—but I believe I will take a little more of the juice!”
Another darkey relates a dream he had during an exciting political campaign down in Kentucky, only in this case his dream took an opposite direction. “I dreamed,” said he, “dat I died an’ went up to de big gate o’ hebbin an’ wanted to git in, an’ Sent Petah he says to me, says he, ‘Is you mounted?’ an’ I says, ‘No.’ An’ he says, ‘Den you can’t come in.’ So I kum away, an’ on de way down I met Kunnel White, de man wat’s runnin’ fo’ Congress, an’ I told him ’twant no use: he couldn’t git in if he wasn’t mounted. ‘Better go back,’ says I, ‘an’ mount de bay mare.’ But he says, ‘No, I tell you, Sam, what we’ll do. You’ll be my hoss. I’ll git on your back, an’ we’ll ride up to de gate an’ when Petah says, “Is you mounted?” I’ll say, “Yaas,” an’ I’ll ride you right in.’
“So I got down on my han’s an’ feet an’ he got up on my back, an’ we trotted up to de big gate, and de kunnel he knocked on de doo’, an’ Sent Petah he open de gate a crack an’ says, ‘Who’s dar?’ an’ de kunnel says, ‘Kunnel White o’ Kentucky, sah.’ An’ Petah says, ‘Is you mounted?’ an’ de kunnel says, ‘Yaas, I is, sah.’ An’ Sent Petah he says, ‘Mighty glad to see you, kunnel. Jist tie your hoss on de outside de gate an’ come right in!’”
They say that the difference between an optimist and a pessimist is this: The optimist looks on the doughnut, the pessimist looks on the hole. Well, there once was a man up in a certain town in Eastern Pennsylvania who did a very good business at the baker-trade. Everybody knew and patronized the good German baker, Hans Kitzeldorfer. Hans was industrious, frugal and thrifty, and was making money, until one unfortunate day he turned pessimist and began to look on the hole in the doughnut. The longer he looked at that hole the more he became persuaded that he could make money much more rapidly by making the holes in his celebrated brand of doughnuts larger than they had been. This happy suggestion he at once proceeded to act on, and for two years he was immensely tickled over his discovery. But by and by it seemed to him that his receipts were not as large as formerly, especially in the Doughnut Department, and he ordered an investigation, the result of which Was that he discovered that by making the holes larger he had unwittingly used more dough to go around the holes than when the holes were less in diameter, whereupon he at once restored his earlier and more profitable system—and Prosperity returned.
A German, meeting a friend on the street, asked him to come up to his house some day, he wanted to show him his two boys. “I haf,” said he, “two of de finest poys vot ever vas; two very fine, polite undt spunky poys.”
His friend went up to the house one day, and the two friends were sitting on the porch talking and smoking their pipes, while the two boys were playing in front of the house in the street.
“Now I vill show you,” said the proud father, “vat two very fine poys I haf.” And with that he called, “Poys!”
One of the little fellows looked up and promptly answered, “Sir?”
“See,” said the father, “how polite. Two very polite undt spunky poys.”
By and by he called out again, “Poys!” and the other little chap looked up from his play and responded, “Sir?”
Again the father proudly commended them to his companion, saying, “How polite, how polite.”
A third time he ventured to put them to the test, as he said, “Just to show you vat two polite undt spunky poys I haf,” and called out, “poys!”
One of the little fellows straightened himself up at this, and shaking his fist at the old man, called out:
“Look here, old man, if you don’t stop your blame hollerin’ at us, I’ll come in there an’ bust your head with a brick.”
“See!” exclaimed the delighted father, “spunky, spunky! Two very polite undt spunky poys.”
Passing by a mill-pond in winter time, and observing a parcel of boys skating right under and around a DANGER sign which had been erected there, a gentleman looked up the miller and expostulated with him for allowing it.
The miller smiled and said, “You just rest easy, my friend. It’s all right. I put that danger sign there on purpose to attract the boys to that part of the pond. You see the water is only a foot deep there, but away on the other side it’s twenty feet deep. If I’d a put the danger sign over there, then they’d all gone over there. So I put it over here. Catch on?”
On the way to the minister’s house to be married a couple had a fall-out, and when the woman was asked: “Would she take this man for her wedded husband?” she said, “No!” And the man said, “Why—what’s the matter with you?” and she said, “Well, I’ve taken a sudden dislike to you.”
They went away without being married, but they made it all up in a few days’ time and went to the minister’s house again. But, when the man was asked, “Would he have this woman for his wedded wife?” he, to get even, answered, “No!” and then she said, “What’s the matter with you, now?” and he said, “Oh, nothin’, only I’ve tuk a sudden dislike to you.”
They went away again, again made it up, and again came to the minister’s house, rang the bell, and when the minister appeared, the man said, “Well, parson, here we are again. We’ll make it good this time, sure; third time proves, you know.” And the minister said “No—he guessed he didn’t care to marry them.” And then they both said, “Why, what’s the matter with you, now?” and he said, “Well, I’ve taken a sudden dislike to both of you!”
Thirty-six years after the date of the battle of Gettysburg, the veteran survivors of a Pennsylvania regiment were holding their first reunion in that celebrated town. In the forenoon they dedicated their monument on the field of “The First Day’s Fight,” and in the afternoon they were to hold a business meeting in the Post Room of the local G. A. R. On that day accommodations were quite inadequate in Gettysburg, and the Post Room was in consequence occupied nearly every hour of the day by some of the various organizations there assembled, so that when it came the turn of this particular regiment to occupy the room, the Seventh Pennsylvania Cavalry was still in session. They waited outside until the cavalrymen were through, and then filed in. One who was there says:
“As we went in, I noticed a man going in beside me, tall, well-formed, with a very fine head of coal-black hair, and rather the worse for drink. I wondered who he was, for I knew nearly every man in the regiment, but I couldn’t place that man.
“Well, when we were all seated, and General Wister took the gavel in hand to rap to order, this black-haired man arose slowly and somewhat uncertainly, saluted and said:
“‘Cap’n, before you read the minutes and proceed to business, I’d like to ask a question. What, hic, regiment is this that’s holding a reunion here?’
“‘The One Hundred and Fiftieth Pennsylvania, Bucktails,’ answered the general with a smile.
“‘Then, ’tain’t the Seventh Cavalry?’
“‘No. It’s the One Hundred and Fiftieth.’
“The Man seemed dazed, repeated the number over and over to himself and said: ‘Then I’m in the wrong box, cap’n—got left. Ever get left yourself, cap’n? Great Scott, got in the wrong box.”
“Then he sat down, chuckling to himself over his adventure and muttering, ‘Wrong box,’ and ‘Got left.’
“By and by he arose again, courteously saluted, and said:
“‘Cap’n, ’scuze me—but what regiment did you say this was? How much was it?”
“‘The One Hundred and Fiftieth.’
“‘The One Hundred and Fiftieth—’m hic, Great Scott,’ looking carefully around the room, ’a fellow’d think it was the Three Hundred and Forty-Ninth by the bald heads a-settin’ around here!’ And then he left, amidst roars of laughter.”
When a political stump speaker, from the wild and windy West, after a very high-falutin flight of oratory paused to gulp down two tumblers of ice-water, old Hayseed arose in one of the front benches and called out: “Well, I’ll be durned if this hain’t the fust time I ever see a windmill run by water.”
Which goes well with what we read of a newly elected senator. He was pounding his desk and waving his arms in an impassioned appeal to the Senate.
“What do you think of him?” whispered Senator K——, of New Jersey, to the impassive Senator K——, of Pennsylvania.
“Oh, he can’t help it,” answered K——. “It’s a birth mark.”
“A—what?”
“A birth mark,” repeated K——. “His mother was scared by a windmill.”
In his “Scotch Reminiscences” Dean Ramsay relates that a certain ruling elder, by the name of David, was well known in the district as a very shrewd and ready-witted man. He received visits from many people who liked a banter or were fond of a good joke. One day three young theological students called on the old man, intending to sharpen their wits upon him and have some fun at his expense.
Said the first, “Well, Father Abraham, how are you to-day?”
“You are wrong,” said the second. “This is not Father Abraham. This is Father Isaac.”
“Tut,” said the third, “you are both wrong. This is only Father Jacob, the originator of the twelve tribes of Israel.”
The old man looked at the young chaps a moment and then said: “I am neither old Father Abraham, nor old Father Isaac, nor old Father Jacob; but I am Saul, the son of Kish, seeking his father’s asses, and lo! I have found three of them!”
Said the professor to a student, “What is the effect of heat, and what the effect of cold?” “Heat expands, sir, and cold contracts.”
“Correct. Give some illustrations.” “Well,” said the boy, “in the summer, when it is hot, the days are long; and in the winter, when it is cold, the days are short.”
“How many sides has a circle?” “Two—the inside and the outside.”
“Does an effect ever go before a cause?” “Yes, sir.”
“Give an illustration.” “When a man pushes a wheelbarrow——“
“That will do, sir. Next—Mr. Johnson.”
A man who was very cross-eyed happened to put his hand into another man’s pocket, and took out his watch. He told the judge that he “only wanted to know the time.” And the judge said it was “Three years.”
One night after saying her prayers before going to bed, a nine-year-old girl astonished her mother by innocently asking:
“Mother, who is Old Man Snuckles?”
“Why, my child, I never heard of a man by that name.”
“Oh, yes, mother,” said the child, “there must be some such man, for I pray for him every night.”
“Pray for Old Man Snuckles, my child? Why, what do you mean?”
“Why, yes, mother. You know I pray for God to bless father and mother, brother and sister and ‘Old Man Snuckles.’ Who is he?”
Her mother saw by and by that it meant “All my aunts and uncles!”
Many interesting and amusing stories have been told of the late Judge Jeremiah Black, an eminent jurist and a very prominent member of President Buchanan’s Cabinet. On one occasion the judge and a legal friend were coming out of the Capitol at Harrisburg, Pa. The judge was busy discussing a certain case at law in which he was interested, and his friend was very hungry. “Say, judge,” said he, “let’s get something to eat. I’m awful hungry.” “Well,” said the judge, “come on. Right down this street is a good place. I know it well.” And they walked on arm in arm, the judge laying down the law as they proceeded. To the amazement of the judge they pulled up in front of an engine house!
“Oh, no,” said the judge, laughing, “I’ve made a mistake. This isn’t the place. Oh—I see. It’s right up this street around the corner.” Around the corner they went, walked three blocks and halted in front of a church!
Again the judge looked foolish and said: “Oh, no. This isn’t the place either. Let me see. Oh—now I have it. The place I was thinking of is in—Baltimore!”
His companion groaned and made a break for the nearest hotel.
A man wrote to the editor of a small weekly newspaper asking a very simple question: “How can I get an article into your esteemed paper?” and the cruel editor wrote in reply: “It all depends on the kind of article you want to get into our paper. If it is small in bulk, like a hair-brush or a tea-caddy, for instance, spread the paper out on the floor nice and smooth, place the article exactly in the center, neatly fold the edges over it, and tie with a string. This will keep the article from slipping out. If, on the other hand, the article is an English bath-tub or a clothes-horse, you will find one of the New York Sunday papers better suited to your purpose.”
I was visiting my friend Nicholas von Spoopendyke over in New York. He has a splendid mansion away uptown, very handsomely furnished. One day he took me all over the house. His bedroom was beautiful indeed, all furnished with rich old mahogany polished like a looking-glass. I was admiring the bed. It was a very old “Napoleon,” most finely veneered and carved, and the bed was faultlessly made up, with a spotless white counterpane, level as a board and not a wrinkle in sight. Beautiful!
