The visiting Englishman, with an eyeglass screwed to his eye, stared in fascinated horror at the ugliest infant he had ever seen, which was in its mother's arms opposite him in the street car. At last, his fixed gaze attracted the mother's attention, then excited her indignation.
"Rubber!" she piped wrathfully.
"Thank God!" exclaimed the Englishman. "I fancied it might be real."
* * *
The teacher had explained to the class that the Indian women are called squaws. Then she asked what name was given to the children?
"Porpoises," came one eager answer.
But a little girl whose father bred pigeons, called excitedly:
"Please, teacher, they're squabs!"
A gentleman strolling alongside a canal observed an old negro and a colored boy fishing. A moment later, a splash was heard. The boy had fallen into the water. The old darky, however, jumped in after the lad, and succeeded in getting him safely to the bank. There he stood the victim on his head to let the water drain out, and it was at this moment that the gentleman arrived on the scene with profuse expressions of admiration for the prompt rescue.
"It was noble of you," the gentleman declared rather rhetorically, "to plunge into the water in that way at the risk of your life to save the boy. I congratulate you on your brave display of heroic magnanimity."
The old colored man answered with an amiable grin:
"All right, boss. Ah doan know nuffin' 'bout magn'imity. But Ah jess had to git dat boy out de water. He had de bait in his pocket."
A patient complained to the doctor that his hair was coming out.
"Won't you give me something to keep it in?" he begged.
"Take this," the doctor said kindly, and he handed the patient a pill box.
On the way to the baptism, the baby somehow loosened the stopper of his bottle, with the result that the milk made a frightful mess over the christening robe. The mother was greatly shamed, but she was compelled to hand over the child in its mussed garments to the clergyman at the font.
"What name?" the clergyman whispered.
The agitated mother failed to understand, and thought that he complained of the baby's condition. So she offered explanation in the words:
"Nozzle come off—nozzle come off!"
The clergyman, puzzled, repeated his whisper:
"What name?"
"Nozzle come off—nozzle come off!" The woman insisted, almost in tears.
The clergyman gave it up, and continued the rite:
"Nozzlecomeoff Smithers, I baptize thee in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost."
* * *
The aged negro clergyman announced solemnly from the pulpit:
"Next Sabbath, dar will be a baptism in dis chu'ch, at half-pas' ten in de mawnin'. Dis baptism will be of two adults an' six adulteresses."
The old colored man left the Methodist Church and joined the Baptist. Soon afterward, he encountered his former pastor, who inquired the reason for his change of sect. The old man explained fully.
"Fust off, I was 'Piscopal, but I hain't learned, an' they done say the service so fast, I nebber could keep up, an' when I come out behin', dey all look, an' I'se 'shamed. So I jined the Methodis'. Very fine church, yes, suh. But dey done has 'Quiry meetin's. An', suh, us cullud folkses can't bear too much 'quirin' into. An' a man says to me, 'Why don't you jine de Baptis'? De Baptis', it's jest dip an' be done wid it! 'An' so I jined."
The teacher directed the class to write a brief account of a baseball game. All the pupils were busy during the allotted time, except one little boy, who sat motionless, and wrote never a word. The teacher gave him an additional five minutes, calling them off one by one. The fifth minute had almost elapsed when the youngster awoke to life, and scrawled a sentence. It ran thus:
"Rain—no game."
Teacher: "In which of his battles was King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden slain?"
Pupil: "I'm pretty sure it was the last one."
The old trapper was chased by a grizzly. When he had thrown away everything he carried, and found, nevertheless, that the bear was gaining rapidly, he determined to make a stand. As he came into a small clearing, he faced about with his back to a stump, and got out and opened his clasp-knife. The bear halted a rod away, and sat on its haunches, surveying its victim gloatingly. The trapper, though not usually given to praying, now improved the interval to offer a petition.
"O God," he said aloud, with his eyes on the bear, "if you're on my side, let my knife git 'im quick in 'is vitals, an' if you're on 'is side, let 'im finish me fust off. But, O God, if you're nootral, you jist sit thar on that stump, an' you'll see the darndest bear fight you ever hearn tell on!"