“That’s my white elephant,” said Spoopendyke. “I always walk round it and keep my distance. When I was first married and before I knew the rules of the house, I sat down on the side of the bed to take off my shoes—once. I’ve never done that since. Say—that’s a mighty fine bed, ain’t it? For one thing, it always tells me when I’m sick. If I lay down on that bed in the day-time, and pull the white cover over me, and my wife doesn’t say nothing—then I know I’m a sick man, and the doctor’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“Say ——“ continued Spoopendyke, growing quite confidential, “I had a queer experience the other night. My wife she says I snore. Well, mebby I do. Most men do. But women snore, too, and you can’t never get ’em to confess it. Well, I was lying wide awake thinking of some bills I had to pay—and had no money to pay ’em with—and beside me lay my wife snoring like all creation. She got higher and louder and louder and higher, till she waked herself up with a tremendous whoop. Then she kicked me—thinking it was me that was making the racket. I said nothing, and she sailed in again—up, up, up she went, higher and higher till she woke up again at the top and said, ‘Nick—stop your blame snoring.’ I said nothing, and she went to work at once again blowing her bugle-horn till she waked up again. This time she was mad. She got up and said something about ‘getting the fire-extinguisher and turning it loose on him,’ and went off to bed in the next room. I lay still listening and laughing, as I heard her blowing the fog-horn again. I laughed till I forgot all about those bills and went to sleep. And the next morning at the breakfast table when she told me how I kept her awake all night with my awful snoring—and how even in the next room she couldn’t sleep for the racket I kept up—I just laughed. Tell her? Not a bit of it. What’s the use? She wouldn’t believe me, and I couldn’t prove it.”
“Say, Isaacstein, don’t you vant to git married?”
“For vy shall I hitch me fast mit a wife?”
“Well, here’s an unusually good chance, a clean snap if you look sharp. You know Levy the banker? Well, he has three daughters, the youngest is eighteen years old, the next twenty-five and the next thirty. I have just learned that he will give $10,000 to the man that marries the youngest, $15,000 to the man that marries the next one, and $20,000 with the oldest. Why don’t you sail in, old man?”
“Dey are all too young fer me. I vill vait till dey get older. I vant one about fifty.”
“How iss business?” “Very poor. Noding’s doing.” “Vell—vy don’t you?” “Mein himmel, how kin I—mit a fire-goompany on von side, a fire-goompany on de odder side, undt a schwmmin-school on top? I shall haf to move.”
On the way to attend a funeral a country parson stopped to make a call on one of his members who had the day before done some butchering, after the old fashion. Before he took his leave the good woman of the house made him a present of some three yards of newly made sausage, which, when he came to the church where the service was to be held, he bestowed for safe-keeping in the pocket of his long-tailed coat. While he was reading the burial service at the grave, a good-for-nothing dog, scenting the savory meat, made repeated efforts to dislodge the treasure, and the preacher was obliged in a very awkward and undignified manner to punctuate his reading of the service with sundry and numerous kicks to the rear to save his bacon and chase the dog away.
After the interment there was a full service in the church, the minister preaching the sermon in one of those old-fashioned pulpits, stuck against the wall like a swallow’s nest, the approach to the pulpit being by a corkscrew staircase winding solemnly upward from the chancel. Here the minister was safe from the assaults of that miserable dog. At least he thought he was. But—at the conclusion of the service, while he was standing in the pulpit and looking another way, one of his deacons, wishing him to make an announcement, quietly and softly tiptoed across the chancel and slipped up the winding stairway and pulled the parson’s coat-tail to attract his attention. He, supposing it was the dog after his sausage again, let fly a most vigorous kick, which caught the poor deacon in the middle of the forehead and knocked him rattling down into the chancel, the preacher, still looking the other way, and saying, “My friends, I am sorry for this disturbance, but—I have some sausage in my pocket and that miserable dog has been following me all this morning trying to steal it!”
It is an old story, but a good one—that of the two Germans who went into Delmonico’s to get something to eat. They ordered a very simple supper. They had a good beefsteak, fried potatoes, bread and butter, and coffee, and were astounded when the waiter handed them a bill for four dollars and a half. They paid the bill, and when they reached the street one of them began to swear at “Dot man Delmonico. He is a robber and a thief.” His companion, however, gently laying a hand on his shoulder, said, “Hermann, do not schwear. It iss wicked to schwear. Pesides, Gott has ponished dat man Delmonico alretty.” “Wie?” was the response. “How has Gott ponished him?” “Hermann,” said the other with quiet assurance, “Gott has ponished him. I have my pockets full mit his spoons!”
He was a clerk in a hardware store, and she was a chambermaid in a hotel. When they came to the parsonage one afternoon to be married, they were very kindly received. The minister’s wife took the bride upstairs to take off her things, and the minister took the groom into the parlor.
The groom was very nervous—and suddenly asked the minister whether he couldn’t “marry him while the bride was upstairs, and then marry her when she came down?” But the minister assured him that it was necessary that the bride should be present, and that they should both be married at the same time. And so they were married.
Two hours later, while making a call at the hotel, he found the bride at her work, and when he asked her how that was, and whether her husband had also gone back to his work at the store, she replied:
“Oh, bless you, no, sir; he’s gone off on his honeymoon!”
A newspaper correspondent, writing to his paper from the mountain region of Eastern Tennessee about twenty-five years ago, had the following to say:
“These mountain people have some occasional times of recreation. I was at one recently. A few days ago I received an invitation to ‘a Kickin’.’ In this neighborhood every well-regulated family has a clumsy, old-fashioned loom to weave the wool of the mountain sheep into fabrics for home consumption. Some of this material requires to be fulled, and to do this ‘a Kickin’’ is instituted, and it was to one of these gatherings that your correspondent was invited. It was held at one of the houses, common in this section, with a big fireplace and no windows, located on the banks of the Spillcorn Branch. The envoy with the invitation was diplomatic. ‘Hev ye ever bin to a Kickin’ afore?’ queried he. I told him I had, and I had, too, in Pennsylvania at that, and the only one I ever saw before. ‘Would ye like to go to one of our Kickin’s down yere?’ I responded that it would certainly afford me great pleasure. ‘Then,’ said the mountaineer, ‘they’re a-goin’ to hev a Kickin’ over in Spillcorn to-night, an’ you kin come over.’
“Not wanting to miss the overture, I went early. The house was unusually large and had one room, with a bed in each corner. Quite a number of strapping boys and girls had collected, and everything bore the aspect of a funeral. The Kickers were ranged around on chairs with that owlish silence that goes with awkwardness and having nothing to say. Presently one of the girls whispered something to another girl near by her, and they slipped out by the back door, and then every girl in the house broke for the door like a lot of sheep going through a gap in the fence. Then the masculine tongue broke loose and Babel reigned, until a few minutes later, when the girls came in, and the funeral was resumed. I sat in one corner with my chair tilted back, taking observations, when not engaged in fighting off a human gad-fly who was pestering me with questions of national politics.
“Presently the old woman said they might as well begin. If there was silence before, pandemonium broke loose now, and everybody was electrified. The old man went out on the porch and rolled in a web of coarse woolen fabric, containing a hundred yards or more, and unrolled it in a loose pile on the floor. Then the boys and girls took off their shoes and stockings. The boys rolled up their pantaloons as far as they could get them, while they arranged fourteen chairs in a circle in the middle of the floor, with the pile of goods in the center. The old woman, who looked for all the world like one of the witches in Macbeth, poured gourdfull after gourdfull of hot water on the material, until it was soaking wet, and then daubed soft soap with a liberal hand over the whole.
“Then the Kickers sat down, boys and girls alternating. The girls gathered up their skirts and sat down on them. They had a bed-cord, with the ends tied so that when the Kickers were seated they could grasp this rope, which was passed around from hand to hand, and hold on while they kicked.
“Everybody now was talking at once, and the confusion was that of a madhouse. The gad-fly yelled at me that if ‘Pennsylvany went Dimmycratic it was all gone to the dogs’—and the kicking began.
“It will be seen that it required constant and vigorous attention to business, pounding that sloppy mass of woolen with bare feet, until everything rattled, to keep it from being kicked over on those who were disposed to be slow. Twenty-eight naked feet would be kicking into the pile with all the rapidity and strength their owners possessed, while the soapsuds flew up to the rafters.
“Everybody laughed, and yelled, and screamed, and kicked till their faces grew red and their eyes fairly stood out in their heads. The floor grew as slippery as soap and water could make it, and every now and then some chair would slip and its occupant sit down suddenly on the floor, and, holding on to the rope, would pull the whole crowd over in a floundering, laughing, yelling pile.
“Then everybody would pant and take a rest and sit down again. The girls would hitch up their impedimenta to a safer distance, and the performance would begin all over again, and thus with relays for two hours. Only one accident occurred. There was one big fat girl they called Loweezy, who looked like a human featherbed with a string tied around it. Louisa was doing her level best to kick the pile over on her opposite, and had gathered both feet and let fly like a pile-driver, and was about to repeat the operation, when, at the critical moment, her chair shot out backward and Louisa sat down in a puddle of soapsuds, with what Augusta Evans in one of her novels calls a sound like the wreck of matter and the crash of worlds. What little breath was in her was knocked out, and it was unknown for a brief space whether it would ever get back. But she got up, and was duly escorted by her female companions to the back porch for needed repairs. The old man threw a few more pine-knots on the fire, and Louisa returned and spread herself before the cheerful blaze in a manner calculated to do the most good. Then when everybody was tired out the work was pronounced completed, the wreck was cleaned off the floor, and supper prepared.”
Last summer the congregation of a little kirk in the highlands of Scotland was greatly disturbed and mystified by the appearance in its midst of an old English lady, who made use of an ear trumpet during the sermon, such an instrument being entirely unknown in those simple parts. There was much discussion of the matter, and it was finally decided that one of the elders, who had great local reputation as a man of parts, should be deputed to settle the question. On the next Sabbath the unconscious offender again made her appearance and again produced the trumpet, whereupon the chosen elder rose from his seat and marched down the aisle to where the old lady sat, and, entreating her with an upraised finger, said sternly: “The first toot an’ ye’re oot!”
The teacher in a public school had an incorrigible girl to deal with, and for the twentieth time had taken her aside for a little heart-to-heart talk on the subject of conduct, and was apparently making a good impression on the child’s mind, for she was attentive and observant as she never had been before, not taking her eyes off the teacher’s face while she was talking, so that the teacher was inwardly congratulating herself, until the scholar broke in with:
“Why, Miss Mary Jane, when you talk your upper jaw doesn’t move a bit!”
A number of gentlemen from different parts of the country were lodging at one of the hotels in Atlantic City. It was their custom to amuse themselves at table by relating anecdotes and conundrums. One of the men, a Pennsylvania Dutchman, was always greatly delighted at these jokes and laughed louder than the rest, but never related anything himself. He couldn’t think of anything to say, and being so much rallied for his standing failure to contribute to the general fund, he determined that the next time he was called on he would have something to relate. So he went to one of the waiters and asked him if he knew any good jokes or conundrums. The waiter said he did, and gave him the following:
“It is my father’s child, and my mother’s child, and yet it is not my sister or my brother,” telling him at the same time that it was himself.
Hans bore it well in mind, and the next day at dinner he suddenly burst out with, “I’ve got a conundrum for you!” “Let’s have it!” exclaimed his companions.
“Vell—here it iss. It iss my fader’s child, and it iss my mudder’s child, and yet it wass not my sister nor my brudder. Now, vat wass dot?”
“Then it must be yourself,” said one of the company. And they all said the same. But Hans laughed them all to scorn, saying, “Diss time I cotched you. I got you now. You wass all wrong. It wass der waiter.”
The Reverend Dr. John was a country minister and was very fond of hunting rabbits. One fall day he was out in a field along the public road at his favorite pastime, and had located a rabbit. Just then he spied one of his deacons coming down the road. Thinking to play a trick on the deacon, he pulled up the collar of the old coat he was wearing, drew down the rim of his slouch hat, humped together and made himself as unrecognizable as possible. He then turned his back to the road and began to take a very deliberate aim. The deacon was interested. He stopped in the road. He walked over to the fence, and leaning on the top rail, he called out, “Give him h——l!” The Reverend gentleman shot the rabbit, and then turned around—but the deacon was off on a run, nor could the minister get anywhere near him for six weeks.
The same Reverend Dr. John was fond of telling a good story about a neighboring minister who served a people living up “along the blue mountain.” Rabbits were very plentiful up in that section, and in the fall of the year when this minister went on a round of pastoral visitation amongst his people, they fed him on rabbits wherever he came. It was rabbits in the morning, rabbits at noon, rabbits at night—fried rabbit, stewed rabbit, roasted rabbit—till the poor parson was so utterly sick of the fare that he composed a special grace at table, which ran somewhat after this fashion:
The darkey preacher and one of his deacons fell to discussing the color-line amongst the apostles. The deacon maintained that “all de ’postles was cullud pussons, ’cause don’t you see, Bruddah, dat de Holy Lan’ is ’bout de same latitude as Africa, an’ dey all jist muss a bin cullud.” But the parson was of a contrary opinion, declaring that while “O’ co’se some on ’em mout a bin cullud, dey wa’n’t all dat a way. Dar, fer ’sample, was Saint Paul—he mout a bin cullud, but den dar war Saint Petah, he wa’n’t. I know he wa’n’t.” “An’ how you know dat, Bruddah?” queried the deacon. “Wa’ll, deacon,” said the preacher, “Saint Petah nevah was a cullud pusson, ’case if he had a bin cullud dat dar rooster wouldn’t a crowed more’n onct.”
A distinguished lawyer and politician was traveling with a pass on a train, when an Irish woman came into the car lugging along a big basket and a bundle, and sat down near him. When the conductor came in to collect the fares, the woman paid her money, and the conductor passed by the lawyer without collecting anything. The good woman looked at him and said, “An’ faith, an’ why is it that the conductor takes the money of a poor Irishwoman, an’ don’t ask ye for anything, an’ ye seem to be a rich mon?” The lawyer replied, “My good woman, I am traveling on my beauty.” The woman looked at him more carefully for a moment, and said, “An’ is that so? An’ then, sure, you must be near your journey’s end.”
A Virginia farmer was trying to train a small horse for a saddle-horse for his daughter, and was riding the animal up and down the road past a haystack. In order to accustom the horse to sudden fright, he directed his son to hide behind the haystack and jump out as he rode by and say, “Boo!” The boy did so, and the horse reared and plunged till he had thrown the rider on the roadside and ran away. The old man picked himself up, cut a switch from a handy hedge, and was about to chastise the boy. When the boy expostulated, declaring that he had only done what he had been directed to do, the old man said, “Yes, I know you did, but you let out altogether too big a Boo for such a small horse!”
They tried hard, but they couldn’t get the Yankee tourist to admit that he saw anything in Europe that could beat things at home. When he passed from Italy to Switzerland, they asked him whether he had noticed the magnificence of the Alps, and he acknowledged, “Waal, now, come to think of it, I guess I did pass some risin’ ground.” And before this they had showed him Vesuvius, and asked him what he thought of that, and whether there was anything in his country could equal it. And he said, “Pooh! Why, we’ve got a waterfall in my country so big that if you had it here and turned it into your burning mountain, it would put out all that fire in just six seconds.”
An American-born Irishman paid a visit to the home of his ancestors, and they proudly showed him the lakes of Killarney. “Killarney, is it?” said he. “We’ve got lakes in America so big that you could take all the lakes in Ireland an’ throw ’em in, and it wouldn’t raise the water an inch. An’ as fer yer city o’ Dublin—let me tell ye, me friend, we’ve got States over there so big that ye could put Dublin away in one corner of ’em, an’ ye’d never know it was there, except for the smell o’ the whiskey.”
These honored citizens could well appreciate the toast—“The United States: bounded on the east by primeval chaos; on the north by the Aurora borealis; on the west by the precession of the equinoxes, and on the south by the Day of Judgment!”
A Larimer County farmer lost a valuable cow in a very unusual and distressing manner. The animal, in rummaging through a summer kitchen, found and swallowed an old umbrella and a cake of yeast. The yeast, fermenting in the poor beast’s stomach, raised the umbrella and she died in great agony.
The same day another accident happened. A pan of cream had been left standing in the spring house, and a frog had fallen in and couldn’t get out. He swam and swam around and around, but could get no foothold to climb out. So he stopped swimming and took to kicking instead. He kicked and he kicked till he had kicked the cream into butter, and then climbed out readily.
Dan Marble was once strolling along the wharves in Boston, when he met a tall, gaunt man, a digger from California, and got into conversation with him about that wonderful State.
“Healthy climate, I suppose?” inquired Dan.
“Healthy? Well, I reckon I should say so, stranger. Why, d’ye know, out there you can choose any kind o’ climate you like, hot or cold or mejum, an’ that, too, without traveling more’n fifteen minutes. They’ve got weather on tap out there, so to speak, sizz or frizz, accordin’ to taste an’ preference. There’s a mountain there—the Sary Nevady, they call it—one side hot an’ one side cold. Well—get up on top o’ that mountain with a double-barrel gun, an’ you can, without movin’, kill either winter or summer game, jest as you wish.”
“What! And have you tried it?”
“Tried it often, an’ would have done some remarkable shootin’, but jest for one thing.”
“And what was that?”
“Well, I wanted a dog, you see, that could stand both climates. The last dog I had froze his tail off pintin’ on the summer side. He was on the Great Divide, you see, nose on the summer side, tail on the winter side, an’ his tail froze right off before I could shoot.”
Garrigan was the name of the new station agent. He was an Irishman, of course, and magnified his office by sending in to headquarters very lengthy telegraphic despatches giving very minute details of the many accidents that happened to the trains at his station. Headquarters, at length wearying of the man’s unnecessary prolixity, instructed him to cut out all superfluous particulars and to confine himself to essentials only. “Cut it out?” said he, “an’ sure that I will the very next time an accident happens, or me name isn’t Garrigan.” The next day some cars went off the track—they were always going off the track at his station—and as soon as they were made all right, he wired headquarters a laconic despatch, in the very rhythm of which one can hear the rumble of the car-wheels: “Off again; on again; gone again. Garrigan!”
A man was buying a horse of a French Canadian. He looked the animal over carefully. The Frenchman said, “He not look ver’ goot, but he is a goot horse.” The purchaser, not setting much store by the man’s judgment of good looks in a horse, and saying that he didn’t care for appearance provided other things were all right, bought the animal. Next day he brought the horse back, saying that he was blind of an eye, and demanded his money back, but the Frenchman said, “Non! Vot I tell you? Did I not say zat he not look goot?”
One day when Mrs. Van Auken installed a Chinaman in her kitchen, the following conversation took place: “What is your name, sir?” asked Mrs. Van Auken. “Oh, my namee Ah Sin Foo!” “But I can’t remember all that lingo, my man. I’ll call you Jimmy.” “Velly welle. Now whachee namee I callee you?” “Well, my name is Mrs. Van Auken. Call me that.” “Oh, me can no membel Missee Yanne Auken. Too big piecee namee. I callee you Tommy—Missee Tommy.”
At a Camp Fire of the Grand Army of the Republic a comrade, being called on for a speech, got up and said, “Now, boys, you all know I can’t make a speech; I never could. And the Commander shouldn’t have called on me to get up. I feel now like my brother Sam felt, one summer night, when he hadn’t anything particular to do. He wandered into a Methodist prayer-meeting and sat down near the door in one of those high-backed old-fashioned pews. He had no idea that he’d be called on to say anything, or he wouldn’t have gone near, but what did the blame preacher do when he spied Sam but call on him to pray! Sam was nearly scared to death. He didn’t know what to do; but when he saw all the congregation getting down on their hunkers between the pews where they couldn’t see him, and the door was open, he heard the bugle call to “Retreat,” got down on all fours and turned turtle, and crawled out of that church on a double quick, and skipped for Home, sweet Home.”
“Mamma,” said a little girl, “George Washington never told a lie, did he?” Being so assured, she continued: “And I guess pretty nearly everybody else did?” This being likewise admitted as probable, she went on, “I guess even father sometimes tells a fib, doesn’t he?” It was hard to admit that, but it had to be. “And, mamma, you tell some once in a while? I know I do.” When this was also reluctantly confessed, the child drew a sigh and said, “Oh, mamma! What a lonely place Heaven will be, with nobody in it but God and George Washington!”
A man had a dog, and the dog was such a poor, miserable cur that everybody wondered at the attachment of the man to such a beast. One day in the barroom of a tavern a number of young men were rallying him on his dog, and wanted to know how much he’d take for his pet. The man said that he loved that dog so much that he couldn’t think of parting with him—he “wouldn’t take twenty dollars for that dog.” His tormentors, knowing him to be thoroughly conscientious, although poor, and that when he had given his word he would never go back on it, got together forty silver half-dollars, piled them up on the bar, and called on him to decide whether he would rather have that miserable dog or all that pile of silver? “No, gentlemen,” said he, walking up to the bar and counting the money carefully, “I stick to what I said. I won’t take twenty dollars for Pete. It’s too much. Nineteen dollars and a half is every cent he’s worth. The dog is yours.” Leaving one half-dollar on the bar, he scooped the other thirty-nine into his hat.
Iowa, 12, 3, ’06.
Dear Sir:—Your sumptuous letter received, and in reply will say that they come frequently, and it would have afforded the boys much amusement had not the melancholy thought come with it that you had no better sense than to abuse, slander and dun a gentleman.
You speak of honor, if you are honorable you know not whereof you speak. You also speak of causing me much trouble, my land, I have already trouble enough to send a whole brigade of you wise boys over the road fifty times. I will give you a history of this case, and if you are surprised at my actions in regard to your claim for 10.00 you are undoubtedly the worst set of misers on earth.
To begin with in 1891 I bought a restaurant on credit. In 1892 I bought an OX team, a timber cart, a pair of Texas ponies, a gold watch, a breech-loading shotgun, A repeating rifle, A milk cow, A pair of fine hogs, and a set of books all on the instalment plan, and hired hands to dig a fish pond. In 1905 my restaurant burned flat to the ground and never left me a thing, one of my ponies died and I hired the other one to an infernal, insignificant drummer. He killed him driving him too hard. Then I joined the farmers alliance and Methodist church, and took advantage of the homestead exemption and honest debtors’ relief law, and then had my applycation wrote out to join the masons. In the latter part of 1905 my father died and my mother married a Mexican. And my brother Bud was lynched for horse stealing. My sister choked to death on a button and I had to pay her funeral expenses.
In 1905 I got burned out again, and I took to drink and soon went through with the interest on what I owed, which was all I had left. My wife run away and left me all the children to take care of. I don’t care for anybody and nothing surprises me any more. Now if you feel like tackeling me pitch in, I’ll have to stand it, I suppose. But let me give you a gentle tip, getting money out of me is like stuffing butter in a keyhole with a hot awl.
You speak of making no effort to adjust this bill; what is the use? If steam boats were worth two cents apiece I couldn’t buy a gang plank. You ask if I thought it would of been more manly to of acknowledged the truth. I answer no, by the way, I don’t expect anything but to be pestered by lawyers, collection sharks and other humbugs and grafters, until this pestilence relieves me from their clutches. Be for I die I am going to Petition heigh heaven for a shower of fire and destruction on the whole bunch. And I will particular pray that the storm spend most of its fury on that southern hamlet where you claim to get your mail.
Maliciously and disrespectfully yours,
----.
Father had bought and planted a number of dwarf pear trees in the yard around the house. He watched their growth and development with great interest for several years, and when at last one of the trees produced just one pear, all the children in the house were straitly and strictly forbidden to pull that pear off the tree. “Whoever pulls that pear off the tree will get a whipping, and a good one.”
The pear grew larger daily, and riper and more lusciously tempting. How the sight of it made our mouths water—especially as it was forbidden to pull it off! However, some one of the children, carefully reasoning that it was not forbidden to touch the pear, nor even to eat it, only that it must not be “pulled off”—bent down the limb that bore it, ate the juicy fruit, and left the core hanging on the tree!
They were sitting opposite me in the smoking car, two traveling salesmen, having a quiet game of cards and sharpening their wits between deals with quips, quirks and conundrums.
“You come from Kalamazoo, I believe?” queried the one.
“Yep,” said the other, “best old town on the earth.”
“D’ye know,” drawled the Boston man, “what we Boston people call the people that live in your town?”
“Nope, an’ we don’t care much, neither. But, just by way of conversation, may I inquire what you call ’em?”
“We call ’em a zoo. See?”
“Yep, I see,” said the Kalamazoo man. “And do you know and can you tell me what kind o’ people live in your town of Boston?”
“Best and smartest people on earth,” was the emphatic answer.
“Well,” was the response, “out my way we say that people that live in Boston are nothing but human beans. See? Cut for a new deal.”