* * *
The guide introduced a tourist in the Rocky Mountains to an old hunter who was reputed to have slain some hundreds of bears.
"This feller," the guide explained to the hunter, "would like to hear about some of the narrer escapes you've had from bears."
The old mountaineer regarded the tourist with a disapproving stare.
"Young man," he said, "if there's been any narrer escapes, the bears had 'em."
The father of a school boy in New York City wrote to the boy's teacher a letter of complaint. Possibly he welcomed the advent of prohibition—possibly not! Anyhow, the letter was as follows:
"Sir: Will you please for the future give my boy some eesier somes to do at nites. This is what he brought home to me three nites ago. If fore gallins of bere will fill thirty to pint bottles, how many pint and half bottles will nine gallins fill? Well, we tried and could make nothing of it all, and my boy cried and said he wouldn't go back to school without doing it. So, I had to go and buy a nine gallin' keg of bere, which I could ill afford to do, and then we went and borrowed a lot of wine and brandy bottles, beside a few we had by us. Well we emptied the keg into the bottles, and there was nineteen, and my boy put that down for an answer. I don't know whether it is rite or not, as we spilt some in doing it.
P.S.—Please let the next one be water as I am not able to buy any more bere."
* * *
The new soda clerk was a mystery, until he himself revealed his shameful past quite unconsciously by the question he put to the girl who had just asked for an egg-shake.
"Light or dark?" he asked mechanically.
The cultured maid servant announced to her mistress, wife of the profiteer:
"If you please, ma'am, there's a mendicant at the door."
The mistress sniffed contemptuously:
"Tell 'im there's nothin' to mend."
A woman visitor to the city entered a taxicab. No sooner was the door closed than the car leaped forward violently, and afterward went racing wildly along the street, narrowly missing collision with innumerable things. The passenger, naturally enough, was terrified. She thrust her head through the open window of the door, and shouted at the chauffeur:
"Please, be careful, sir! I'm nervous. This is the first time I ever rode in a taxi."
The driver yelled in reply, without turning his head:
"That's all right, ma'am. It's the first time I ever drove one!"
The cook, Nora, had announced her engagement to a frequenter at the kitchen, named Mike. But a year passed and nothing was heard of the nuptials. So, one day, the mistress inquired:
"When are you to be married, Nora?"
"Indade, an' it's niver at all, I'll be thinkin', mum," the cook answered sadly.
"Really? Why, what is the trouble?"
The reply was explicit:
"'Tis this, mum. I won't marry Mike when he's drunk, an' he won't marry me when he's sober."
* * *
The delinquent laggard swain had been telling of his ability as a presiding officer. The girl questioned him:
"What is the parliamentary phrase when you wish to call for a vote?"
The answer was given with proud certainty:
"Are you ready for the question?"
"Yes, dearest," the girl confessed shyly. "Go ahead."
What is the penalty for bigamy?
Two mothers-in-law.
* * *
The man was weak and naturally unlucky, and so he got married three times inside of a year. He was convicted and sentenced for four years. He seemed greatly relieved. As the expiration of his term grew near, he wrote from the penitentiary to his lawyer, with the plaintive query:
"Will it be safe for me to come out?"
The little girl in the zoölogical park tossed bits of a bun to the stork, which gobbled them greedily, and bobbed its head toward her for more.
"What kind of a bird is it, mamma?" the child asked.
The mother read the placard, and answered that it was a stork.
"O-o-o-h!" the little girl cried, as her eyes rounded. "Of course, it recognized me!"
The philosopher, on being interrupted in his thoughts by the violent cackling of a hen that had just laid an egg, was led to express his appreciation of a kind Providence by which a fish while laying a million eggs to a hen's one, does so in a perfectly quiet and ladylike manner.
A shopkeeper with no conscience put by his door a box with a slit in the cover and a label reading, "For the Blind." A month later, the box disappeared. When some one inquired concerning it, the shopkeeper chuckled, and pointed to the window.