After a dinner in one of the most hospitable residences in Washington, a party of very distinguished men—Cabinet ministers, senators, diplomats, scientists and soldiers—sat in the smoking-room, and the conversation drifted from politics to religious questions. Somebody remarked that he once sat in the Union League Club in New York, with Roscoe Conkling, Chester A. Arthur and several other distinguished gentlemen who had been carefully educated in religious families, and that none of them was able to name the Twelve Apostles.
“That’s easy,” said a senator brashly, beginning: “Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, bless the bed that I lie on, Paul, the two Jameses, Jude, Barnabas—“ and there he stopped with some embarrassment.
“Timothy,” suggested a major-general, who was a vestryman in an Episcopal Church.
“Nonsense,” answered a senator. “Timothy was a disciple of Paul’s. He wasn’t one of the Twelve Apostles.”
“Nicodemus,” added one of the company.
“Jeremiah,” suggested another.
“Judas was one of the apostles,” meekly came from a voice in a corner.
“I’ll be blamed if he was. He was a disciple, so far I’ll go, but no farther,” was the curt reply.
“Weren’t the disciples and the apostles the same thing?” inquired the meek voice, getting a little bolder.
Bartholomew was next suggested, and accepted by several.
“What’s the matter with Peter?” exclaimed a modest young member of the Diplomatic Corps who had hitherto been silent.
“How many does that make?” somebody asked, and they counted up eleven for sure, with as many more doubtful.
“Lets look in the Bible,” some one suggested, and the Good Book was overhauled in vain. Nobody could find the place, some insisting it was in Chronicles somewhere, while other authorities were equally certain of Corinthians. Then an encyclopedia was appealed to, but it was not entirely satisfactory, for it included Thomas and Andrew in the list, and that would make one too many—thirteen, an unlucky number. Besides, the justice of the Supreme Court and two senators were positive that Andrew was not an apostle—all of which teaches the great usefulness and the pressing need of Sunday-schools.
Artemus Ward was traveling on a slow-going southern road soon after the war. While the conductor was punching his ticket, Artemus remarked: “Does this railroad company allow passengers to give it advice, if they do so in a respectful manner?” The conductor replied in gruff tones that he guessed so. “Well,” Artemus went on, “it has occurred to me that it would be well, perhaps, to detach the cow-catcher from the front of the engine and hitch it to the rear of the train. For, you see, we are not likely to overtake a cow; but what’s to prevent a cow strolling into this car and biting the passengers?”
A gentleman who was buying a turkey from old Uncle Ephraim asked him, in making the purchase, if it was a tame turkey.
“Oh, yais, sir; it’s a tame tu’key all right.”
“Now, Ephraim, are you sure it’s a tame turkey?”
“Oh, yais, sir; dere’s no so’t o’ doubt ’bout dat. It’s a tame tu’key all right.”
He consequently bought the turkey, and a day or two later, when eating it, came across several shot. Later on, when he met old Ephraim on the street, he said:
“Well, Ephraim, you told me that was a tame turkey, but I found some shot in it when I was eating it.”
“Oh, dat war a tame tu’key all right,” was Uncle Ephraim’s reiterated rejoinder, “but de fac’ is, boss, I’s gwine to tell yer in confidence, dat dem ’ere shot was intended for me.”
During the Civil War a German cavalryman, Hans von Gelder by name, on coming into camp saw at a distance a squad of men who were apparently greatly interested or excited about something.
“Vat’s der matter oud dere?” asked Hans.
“Shelling,” was the laconic answer.
“Shellin’? Who was giffin’ us fits now? Whose gommand is makin’ dot shellin’?”
“It’s General R——’s command shelling corn for the horses.” When Hans finally grasped the idea, he laughed long and loud and determined to make some one else the victim of the jest. Upon returning to his tent he wakened his sleeping comrade and exclaimed:
“Say, I haf got von goot shoke.”
“You couldn’t get off a joke, Hans, to save your soul.”
“Vell, now, you ask me vat dem fellers are doin’ ofer dere, undt I vill tell you dot shoke.”
“Well, what air they doin’ over there?”
“Dey vas shellin’ corn for dere hosses. Haw! haw! haw!”
“But that hain’t no joke.”
“Dond id?” asked Hans in surprise. “Vell, if id dond now, it used to pe.”
Sam Ward was once seated opposite a well-known senator at a dinner in Washington. The senator was very bald, and the light shining brilliantly on the breadth of his scalp attracted Ward’s attention.
“Can you tell me,” said he to his neighbor, “why that senator’s head is like Alaska?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” was the answer.
“Because it is a great white bear place.”
The man was immensely tickled and he at once hailed the senator across the table:
“Say, senator, Ward’s just got off a good thing about you.”
“What is it? Let’s have it.”
“Do you know why your bald head is like Alaska?”
“No. Give it up.”
“Because it is a great place for white bears.”
The following, gentle reader, is given place here purely for the benefit of the next generation:
In a certain court in the good State of Maine, once upon a time, the proceedings were delayed by the failure of a witness by the name of Sarah Mony to arrive. After waiting a long time for Sarah, the court concluded to wait no longer, and his Honor, wishing to crack his little joke, remarked:
“The Court will adjourn without Sarah—Mony.”
Everybody laughed except one man who sat in solemn meditation for five full minutes, and then burst out into a hearty guffaw, “I see it! I see it!”
He laughed all the way home, and when he arrived there he tried to tell the joke to his wife, saying that he had been down in the court-house, and they were trying a case, and there was a witness wanted who didn’t turn up, and her name was Mary Mony, and so the judge said, “We’ll adjourn without Mary Mony—“ Ha, ha, ha!
And then his wife said she didn’t see anything funny in that, and he said, “I know it, I know it. I didn’t at first either. But you will in about five minutes.”
“Say, Jenks, old boy,” said one man to another on the street, “here’s a good one: What’s the difference between me and a donkey?”
“Well—what is the difference?”
“Measuring by my eye, I should say it was about three feet.”
Jenks, thinking that too good to be lost, carried it home to his wife. “Say, Maria,” said he, “what’s the difference between me and a donkey?” And the cruel woman with a merry laugh answered, “Not a particle of difference!”
That was certainly a very enterprising Chicago lad who was found selling tickets to the children in his neighborhood, at a nickel apiece, the tickets entitling the holder to view the eclipse from his mother’s back yard.
Among the visitors at a Dog Show at Atlantic City, N. J., was a very tall man who complained to an exhibitor that his dog, a very diminutive specimen, had bitten him on the ankle. The exhibitor looked the man over, and then said with a charming down-East drawl:
“Well, stranger, I reckon you are about six feet tall. This here dog o’ mine ain’t more’n six inches high. He bit you on the ankle, did he? Well, I’m sorry, but you couldn’t naturally expect so small a dog to bite you on the neck.”
“Do you know the prisoner well?” asked the attorney.
“Never knew him sick,” replied the witness.
“Come—no levity,” said the lawyer sternly. “Now, sir, did you ever see the prisoner at the bar?”
“Took many a drink with him at the bar.”
“Answer my question,” yelled the lawyer. “How long have you known the prisoner?”
“From two feet up to five feet ten inches.”
“Will the Court please make the——“
“I have, Jedge,” said the witness, anticipating the lawyer. “I have answered his question. I knowed the prisoner when he was a boy two feet long and a man five feet ten.”
“Your Honor——“
“It’s a fact, Jedge, and I’m under oath,” persisted the witness. The lawyer arose, placed both hands on the table in front of him, spread his legs apart, leaned his body over the table and said:
“Will you tell the Court what you know about this case?”
“That ain’t his name,” answered the witness.
“What ain’t his name?”
“Why, Case.”
“Who said it was?”
“You did, just now. You wanted to know what I knew about this Case. His name is Smith.”
“Your Honor,” howled the lawyer, pulling his beard, “will you make the witness answer my questions?”
“Witness,” said the judge, “you must answer the questions put to you.”
“Land o’ Goshen! Hain’t I been doin’ it, Jedge? Let the blame cuss fire away, I’m ready.”
“Then,” said the lawyer, “don’t beat about the bush any more. You and the prisoner have been friends?”
“Never.”
“What! wasn’t you summoned here as a friend?”
“No, sir. I was summoned here as a Presbyterian. Nary one of us ever was friends. He’s a old-line Baptist without a drop o’ Quaker blood in him.”
“Stand down,” yelled the lawyer in disgust.
“Hey?”
“Stand down!”
“Can’t do it. I kin set down, ef ye want me to, or I kin stand up, but I can’t stand down.”
“Sheriff—remove this man from the box.”
Witness retires muttering: “Well, if he ain’t the thick-headedest cuss I ever laid eyes on.”
The Board of Councilmen in a Mississippi town voted the following resolutions at one of their meetings:
“First—Resolved by this council, that we build a new jail.
“Second—Resolved that the new jail be built out of the materials of the old jail.
“Third—Resolved that the old jail be used till the new jail is finished.”
This is something like the account an Irish sailor once gave of the execution of a negro on the west coast of Africa. He told how the negro’s hands were tied behind his back, and how the executioner cut the man’s head off at one clip, and how the headless man stooped down, seized his bloody head and set it up on his neck where it was before! When some bystander remarked that such a thing was impossible, for “How could the man pick up his head from the ground when his hands were tied behind his back?” “Begorry,” was the answer, “he done it wid his teeth!”
It occurred years ago in the mountain regions in Eastern Tennessee. Some of the natives had been gambling in a tobacco barn, and one of the neighbors, in the interest of good morals, had them up “afore the justice” for it. The squire had a lank specimen of humanity before him and was examining him.
“Now, Zeke, you tell us what you know about this here gamblin’.”
“Wot gamblin’?”
“Why, this here gamblin’ at Jamison’s barn.”
“At Jamison’s barn?”
“Yes, at Jamison’s barn. You was there. Now, what do you know about this gamblin’?”
“Gamblin’ at Jamison’s barn? Who said there was any gamblin’?”
“Was you at Jamison’s?”
“Was I?”
“Yes. Was you there?”
“Where?”
“At Jamison’s barn.”
“Ye—s. I wuz thar off an’ on ever sence it wuz built.”
“Was you there last week?”
“Wot—in the barn?”
“I don’t know. Was they a-gamblin’ there?”
“Wuz who a-gamblin’?”
“That’s what I want to know. Was anybody a-gamblin’?”
“A-gamblin’—where?”
“At Jamison’s barn. Did you see them gamblin’?”
“Did I see them gamblin’, d’ye say?”
“Yes. Was you in close proximity to them a-gamblin’?”
“Zimmity—Zimmity. See here, square, what’s this here ye’re a-givin’ me. Don’t you go to projeckin around me that a way. I’m a mountain man, I am, an’ I ain’t to be fooled with nohow.”
“I asked, Zeke, did you see anybody a-gamblin’ or not a-gamblin’?”
“Where?”
“At Jamison’s barn last week.”
“Did I see anybody a-gamblin’ last week——“
“Yes, now; that’s it.”
“Yes. I see some a-gamblin’ last week.”
“Ah! now we’re comin’ to it. Who was it you saw a-gamblin’ last week?”
“Why, don’t you know, you an’ me an’ Bill was playin’ keerds at the mill——“
“Oh—pshaw! I don’t mean that. Was anybody gamblin’ at Jamison’s?”
“Wot—at Jamison’s?”
This went on for a full hour, and it all came to one thing. Nobody knew anything about it, and after some talk a weazen-faced, dried-up old man, who had been whittling a piece of bark, said:
“Square, there ain’t been nothin’ a-proved, and this here case must be stopped. I’ll pay the costs.”
“Well,” said the magistrate, “there ain’t been nothin’ proved up, an’ if you’ll pay the costs of one sixty, I’ll call this here case a Nolly Prossy.”
And then the old man said, “All right, square. Here’s yer money fer the costs. I don’t mind about payin’ ’em seein’ as how I won the whole pot anyways.”
Let a vote be taken for the wisest man, and every fool will vote for himself.
Andrew Carnegie, in the smoke-room of the Baltic, talked about Scotch whisky.
“It is a pure but a powerful spirit,” he said, smiling. “In Peebles the other day they told me a good story about it.
“It seems that a Peebles lawyer and his clerk had been to a wedding of the real, old-fashioned sort. On the way home the lawyer said, as they were crossing the famous Peebles iron bridge:
“‘Noo, Saunders, mon, I’ll juist gang on ahead a meenit, an’ ye’ll tell me if I’m walkin’ straucht.’
“So the lawyer walked ahead, and then called back:
“‘Straucht, Saunders?’
“‘Straucht’s a die,’ Saunders answered; ‘but—hic—wha’s that wi’ ye?’”
“The old teacher in one of the smaller schools near my native town of Peekskill,” said Senator Depew, “had drilled a number of his brightest scholars in the history of contemporary politics, and to test their faith and their knowledge he called upon three of them one day and demanded a declaration of personal political principles.
“You are a Republican, Tom, are you not?” inquired he of the first. “Yes, sir,” was the answer. “And, Bill, you are a Prohibitionist, I believe?” “Yes, sir,” said Bill. “And, Jim, you are a Democrat?” “Yes, sir,” said Jim.
“Well, now,” continued the teacher, “the one of you that gives the best reason why he belongs to his party can have this live woodchuck which I caught on my way to school this morning.”
“I am a Republican,” said the first boy, “because the Republican party saved the country in the war and abolished slavery.”
“And I am a Prohibitionist,” rattled off the second youth, “because rum is our country’s greatest enemy, and the cause of our over-crowded prisons and poorhouses.”
“Very excellent reasons, boys, very excellent reasons,” observed the teacher encouragingly. “And, now, Jim, why are you a Democrat?”
“Well, sir,” was the slow reply, “I am a Democrat because I want that woodchuck!”
A muscular Irishman strolled into the Civil Service examination-room where candidates for the police force are put to a physical test.
“Strip,” ordered the police surgeon.
“What’s that?” demanded the uninitiated.
“Get your clothes off, and be quick about it,” said the doctor.
The Irishman disrobed, and permitted the doctor to measure his chest and legs and to pound his back.
“Hop over this bar,” ordered the doctor.
The man did his best, landing on his back.
“Now double up your knees and touch the floor with your hands.”
He sprawled, face downward, on the floor. He was indignant but silent.
“Jump under this cold shower,” ordered the doctor.
“Sure, that’s funny!” muttered the applicant.
“Now run around the room ten times to test your heart and wind,” directed the doctor.
The candidate rebelled. “I’ll not. I’ll sthay single.”
“Single?” asked the doctor, surprised.
“Sure,” said the Irishman, “what’s all this fussing got to do with a marriage license!”
He had strayed into the wrong bureau.
A number of mischievous boys on their way to drive the cows home from pasture one evening, passing by the low and lonely cabin occupied by a poor old woman, hearing some one talking within, peeped through the window and saw the poor old body on her knees before the wide old-fashioned chimney. She was pitifully beseeching God to send her bread. The boys thinking it would be a good joke, ran back home and got some loaves of bread. The old lady was praying still for bread when they returned, all out of breath. They climbed up on the roof quietly and threw the loaves down the chimney, scrambled down to the door and listened to the poor old soul pouring her heart out in thanksgiving to God for sending her bread from heaven. Then they opened the door, and burst in on her with:
“Why, granny! Did you think God sent you that bread? We tumbled it down the chimbley!”
And she said, “Well, boys, God did send it even if the devil did bring it.”
During a great temperance agitation out in Kansas a man was lecturing in a public school building on chemistry. An interested auditor, a farmer, couldn’t at all get the hang of the lecturer’s remarks, and asked his neighbor in the next seat: “Say, what does the lecturer mean by oxy-gin and hydro-gin, and what is the difference?” “Well,” was the answer, “they come to ’bout the same thing. There ain’t enough difference betwixt them to amount to much. You see, by oxy-gin the lecturer means pure gin, and by hydro-gin he means gin and water.”
“Thank you, sir,” replied Hayseed, “I reckon I’ll take oxy-gin. It goes further.”
Robert Burdette, in one of his lectures, thus describes scientific education in primeval times: “When a placid but exceedingly unanimous-looking animal went rolling by, producing the general effect of an eclipse, Cain would shout:
“Oh, lookee, lookee, pa! What’s that?”
“Then the patient Adam, trying to saw enough kitchen wood to last over Sunday, with a piece of flint for a saw, would have to pause and gather up enough words to say:
“That, my son? That is only a mastodon giganteus; he has a bad look but a Christian temper.”
And then presently:
“Oh, pa! pa! What’s that over yon?”
“Oh, bother,” Adam would reply; “it’s only a paleotherium, mammalia pachydermata.”
“Oh, yes; theliocomeafterus. Oh, lookee, lookee at this ’un!”
“Where, Cainny? Oh, that in the mud? That’s only an acephala lamelli branchiata. It won’t bite you, but you mustn’t eat it. It’s poison as politics.”
“Whee! See there! See, see, see! What’s him?”
“Oh, that? Looks like a pleiosaurus; keep out of his way; he has a jaw like your mother.”
“Oh, yes; a plenosserus. And what’s that fellow, poppy?”
“That’s a silurus malapterous. Don’t you go near him, for he has the disposition of a Georgia mule.”
“Oh, yes; a slapterus. And what’s this little one?”
“Oh, it’s nothing but an aristolochioid. Where did you get it? There, now, quit throwing stones at the acanthopterygian; do you want to be kicked? And you keep away from the nothodenatrichomanoides. My stars, Eve! where did he get that anonaceo-hydro-charideo-nymphaeoid? Do you never look after him at all? Here, you Cain, get right away from down there, and chase that megalosaurius out of the melon-patch, or I’ll set the mono-pleuro brachian on you!”
Mark Twain is credited with telling a good story about the meanest corporation on earth. A man was working for this company, drilling holes for blasting rock. He got to work on a place where there was a charge that had not gone off. So, as he sat there quietly drilling away, there was an explosion. He went up and up till he didn’t look any bigger than a hat; and then up and up till he didn’t look any bigger than a walnut; and then up and up till he went out of sight. Then he began to come down and down till he looked as big as a walnut; and then down and down till he looked as big as a hat; and then down and down till he sat right in the place he had left, and went on drilling away as if nothing had happened. He was absent just sixteen minutes and forty-two seconds—and the company was so mean that they docked him for loss of time!
“Say, boy, say!” exclaimed a hot looking man with a big valise, “what’s the quickest way to the cars?” “Run!” yelled the boy as he dodged into an alley. The man was very sorry the boy had so suddenly disappeared, for he was so pleased with the kind information that if he could only have come near enough to the boy, he would certainly have given him something to remember him by.
When the preacher went into politics and suffered in his professional character in consequence, he thought well to make an humble confession to his conference to the effect that “the muddy pool of politics was the rock on which I split.”
He mixed his figures about as badly as a famous Irishman, Sir Boyle Roche, who, suspecting the opposition of some sort of underhand intentions, revealed his acuteness and his purpose to head off the enemy in the following terms: “I smell a rat; I feel it in the air; and I will nip it in the bud!”
The colonel and a friend were sitting on the back porch of the house smoking and talking. They fell to discussing the intoxicating properties of beer. The colonel maintained that a man couldn’t possibly drink enough beer to make him drunk, but his friend was of a contrary mind. The colonel went into his kitchen and brought out a two-gallon tin bucket, and said, “See this bucket? Well, I have a German sawing wood down in my barn at the end of the lot. I’ll bet you ten dollars that he can drink all the beer that bucket will hold at one sitting, and not be the worse for it.” The bet was taken, and the colonel called the man from his work, and said, “Diedrich, you see that bucket? If I were to fill that bucket with beer, do you think you could drink it all at one sitting?”
The German smiled broadly, and said he guessed he could—he could try. “But I want you to be certain,” said the colonel. “Vell,” said Diedrich, “I guess I could, but maybe I couldn’t.” With this he was dismissed and the subject was dropped.
At the end of a half hour, Diedrich appeared on the scene and said that if that bucket was filled with beer he could drink it all without stopping. He was certain he could. Accordingly he was sent with the bucket to a neighboring brewery and promptly returned with the vessel full to the brim. He placed it on a table, drew up a chair, tilted the bucket and set to work. In a very short time he had finished, arose, thanked the colonel and was making for the wood-pile.
“Hold on,” called the colonel, “I want to ask you a question. When I called you up the first time you were uncertain whether you could drink that bucket of beer or not, and then after a while you came back and said you were certain you could. How do you explain that?”
Diedrich drew the back of his hand across his mouth, and said, “Vy, colonel, dot is easy to explain. Der first time ven you ask me, I did not know for sure. So ven I vent away, I vent over to der brewery undt got me a bucket about so big as yours undt tried if I could—undt I found I could, I could; undt so I coom back here sure, sure dat I could drink your bucket full mit beer. See?”
While instructing his pupils in grammar, a country school-teacher gave out this sentence to be parsed: “Mary milks the cow.” Each word had been parsed except the last, which fell to Bob, a sixteen-year-old boy, near the foot of the class, who began thus:
“Cow is a noun, feminine gender, singular number, third person, and stands for Mary.”
“Stands for Mary!” said the astonished teacher. “And, pray, Robert, how do you make that out?”
“Because,” answered the hopeful pupil, “if the cow didn’t stand for Mary, how could Mary milk the cow?”
“Say—how much do you think I had to pay the milliner for my wife’s last spring bonnet? Thirty-six dollars and seventeen cents.”
“Rather steep, isn’t it? What are you going to do about it?”
“Do about it? Nothing. Because, don’t you see, old man, I daren’t say beans to it. My wife has the delirium trimmins.”
Mr. W. J. Lampton in the New York Times thus discourses on the tender topic:
The handwriting of Horace Greely, the great editor, was remarkable for its illegibility. Very few people could read what he wrote, and sometimes it puzzled Mr. Greely himself. He wrote a hurried note one day, addressed it to the editor of one of the other great New York papers, and sent it by a messenger boy. The boy duly delivered it, but the man couldn’t make it out, and sent it back. When the boy handed his own note to Mr. Greely, he, supposing it to be a reply to his own communication, and being unable to read it, looked it over carefully and said: “Why, what does the old fool mean?” “Yes,” said the boy, “that’s just what the other man said!”
In addition to writing a poor hand Mr. Greely was very absent-minded. Leaving his office in a great hurry one day to go an errand downtown, he wrote on a card, “Back in 20 minutes,” pinned it on the outside of his office door and rushed out. Having changed his mind, he came back in five minutes and, seeing the notice on the door, took a seat nearby, and actually waited twenty minutes for himself to come back!
A good-looking young minister was driving to the county town of B—— in a buggy. On the way he overtook a very comely young woman going the same direction afoot. He courteously stopped and suggested that he give her a lift, an offer which she gladly accepted, riding beside him several miles to her destination at a country farm-house. On descending from the vehicle she thanked him for his kindness, and he very politely said, “Don’t mention it—don’t mention it.” And she said, “No, I won’t. I won’t tell. I’m as much ashamed of it as you are!”
When he was within two miles of the town he overtook a young lawyer who was returning afoot from a visit to a country client, and took him aboard, and the two had some sharp passages as they rode along. Now, it chanced that a man was to be hanged for murder the next day in the town, and the carpenters were busy erecting the gallows in the yard of the jail. When the two came to the hill which overlooks the town of B——, they could plainly see the top of the gallows above the wall of the jail. Pointing then to the jail the minister said:
“If the gallows had its due, where would you be?”
“I’d be riding into town alone, I reckon,” was the answer.
“My friend Dickinson,” said the colonel, “is a very witty fellow. He made a very witty reply lately. He had been sent down to a certain celebrated seaside resort by his physician for a rest and a change, and it was understood that he was to spend at least a month there, but at the end of a week he turned up again in his home town, and when people asked him why he had come back so soon, his reply was:
“Well, you see, the doctor sent me down there for a rest and a change, and I went down and tried it; but by the end of a week I found that the waiters at the hotel were getting all the change, and the man that kept the hotel got all the rest, and so I just had to come home to recopperate, you know.”