"I collected enough," he explained. "There's the new blind."
The sympathetic and inquisitive old lady at the seashore was delighted and thrilled by an old sailor's narrative of how he was washed overboard during a gale and was only rescued after having sunk for the third time.
"And, of course," she commented brightly, "after you sank the third time, your whole past life passed before your eyes."
"I presoom as how it did, mum," the sailor agreed. "But bein' as I had my eyes shut, I missed it."
The recruit complained to the sergeant that he'd got a splinter in his finger.
"Ye should have more sinse," was the harsh comment, "than to scratch your head."
The crowd in the car was packed suffocatingly close. The timid passenger thought of pickpockets, and thrust his hand into his pocket protectingly. He was startled to encounter the fist of a fat fellow-passenger.
"I caught you that time!" the fat man hissed.
"Thief yourself!" snorted the timid passenger. "Leggo!"
"Scoundrel!" shouted the fat man.
"Help! Stop thief!" the little fellow spluttered, trying to wrench his hand from the other's clasp. As the car halted, the tall man next the two disputants spoke sharply:
"I want to get off here, if you dubs will be good enough to take your hands out of my pocket."
* * *
During the Civil War, an old negro was deeply interested in the conflict, but showed no sign of wishing to take part in it. A white man questioned him one day:
"The men of the North and South are killing one another on your account. Why don't you pitch in and fight yourself?"
"Has you-all ever seen two dogs fightin' over a bone?" the negro demanded.
"Many times, of course," was the answer.
The old negro chuckled as he said:
"Did you ever see de bone fight?"
"Well!—no!"
"Dat's all! I'se de bone."
The Southern Colonel at Saratoga Springs, in the days before prohibition, directed the colored waiter at his table in the hotel:
"You-all kin bring me a Kentucky breakfast."
"An' what is that, sir?" the waiter inquired doubtfully.
The Colonel explained:
"Bring me a big steak, a bulldog and a quart of Bourbon whiskey."
"But why do you order a bulldog?" asked the puzzled waiter.
"To eat the steak, suh!" snapped the Colonel.
The best illustration of the value of brief speech reckoned in dollars was given by Mark Twain. His story was that when he had listened for five minutes to the preacher telling of the heathen, he wept, and was going to contribute fifty dollars, after ten minutes more of the sermon, he reduced the amount of his prospective contribution to twenty-five dollars, after half an hour more of eloquence, he cut the sum to five dollars. At the end of an hour of oratory when the plate was passed, he stole two dollars.
A thriving baseball club is one of the features of a boy's organization connected with a prominent church. The team was recently challenged by a rival club. The pastor gave a special contribution of five dollars to the captain, with the direction that the money should be used to buy bats, balls, gloves, or anything else that might help to win the game. On the day of the game, the pastor was somewhat surprised to observe nothing new in the club's paraphernalia. He called the captain to him.
"I don't see any new bats, or balls, or gloves," he said.
"We haven't anything like that," the captain admitted.
"But I gave you five dollars to buy them," the pastor exclaimed.
"Well, you see," came the explanation, "you told us to spend it for bats, or balls, or gloves, or anything that we thought might help to win the game, so we gave it to the umpire."
Two ladies in a car disputed concerning the window, and at last called the conductor as referee.
"If this window is open," one declared, "I shall catch cold, and will probably die."
"If the window is shut," the other announced, "I shall certainly suffocate." The two glared at each other.
The conductor was at a loss, but he welcomed the words of a man with a red nose who sat near. These were:
"First, open the window, conductor. That will kill one. Next, shut it. That will kill the other. Then we can have peace."
A young couple that had received many valuable wedding presents established their home in a suburb. One morning they received in the mail two tickets for a popular show in the city, with a single line:
"Guess who sent them."
The pair had much amusement in trying to identify the donor, but failed in the effort. They duly attended the theatre, and had a delightful time. On their return home late at night, still trying to guess the identity of the unknown host, they found the house stripped of every article of value. And on the bare table in the dining-room was a piece of paper on which was written in the same hand as the enclosure with the tickets:
"Now you know!"