“When I was down there in Atlantic City,” said Dickinson with that delightful drawl of his, “I went one day into a shoe store on ‘The Avenue,’ as they call the business street of the town, and looked around. The clerk came up smiling and asked could he wait on me, and I said he could if he had any ‘crochetted overshoes.’ That made him scratch his head. ‘Must be a new kind,’ said he. ‘Oh, no,’ said I. ‘They’ve been in use some years.’ ‘But,’ said he, ‘I can’t see what use crochet work would be on overshoes. Why, the rain and mud would spoil it all in a short time.’ ‘Oh, no,’ said I. ‘You don’t catch on. I am not looking for overshoes with crochet work on them, but for crochetted overshoes—overshoes that are crow-shade; black ones, you understand?’”
It is hard to tell whether the biggest liars live by the sea or on the mountain, but certainly the sailor folk will have a time of it to match one Bob Sempers, one of the most elastic of all the prevaricators on the Pocono Mountain. Here is a story Bob told a party of gentlemen hunters not long ago:
“You know where I live. About three mile from the Big Lake. Well—one evenin’ last spring when I was goin’ home, I see a flock o’ geese a-settlin’ on the lake. I got up bright an’ early next mornin’, took down my shootin’ iron an’ started for the lake to try my luck. When I got there I found they were out o’ gun shot, an’ I knowed ’twan’t no use to shoot at that distance. I’d jist skeer ’em away if I did. So, I stood there thinkin’ what best to do. I see a fox come down to the water edge and stand there a minnit or so a-snuffin’ the air. I’d a mind to shoot him, but I thought I’d wait an’ see what he’d do. Well, sir, he just plumped into the water an’ made for them geese. They were all huddled together about a half a mile from the shore. After swimmin’ up to within a few yards of ’em, he suddenly disappeared, and in a few minnits a goose was drawn under water. Then the fox swum ashore an’ laid the dead goose on the bank, and went back fer another snap, an’ so he kep on till he got the whole flock, an’ I waited till he brought in the last one, an’ then I shot him.
“Well, sir, I found when I come to count ’em, that I had just fifty nice fat geese, which I lugged home together with my gun an’ the dead fox. An’ when I got home I found my old woman hadn’t the breakfast quite ready yet.”
“‘But, Bob,’ said some one, ‘the fox had to swim a mile for each goose—half a mile each way—consequently he had to swim just fifty miles. And the geese averaged, say, six pounds; so that you had three hundred pounds of goose-flesh to carry three miles, to say nothing of the dead fox and your gun—impossible!’
“‘Impossible or not,’ maintained Bob, ‘every word is truth, and I can prove it, too, by more than a dozen of my neighbors, to each of whom I sold enough feathers to fill a feather-bed.’”
A company of tourists were traveling in Switzerland, and they went to buy tickets for the coach-ride up the mountain. The American man of course bought a first-class ticket, but he noticed that all the rest got second and third class, and they all got into the wagon with him. He said to the driver, “What advantage is there in paying for a first class ticket when holders of second and third class tickets have precisely the same accommodations?” The driver said, “You just wait a while and you will see.” So by and by they came to a steep hill, and the driver called out, “First class passengers will keep their seats; second class passengers will get out and walk; third class passengers will get out and push.”
They have a new brand of whiskey down in Kentucky known as “The Horn of Plenty,” because it will corn-you-copiously.
“In the Blue Grass section of Kentucky was I born, where all the corn is full of kernels—and all the colonels full of corn.”
Chauncey Depew spoke one evening during a political campaign at a town in the interior of New York State, which it is not necessary to name. The next morning the chairman of the local committee took him in his carriage for a ride about the place. They had reached the suburbs and were admiring a bit of scenery when a man wearing a blue shirt and carrying a long whip on his shoulder approached from where he had been piloting an ox-team along the middle of the street and said:
“You’re the man that made the rattlin’ speech up at the hall last night, I guess?”
Mr. Depew modestly admitted that he had indulged in some talk at the time and place specified.
“Didn’t you have what you said writ out?” went on the man.
“No,” replied the orator.
“You don’t mean to say you made that all up as you went along?”
“Yes.”
“Jess hopped right up there, took a drink o’ water out of the pitcher, hit the table a whack and waded in without no thinkin’ nor nothing?”
“Well, I suppose you might put it that way.”
“Well, that beats me. You’ll excuse me for stoppin’ you, but what I wanted to say was that your speech convinced me, though I knowed all the time it was the peskiest lie that was ever told. I made up my mind to vote your ticket, but I’d ’a’ been willin’ to bet a peck o’ red apples that no man could stand up and tell such blamed convincin’ lies without havin’ ’em writ out. You must ’a’ had an awful lot o’ practice.”
A lady living in Ohio is the mother of six boys. One day a friend called on her, and during the conversation said: “What a pity that one of your boys had not been a girl.” One of the boys, about eight years old, overheard the remark, and promptly interposed, “I’d like to know who’d ’a’ bin ’er. Ed wouldn’t ’a’ bin ’er, Joe wouldn’t ’a’ bin ’er, Pete wouldn’t ‘a’ bin ’er, I wouldn’t ’a’ bin ’er, blame ef I would, an’ I’d like to know who’d ’a’ bin ’er?”
Mrs. Hobbs was the parent of an infant terror and several half-grown terrors besides. One day at table she said, “Well, Mr. Hobbs, since you are so dissatisfied with the way I am bringing up our darling Willie, maybe you will condescend to inform me how you would bring up boys?”
“Certainly,” said Hobbs. “Every boy ought to be kept in a hogshead, and fed through the bung-hole until he is twelve years of age.”
“And when he reaches the age of twelve?”
“Stop up the bung-hole.”
A toll-gate was recently established on a road leading to Little Rock, Ark.; and an old negro who came along with an ox-team was much astonished. “Wall, ef dis doan cap de climax,” said he. “Ain satisfied wid chargin’ folks fur ridin’ on de train and steamboat, but wanster to charge him fur ridin’ in his own waggin!” “That’s the law of the corporation, old man.” “Wat’s de corporation got to do wid my waggin?” “Got nothing to do with your wagon, but they have a right to make you pay for riding over their road.” “Ain dis er a free country?” “Yes. But this is not a free road.” “But de road’s in the country. What does yer law say yer may charge?” “One horse, five cents; a horse and buggy, ten cents; two horses and a wagon, twenty cents.” “Well, dese here ain’t horses, ’case da’s steers. De law doan say nuthin’ about dem. Whoa, dar! Come ’ere!” And to the astonishment of the gate-keeper, the old fellow drove away.
Standing outside his club one afternoon Mr. Gilbert was approached by a stranger who asked, “I beg pardon, sir, but do you happen to know a gentleman, a member of this club, a man with one eye called ‘Matthews’?” “No, I don’t think I do,” replied Mr. Gilbert. Then after a pause he quickly added, “What’s the name of his other eye?”
The Confederate general, Stonewall Jackson, had been on one occasion most hospitably entertained in the house and by the family of an old Virginia friend. It was known at the time that some very important movement of the Confederate army was afoot, and just as the great general was about to take his departure from the house in which he had been so royally received, the host, eager with curiosity and presuming on old friendship, took the general aside, and begged him for some information as to the coming demonstrations. Passing his arm affectionately around his old friend General Jackson said in a whisper, “My dear friend, can you keep a secret?” “Yes—Yes!” was the eager reply. “And so can I,” was the response, as the general mounted his horse.
A preacher was much annoyed by the whispering and laughing of some young folks in the rear of the church. Stopping in the midst of his discourse and looking intently at them until all had become still, he said:
“I hesitate to reprove those who are inattentive and noisy. I will tell you why. Some years since, as I was preaching, a young man sat before me who was constantly laughing and making queer faces. It annoyed me very much, and I gave him a very severe rebuke. After the close of the services a gentleman said to one, ‘Sir, you made a great mistake; that young man is an idiot.’ Since that time I always hesitate to reprove those who misbehave in church, lest I should again find myself in the error of rebuking an idiot.” There was order during the rest of the service.
Lazily sauntering along on the gay boardwalk, enjoying the stiff salt breeze and paying due attention to the merry throng always passing up and down, my attention was called to a certain rolling chair whose occupant I thought I knew. Wasn’t that Barney Schmitt? Barney, you must know, keeps one of the very best cafés in existence, up in one of the most flourishing towns in Eastern Pennsylvania. I knew he had been suffering greatly from rheumatism for a year past, but had lost track of him recently and supposed him to be in the doctor’s hands at some Water Cure up in New York State—and here he was, fat and puffy, all covered up with a big steamer rug in a rolling chair. I stopped the chair and said, “Hello, Barney, that you?”
“Yes,” said he, “diss iss me. I vish to Himmel it wass somepody else.”
“Well, how are you? Better I hope?”
Barney shook his head with a rueful countenance. “No, I’m no petter. I’ve tried everything in all greation from a lemon to Gristian Ziance, undt it all does no good.”
“Christian Science? So you tried that, did you? How did it work?”
“Let me tell you,” said the suffering Barney with a smile that might have been mistaken for a wince. “You know I went up to der Wasser-Cure, up dere in New York. I had plasters undt pads all ofer my pody, undt walked mit a pair of grutches. De first evening I got dere, I wass settin’ in der parlor tryin’ hard to keep from hollerin’ mit der pain, undt a woman come up to me—one of dese here Gristian Ziance women, you know, a mighty purty, sweet-faced woman she wass, too—undt she says to me, says she:
“‘Vat iss der matter mit you, Mr. Schmitt?’ Undt I toldt her apoudt my rheumatism, undt den she says:
“‘Mr. Schmitt, dere iss nodings der matter mit you. You only think dere iss. It iss all in your mindt. It issn’t in your pody. Your pody can’t feel noding. It iss your mindt vat feels. Your rheumatism iss all in your mindt. All you have got to do iss to get your mindt changed, you see, undt you vill be all right.
“‘Now, Mr. Schmitt, I tell you vat to do undt you vill soon be vell. Ven you go to bed to-night, you make your mindt nice undt quiet like, fill your heart full mit good thoughts of peace undt joy; say a nice little prayer, undt go to sleep. Den, in de morning, ven you get avake, you compose your mindt mit peaceful thoughts, you say a nice little prayer to yourself, and you yusht say: “Mr. Schmitt! Dere iss nodings der matter mit you—you are vell undt shtrong!” Undt you jump out of de bed, undt dere you are!’”
“All right. I did all vat she said. I vent to bed. I said a nice leetle prayer, vat my mudder taught me, in der German language, undt I vent to sleep.
“In der morning I get awake. I haf very peaceful undt peautiful thoughts, undt I say to myself:
“‘Barney Schmitt, you are a tam fool. Dere iss nodings der matter mit you. You are all right.’
“Undt mit dot, I just jump out in der mittle of der floor, undt lit on my pack mit a mighty doonder-knock vat shook der vinders. I fell all in a heap, undt mine Himmel! didn’t I holler! Der bell poy, der hotel clerk, der doctor undt two nurses coom on der double quick, pick me up undt put me in der bed. Undt dere I vas for two weeks, all right. Dat’s vat I know about Gristian Ziance. Undt now here I am in Atlantic City in a rollin’ chair. Pray for me, colonel, for my prayers doesn’t seem to do me much goot!”
The late Dr. Talmage was once in the company of some theological students. They were fresh from the study of church history, and were laughing over the old question so much discussed by the schoolmen in the Middle Ages, “How many angels can stand on, or be supported by, the point of a needle?”
They put the question to Dr. Talmage, “How many angels can be supported by the point of a needle?” and Dr. Talmage promptly answered, “Five.” When they wanted to know how he knew, he told them the following story:
“One very stormy night I was coming home late, and noticed a light in the window of a room where I knew a poor woman lived whose husband was lost at sea. I wondered what kept her up so late and I thought I would go and see. I found her hard at work sewing at her lamp, while her five rosy children were sound asleep beside her. And that is how I happen to know that five angels can be supported by the point of a needle.”
The family had returned from church one Sunday, and as they had company to dinner, and dinner was a little later than usual, the six-year-old Robert was very hungry and could hardly wait any longer. He had been very much interested in the sermon, which was a very graphic account of the creation of woman. He had listened wide-eyed while the minister told how God had put Adam to sleep and had taken a rib out of his side and made it into a wife for the lonely man. But just now he was more interested in the dinner, especially in its conclusion, mince pie and cakes.
An hour later he was missed from the company, and being searched for was found sitting in a corner of another room, groaning softly, with his hands pressed against his side and an air of solemn anxiety on his face.
“Why, Robert, what in the world is the matter?” asked his mother in alarm.
“Mamma, dear,” said he, “I’m afraid I’m getting a wife.”
He opened the door cautiously, and poking his head in, in a suggestive sort of way, as if there might be more to follow later on provided the way was clear, inquired, “Is this the editorial rinktum?” “The—what, my friend?” “Is this the rinktum, sinktum, or some such place, where the editors live?” “Yes, sir. This is the editorial room. Come right in.” “No, I guess I won’t come in. Just wanted to see what a rinktum was like, that’s all. Looks like our garret, only wuss. Good day!”
It is related that two Presbyterians, two Baptists, two Universalists and an active Jew recently met and discussed theology together without quarreling in Boston. The reason they did not quarrel in Boston was because they were in New York.
Going home from a party late one night a man ran against the same tree seventeen times. He then concluded that he was lost in an interminable forest, and began to call out, “A lost man! A lost man!” But nobody responding to his pitiful call, he made one more effort to escape, and had the luck to run into the next tree, which chanced to be surrounded by iron rods for its protection. He caught hold of the rods and felt them. He walked round and round the tree trying in vain to find some opening to pass through, and at last gave it up in despair, saying, “Just my luck. In the lock-up again.”
A negro prayed that his brethren might be preserved from their “upsettin’ sins.” “Brudder,” said one of his friends, “you hain’t got de hang o’ dat ar word. It’s be-settin’, not upsettin’.” “Brudder,” replied the other, “if dat’s so, den it’s so. But—I was prayin’ de Lawd to save us from de sin o’ ’toxication, for dar dey jest set-em-up fust and den dey gits upset, an’ if dat ain’t an upsettin’ sin, I dunno what am.”
There are very few men who can handle a red-hot lamp-chimney and at the same time say, “There is no place like Home,” without getting—confused.
That was a truly human tombstone that bore the inscription, “I expected this, but not just yet.”
A youth was heard to remark to a jolly, fat Teutonian, “Haven’t I seen you before? Your face certainly looks familiar?” “Iss dot so?” answered Hans. “An’ ven you get so oldt as me, your face vill look fermiliar, too.”
A young lady complained to her male companion that she didn’t like arithmetic. She couldn’t understand it, and didn’t see the use of it. The young man said he would teach her. “Now,” said he, “I kiss you three times on one cheek and four times on the other. How many does that make?”
“Seven,” whispered the girl, disengaging herself to breathe more freely.
“Well,” said he, “that is Arithmetic.”
“Dear me,” said she, “I did not think it ever could be made such a very pleasant study.”
Artemus Ward records that he once went to the theatre, “Niblo’s Garding,” New York, to hear Edwin Forrest in Othello. “I sot down in the Pit,” says he, “took out my spectacles & commenced peroosin’ the evenin’s bill. The awjince was all-fired large & the Boxes was full of the Elitty of New York. Several opery glasses was leveld at me by Gothum’s fairest darters, but I didn’t let on as tho I noticed it, tho mebby I did take out my sixteen-dollar silver watch & brandish it round more than was necessary. But, the best of us has our weaknesses, and if a man has gewelry, let him show it.
“As I was peroosin’ the bill, a grave young man who sot near me axed me if I’d ever seen Forrest dance ‘The Essence of Old Virginny? He’s immense in that,’ said the young man. ‘He also does a fair champion jig,’ the young man continued, ‘but his Big Thing is the Essence of Old Virginny.’
“Sez I—‘Fair youth, do you know what I’d do with you, if you was my sun?’
“‘No,’ sez he.
“‘Wall,’ sez I, ‘if you was my sun, I’d appint your funeral for tomorrow arternoon, at two o’clock—and the Korps would be reddy. You’re too smart to live on this here yearth.’ That youth didn’t try any more of his doggone capers on me.”
“Teacher,” said a boy in a New York City school, “my sister’s got the measles.” “Well, then, my boy, you go home and you stay home till your sister has entirely got over them.” After the boy was gone, another boy raised his hand and said, “Teacher, that boy’s sister what’s got the measles lives in Omaha!”
The late Horace Leland, who for many years kept the Leland Hotel at Springfield, Ill., was an exceedingly generous man and an especial lover of children. One day he and Judge A. C. Matthews, then Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, and afterward the First Controller of the Treasury, were walking out together when they met a man with a cluster of toy balloons. School was just out and hundreds of boys and girls came pouring from a building near at hand and formed in groups around the balloon man.
“Hold on, Ace,” said Mr. Leland, “there’s a joyous sight,” and the two stopped and watched the children gaze longingly at the balloons.
“I can make some of them happy, anyway,” said Mr. Leland, and he asked the man the price of the balloons.
“Fi’ cent apiece.”
“How much for the lot?” asked the philanthropist.
The man counted them over. There were twenty-one.
“One dol’ for de lot.”
Mr. Leland took them all and distributed them among the children with as much fairness as possible, and away the little codgers ran with them.
Then Mr. Leland put his hand in his pocket and said:
“By George, Ace, I ain’t got a cent. Lend me a dollar.”
“Oh, no,” said Judge Matthews, seriously; “you can’t play philanthropist at my expense. Not much.”
“Well, my man,” said Mr. Leland, “I guess you’ll have to call at my hotel for your money.”
“No, sir,” said the man, “you give me my money or you give me back my balloons.”
“But don’t you see I can do neither? Come to the Leland House and ask for Mr. Leland, and I will pay you.”
“No, sir,” persisted the man, “you pay me my money or give me back my balloons. I haf seen dat hotel trick before.”
“Come, Ace,” said Mr. Leland, from the depth of his troubled soul, “give me a dollar.”
“Not a cent,” said the Judge. “I wouldn’t trust you with a dime.”
“See,” said the man, “your own friend no will trust you. You give me my money or I will call de policeman.”
Just then there happened along an old beggar woman who had lived upon the bounty of the good people of Springfield for many a year. She stopped and heard enough of the conversation to know what it was about.
“Hould on, Misther Layland,” said she, “if yer foine frind there won’t lave ye the loan av a dollar, begorra O’im the frind that will,” and as she lectured Judge Matthews for the “stingiest ould thing out o’ jail,” she unrolled the money from a dirty rag and gave it to the philanthropist.
Judge Matthews says he never tried to play just that kind of a joke on Horace Leland again.
The town of M—— in Pennsylvania had just elected a new Justice of the Peace. He was, of course, a Pennsylvania German, and the first cause that came before him for adjudication was a peculiar one. A man had attempted to shoot another man in the street of the business part of the town, but the man that was shot at dodged, and the bullet smashed a plate-glass window in a store. The owner of the store sued the man with the gun for damages, but the Justice, after hearing the evidence, decided that the man that was shot at and dodged the bullet must pay, “because,” said he, “don’t you see, if that man hadn’t dodged, the window wouldn’t have been broken.”
Two Irishmen who had just landed were eating their dinner in a hotel, when Pat spied a bottle of horseradish. Not knowing what it was he took a mouthful, which brought tears to his eyes.
Mike, seeing Pat crying, exclaimed, “Phat be ye cryin’ fer?”
Pat, wishing to have Mike sample the hot stuff also, replied, “Oim cryin’ fer me poor ould mither who’s dead away over in ould Ireland.”
By and by Mike took some of the radish, and immediately tears filled his eyes. “An’ phat be you cryin’ fer, now?” queried Pat. “Ach,” says Mike, “I’m cryin’ because you didn’t die at the same time your ould mither did in ould Ireland.”
He was a very decided English type, and as he stopped an Irishman and asked for a light he volunteered to say:
“Excuse me, my man, for stopping you as an entire stranger. But at home I’m a person of some importance. I’m Sir James B——, Knight of the Garter, Knight of the Double Eagle, Knight of the Golden Fleece, Knight of the Iron Cross. And your name is—what, my man?”
“My name,” was the ready reply, “is Michael Murphy. Night before last, last night, to-night an’ every night, Michael Murphy.”
When Thackeray, the great English novelist, visited this country, his literary friends in Boston gave a banquet in his honor. The committee of arrangements, learning that Mr. Thackeray had made some comments on the general tendency of Americans to magnify things, thought they would give their distinguished guest a demonstration of the greatness of the American oyster, at least, the more so as the oyster does not attain a great size in the British Isles. They accordingly ransacked the market for the very largest bivalves that could be found, and a half dozen of these were placed at Thackeray’s plate. The gentleman next to him apologized for the small size of the oysters, but Thackeray looked at them in amazement, and asked, “What am I to do with them?” “Swallow them, of course,” was the answer. “Well,” said he, taking a huge one on his fork, “here goes.” He gave a gulp and down it went. “How do you feel on it?” asked his friend. “Feel?” said he—“I feel as if I had swallowed a baby!”
Three men were talking in rather a large way of the excellent train-service each had in his special locality. One was from the West, one from New England and one from New York. The former two men had told their tales, and it was New York’s turn.
“Now in New York,” said he, “we not only run trains fast, but we start them fast, too, very fast. I recall the case of a friend of mine whose wife went to the station at Jersey City to see him off for the West. As the train was about to start, my friend said his final good-bye to his wife and leaned down from the car platform to kiss her. The train started, and started with such a rush that, would you believe it, my friend found himself kissing a strange woman on the platform at Trenton!”
At a dinner one day some gentlemen were discussing the merits of different species of game. One preferred canvasback duck, another woodcock, another quail. The dinner and the discussion ended, one of the men said to the waiter, who was a good listener, “Well, Frank, what kind of game do you like best?”
“Well, gemmen, to tell you de trufe,” said he, “‘mos any kind o’ game ’ll suit me, but what I likes best is an American Eagle served on a silvah dollah!”
In the early days of railroading in this country, an elderly gentleman was asked by the conductor for his ticket. The train had stopped at every little station, town and hamlet on the way, and was two hours late. “Your ticket, please,” said the conductor. The man fumbled a great while in his vest pocket and finally presented a half-fare cardboard.
“Come,” said the conductor, “this won’t do, not for a man with hair as gray as yours, any way—this is a child’s ticket.”
“Well,” responded the weary traveller, “I was a child when this train started, and I guess I’ll be as old as Methusaleh by the time it gets me to where I want to go.”
A schoolboy one day picked up a piece of poetry at school and carried it home and gave it to his grandmother to read. When she had read it she said:
“Kit, you ought never repeat that, because that is just the same as telling people to go to the bad place.” The poetry was as follows:
The chaplain of a large private asylum asked a brother clergyman to preach to the inmates on a Sunday during his absence. Before going away, he said: “Preach your best, for, though insane on some points, they are very intelligent.” So he talked to them of India, and of heathen mothers who threw their dear little babies into the sacred river Ganges as offerings to their false gods. Tears streamed down the face of one listener, evidently deeply affected. When asked by the preacher afterward what part of the sermon had touched his heart with grief, the lunatic replied: “I was thinking it was a pity your mother didn’t throw you into the Ganges.”
The poet of the Pine Tree State is said to have shown decided poetic proclivities from his earliest days. When a boy of eight or nine, he had two kittens which he had named Myrtle and Ann Eliza. Myrtle died. He buried her in the orchard and planted a shingle headstone on the grave, on which his smiling parents read:
In a short time Ann Eliza passed from this earthly scene of caterwauling, and was buried beside Myrtle, with a shingle headstone duly erected and inscribed. His parents, wondering what would be the epitaph, were delighted to read:
Two lovers were taking a walk along a country road. The day was fine, the sun was shining and a good breeze was blowing across the hills and fields. The young man was of an idealistic temperament and of good poetic taste, but the young lady was quite matter-of-fact and altogether practical, their differing dispositions being illustrated by their conversation by the way. They had paused in their walk and sat down to rest a while under the outspreading branches of an apple-tree laden with green fruit.
“Ah, my dear,” said he as he looked around, “how grand and glorious all this is—the bright day, the glorious sunlight, the wind blowing fresh and full, and the limbs of this grand old tree moaning a sweet and tuneful melody in response to it all——“
“Yes,” interrupted she, “I guess you’d be groaning, too, if you were as full of green apples as that old apple-tree is!”
A man who had been playing the part of the Lamb in the Great Wall Street Theatre, was complaining that he had invested a large sum of money in that institution and had lost every cent of it. A sympathizing friend asked him whether he had been a Bull or a Bear, and the Lamb replied, “Neither. I was a Jackass!”
The minister was a very genial man and a very witty man. He had great difficulty in getting his salary promptly. Of late it was much in arrears, and he did not know what to do. One day he entered the hardware store kept by his leading deacon, and asked to look at corkscrews. He looked over the assortment very carefully, saying that he wanted quite a large one, one that was very strong, too. And when the deacon asked him what he wanted with a corkscrew, the minister replied, “I want it to draw my salary with.” He got it.
A negro exhorter shouted to his audience, “Come up an’ jine de army ob de Lord!”
“I’se done jined,” replied one woman.
“Whar’d yo’ jine?” asked the exhorter.
“In de Baptis’ Church.”
“Why, chile,” said the exhorter, “yo’ ain’t in de army ob de Lord; yo’s in de navy.”
When Dr. Theodore L. Cuyler once put the question, “What is the chief end of man?” to a gathering of Sunday-school scholars, he received for an answer, “To glorify God and annoy Him forever.” Another minister relates that he once asked this famous question of a very much neglected boy, “What is the chief end of man?” and the boy promptly replied, “Why, I guess the end that has the hat on!”
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes was once invited by a lady friend to a social afternoon tea. The hostess had invited and had present the cream of her acquaintance and expected some expression of admiration from the great man. As he was taking his leave, the lady said to him, “Well, Doctor, what is your opinion of an afternoon tea?” And the witty but cruel man replied, “My dear friend, it is all giggle—gabble—gobble—and git!”
Davies Herkimer, the noted political economist, said of modern politics in an address on reform that he recently delivered:
“Modern politics are entirely too tricky. The average candidate when he enters the political struggle lets plain dealing go by the board. What, then, is the result? The result is something altogether worthless, something that reminds me of a Western clergyman.
“This clergyman was very fond of cider. His congregation, meeting secretly last autumn, decided that it would surprise him with a hogshead of the beverage he loved and arranged to hold a surprise party at the manse, each guest to bring a demijohn of cider and to empty it into a huge hogshead in the garden. The party duly came off. The guests brought their demijohns, emptied them into the hogshead and feasted afterward in the manse on apples, nuts and gingerbread.
“At the height of the feasting the clergyman host was told of the full hogshead that stood without the door, and, overjoyed, the good man said to his servant:
“‘Jane, take a pitcher, fill it at the hogshead, and bring it in that we may sample it.’
“The maid withdrew into the darkness and soon returned with a pitcher brimming with—clear water!
“Each tricky guest had filled his demijohn at the pump, thinking that amid so much cider his aqueous contribution would escape unnoticed. But this trickery, like the trickery of modern politics, had been a little too unanimous.”
It was a Pennsylvania German farmer’s wife who having baked a large number of very fine pies, some mince and some apple, marked the crust of each with two letters—T. M. Being asked by a neighbor what these letters stood for, she said:
“Vy, T. M. on this pie means ‘’Tis mince,’ and on that pie it means ‘’Tain’t mince.”
A lawyer advertised for a clerk. The next morning the office was crowded with applicants—all bright and many suitable. He bade them wait until all should arrive and then arranged them all in a row and said he would tell them a story, note their comments and judge from that whom he would choose.
“A certain farmer,” began the lawyer, “was troubled with a red squirrel that got in through a hole in his barn and stole his seed corn. He resolved to kill the squirrel at the first opportunity. Seeing him go in at the hole one noon he took his shotgun and fired away. The first shot set the barn on fire.”
“Did the barn burn?” said one of the boys.
The lawyer, without answer, continued:
“And seeing the barn on fire the farmer seized a pail of water and ran to put it out.”
“Did he put it out?” said another.
“As he passed inside the door shut to and the barn was soon in flames. When the hired girl rushed out with more water——“
“Did they all burn up?” said another boy.
The lawyer went on without answer: “Then the old lady came out, and all was noise and confusion and everybody was trying to put out the fire.”
“Did any one burn up?” said another.
The lawyer said: “There, that will do; you have all shown great interest in the story.”
But observing one little bright-eyed fellow in deep silence, he said: “Now, my little man, what have you to say?”
The little fellow blushed, grew uneasy and stammered out: “I want to know what became of that squirrel; that’s what I want to know.”
“You’ll do,” said the lawyer; “you are my man; you have not been switched off by a confusion and barn burning, and the hired girls and water pails. You have kept your eye on the squirrel.”
“Charley,” remarked Jones, “you were born to be a writer.” “Ha!” replied Charley, flushing at the compliment, “you have seen some of the things I have turned off?” “No,” said Jones, “I wasn’t referring to what you have written. I was simply thinking what a splendid ear you have for carrying a pen. Immense, Charley, simply immense!”
When some one was complaining of insomnia, an Irishman recommended a sure cure for it. “Go to bed,” said he, “an’ schlape it off!”
Said an Englishman to an American tourist, as he drew out of his pocket an old English silver coin, “Do you see the image on that coin? That’s the picture of the old English king that made my great grandfather a Duke.”
“Pooh!” said the Yankee. “That’s nothin’. Here, do you see this United States coin? We call it a cent. And you will observe the picture of an Indian on the cent. Well, sir, that’s the picture of the Indian that made my grandfather an Angel!”
In driving out into the country on a by-road a few days ago, a lawyer encountered a horse and buggy driven by a woman. As she was driving on the wrong side of the road, he made up his mind not to give up his rights. As a consequence, the two horses finally came to a standstill, with their noses rubbing each other. The lawyer stared at the woman and the woman stared back. Then he pulled a newspaper from his pocket, and began reading. In a minute, she had her knitting out and was industriously at work. Ten long minutes in a broiling sun passed away, and the lawyer looked up and asked: “How long are you going to stay here?” “How long are you?” “All day.” “And I’ll stay here a whole week.” He read and she knit for about ten minutes, and then the lawyer cried out: “Do you know that I’m a lawyer?” “I don’t care for that,” she replied; “I’m the wife of a Justice of the Peace.” “Oh—ah—excuse me, madam. Really, but if I’d known you belonged to the purfesh, this would not have happened. Take this side, madam, take the whole road!”
Deacon Broadbent, an honest and pious man, was conducting a Christmas revival with great success. In a word, his powerful exhortations had brought Calhoun White, the town’s worst sinner, weeping to the mourner’s bench.
The deacon, gratified by this proof of his evangelical prowess, hastened to Calhoun’s side.
“Deacon,” sobbed Calhoun, “‘tain’t no use in mah comin’ up. I’se sinned away de day o’ grace.”
“No, you hain’t, brudder Cal,” said the deacon. “All yo’ got to do is to gib up sin an’ all will be forgibben.”
“I’se done gib it up, deacon, but dar hain’t no salvation fo’ me.”
“Yes, dey is, honey. Dey hain’t no sin so black but it kin be washed whiter’n de snow.”
“But I don stole fo’ young turkeys last week,” said the penitent.
“Dat’s all forgibben, Cal.”
“An’ free de week befo’.”
“Dat’s forgibben, too.”
“An’ six fat Christmas geese——“
“—— six fat Christmas geese outer yore own yard, deacon—dem fat geese wot yo’ ’lowed to set so much store by.”
“Wot’s dat yo’ say?” the deacon hissed furiously.
“It wuz me wot stole yo’ Christmas geese, sah.”
“I reckon, Calhoun,” he said slowly, “I reckon I’se spoke too hasty. Dis case o’ yourn needs advisement. I ain’t sho’ dat we’s justified in clutterin’ up de Kingdom o’ Heben wid chicken thieves.”
One day a village parson was summoned in haste by Mrs. Johnson, who had been taken seriously ill. He went in some wonder at the summons, because the woman was not of his parish, and was known to be devoted to her own minister, the Rev. Mr. Hopkins.
While he was waiting in the parlor before seeing the sick woman, he passed the time talking with her daughter.
“I am very pleased your mother thought of me in her illness,” he said. “Is Mr. Hopkins away?”
“Oh, dear no,” she replied, “but we are afraid mother has something contagious, like small-pox, and we couldn’t think of letting dear Mr. Hopkins run any risk!”
“If yu trade horses with a jockey, you kan’t git cheated but once. But—if yu trade with a deakon yu may git cheated twice—once in the horse, and once in the deakon” ... “Go in when it rains.”
Josh Billings
“Now, my man,” said the minister to the happy bridegroom after the marriage ceremony, “you have come to the end of all your troubles.” The man came back to the minister a week later and said: “You told me I had come to the end of all my troubles when I got married, and I find they are just beginning.” “Ah, my dear brother,” was the response, “all troubles have two ends, and I didn’t say which end, did I?”
It is related that once upon a time the President paid an important visit to an Indian reservation in the Far and Distant West. In honor of the great occasion the great chiefs of the tribe were all gathered together, arrayed in their best bib and tucker, all war-paint and feathers, and sat cross-legged in a great circle listening to the words of wisdom from the Great Father.
“Noble Red Men of the Forest,” began the President, “Primeval and Original Proprietors of the Soil of the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave! I am delighted to see you!”
And all the Indians round the circle exclaimed: “Walla Walla!” This evidently being Indian for “Hear! Hear!”
“You have indeed been greatly wronged,” continued the speaker, “and I take your wrongs to my own heart, and I shall take immediate measures for their redress, and shall demand that hereafter justice shall be done to the noble Red Men, the Original Proprietors of the Free Soil of America.”
And the Indians again shouted approval, “Walla Walla!”
“Aye,” he continued, “on my return to Washington I shall personally see to it that your wrongs are righted, and shall direct that the Indian Appropriation be greatly increased, so that you may spend your lives in comfort and plenty.”
Again in deep and guttural tones the Indians applauded, “Walla Walla!”
After it was all over, the President expressed his delight at the hearty interest and evident appreciation of his warlike auditors, being particularly impressed with the fact that they had so well understood his remarks, as was sufficiently manifest by the fact that they applauded every time just at the right place. And then the Interpreter asked him whether he knew what Walla Walla meant? And he not knowing the meaning thereof, the cruel Interpreter disillusioned him by telling him that Walla Walla was Indian for “Hot Air!”
A gentleman who spent part of a summer recently in England relates an incident which very sadly disturbed the religious peace of a parish in Penzance.
A gentleman, his wife and his mother-in-law lived together. They had a parrot. And the parrot had somehow and somewhere—they could not imagine how or where—picked up the very disagreeable habit of remarking at frequent intervals:
“Wisht the old woman were dead. Wisht the old woman were dead.” This annoyed the good people of the house very much, and they at last ventured to speak to the curate about it.
“I think we can rectify the matter,” replied the good man. “I also have a parrot, and he is a very righteous bird, having been brought up in the way he should go. I will lend you my parrot, and I trust his good influence will soon reform that depraved bird of yours.”
The curate’s parrot was placed in the same room with the wicked one, and as soon as the two had become accustomed to each other, the bad bird remarked:
“Wisht the old woman were dead.”
Whereupon the clergyman’s bird rolled up his eyes, and in solemn accents responded:
“We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord.”
The story got out in the parish, and for several Sundays it was thought expedient to omit the Litany at the church services.
Dr. Jowett was a warm friend of University extension. When the question came up at Oxford of entertaining the students during the summer, he found the Dons very much opposed to giving up even temporarily their quarters, claiming their vested rights even in vacation. The Master, however, controlled the buttery, and also the chapel exercises. He accordingly cut down the commissariat and lengthened out the prayers, until the Dons yielded and quietly moved out. As a party of them, portmanteaus in hand, were walking to the railway station one day, he chuckled to a friend, “This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.”
Barnum, the great showman, once upon a time lit upon a very happy expedient to get a great company of people to move on. They were packed together in the great tent, and every one of them was anxious to see all that was to be seen, and determined not to miss anything. It was necessary to clear the room, but the crowd couldn’t be shoved and wouldn’t go out. At the direction of the great showman a man appeared with a brush and a kettle of red paint. He painted just one word, in big letters, on a door leading out into a side street. The word was EGRESS. “Come on,” said the crowd, “let’s go in and see The Egress.” They went in, and they went out, and they saw
THE EGRESS
