Josh Billings said:
"Laff every time yu pheel tickled—and laff once in a while enny how."
The lawyer explained to the client his scale of prices:
"I charge five dollars for advising you as to just what the law permits you to do. For giving you advice as to the way you can safely do what the law forbids, my minimum fee is one hundred dollars."
There was a town jail, and there was a county jail. The fact was worth forty dollars to the lawyer who was approached by an old darky in behalf of a son languishing in duress. The lawyer surveyed the tattered client as he listened, and decided that he would be lucky to obtain a ten-dollar fee. He named that amount as necessary to secure the prisoner's release. Thereupon, the old colored man drew forth a large roll of bills, and peeled off a ten. The lawyer's greedy eyes popped.
"What jail is your son in?" he inquired craftily.
"In the county jail."
"In the county jail!" was the exclamation in a tone of dismay. "That's bad—very bad. It will cost you at least fifty dollars."
* * *
Some physicians direct their patients to lie always on the right side, declaring that it is injurious to the health to lie on both sides. Yet, lawyers as a class enjoy good health.
"What did you do last night?"
"I went to a slight-of-hand performance. Called on Laura Sears, and offered her my hand, and she slighted it."
LENT
"Did you give up anything during Lent?" one man asked another.
"Yes," was the reply, uttered with a heavy sigh. "I gave up fifty dollars for a new Easter bonnet."
The World War has incited veterans of the Civil War to new reminiscences of old happenings. One of these is based on the fact that furloughs were especially difficult to obtain when the Union army was in front of Petersburg, Virginia. But a certain Irishman was resolved to get a furlough in spite of the ban. He went to the colonel's tent, and was permitted to enter. He saluted, and delivered himself thus:
"Colonel, I've come to ax you to allow me the pleasure of a furlough for a visit home. I've been in the field now three years, an' never home yet to see me family. An' I jest had a letter from me wife wantin' av me to come home to see her an' the children."
The colonel shook his head decisively.
"No, Mike," he replied. "I'm sorry, but to tell the truth, I don't think you ought to go home. I've jest had a letter from your wife myself. She doesn't want you to come home. She writes me that you'd only get drunk, and disgrace her and the children. So you'd better stay right here until your term of service expires."
"All right, sir," Mike answered, quite cheerfully. He saluted and went to the door of the tent. Then he faced about.
"Colonel dear," he inquired in a wheedling voice, "would ye be after pardonin' me for a brief remark jist at this toime?"
"Yes, certainly," the officer assented.
"Ye won't git mad an' put me in the guard house for freein' me mind, so to spake?"
"No, indeed! Say what you wish to."
"Well, thin, Colonel darlint, I'm afther thinkin' thar are at the prisint moment in this tint two of the biggest liars in all the Army of the Potomic, an' sure I'm one av thim—I have no wife."
A certain famous preacher when preaching one Sunday in the summer time observed that many among the congregation ware drowsing. Suddenly, then, he paused, and afterward continued in a loud voice, relating an incident that had no connection whatever with his sermon. This was to the following effect:
"I was once riding along a country road. I came to the house of a farmer, and halted to observe one of the most remarkable sights I have ever seen. There was a sow with a litter of ten little pigs. This sow and each of her offspring had a long curved horn growing out of the forehead between the ears."
The clergyman again paused, and ran his eye over the congregation. Everybody was now wide-awake. He thereupon remarked:
"Behold how strange! A few minutes since, when I was telling you the truth, you went to sleep. But now when you have heard a whopping lie, you are all wide-awake."
The woman was strong-minded, and she was religious, and she was also afflicted with a very feminine fear of thunder storms. She was delivering an address at a religious convention when a tempest suddenly broke with din of thunder and flare of lightning. Above the noise of the elements, her voice was heard in shrill supplication:
"O Lord, take us under Thy protecting wings, for Thou knowest that feathers are splendid non-conductors."
The kindergarten teacher questioned her tiny pupil:
"Do you know, Jennie, what a panther is?"
"Yeth, ma'am," Jennie replied, beaming. "A panther ith a man who makes panth."
The class had been told by the teacher to write compositions in which they must not attempt any flights of fancy, but should only state what was really in them. The star production from this command was a composition written by a boy who was both sincere and painstaking. It ran as follows:
"I shall not attempt any flites of fancy, but wright just what is really in me. In me there is my stommick, lungs, liver, two apples, two cakes and my dinner."
The visitor from the city stopped in at the general store of the village, and inquired:
"Have you anything in the shape of automobile tires?"
"Yep," the store-keeper answered briskly, "life-preservers, invalid cushions, funeral wreaths, doughnuts, an' sich."
The mother came on her little son who was standing thoughtfully before the gooseberry bush in the garden. She noted that his expression was both puzzled and distressed.
"Why, what's the matter, little lamb?" she asked tenderly.
"I'm finkin, muvver," the boy answered.
"What about, little man?"
"Have gooseberries any legs, muvver?"
"Why, no! Of course not, dear."
The perplexity passed from the little boy's face, but the expression of trouble deepened, as he spoke again:
"Then, muvver, I fink I've swallowed a catapillar."
The two old Scotchmen played a round of seventeen holes without a word exchanged between them. As they came to the eighteenth green, Sandy surveyed the lie, and muttered:
"Dormie."
Quoth Tammas, with a snarl:
"Chatter-r-rbox!"
The philosopher calmly defined the exact difference between life and love:
"Life is just one fool thing after another: love is just two fool things after each other."
The little girl came in tears to her mother.
"God doesn't love me," she sobbed.
"Of course, God loves you," the mother declared. "How did you ever come to get such an idea?"
"No," the child persisted, "He doesn't love me. I know—I tried Him with a daisy."
The pessimist quoted from his own experience at poker in illustration of the general cussedness of things:
"Frequent, I have sot in a poker game, and it sure is queer how things will turn out. I've sot hour after hour in them games, without ever takin' a pot. And then, 'long about four o'clock in the mornin', the luck'd turn—it'd take a turn for the worse."
* * *
"How did you find your steak?" asked the waiter of a patron in the very expensive restaurant.
"Just luck," the hungry man replied, sadly. "I happened to move that small piece of potato, and there it was!"
* * *
The new reporter wrote his concluding paragraph concerning the murder as follows:
"Fortunately for the deceased, he had deposited all of his money in the bank the day before. He lost practically nothing but his life."
* * *
The editor of the country paper went home to supper, smiling radiantly.
"Have you had some good luck?" his wife questioned.
"Luck! I should say so. Deacon Tracey, who hasn't paid his subscription for ten years, came in and stopped his paper."
The lunatic peered over the asylum wall, and saw a man fishing from the bank of the river that ran close by. It was raining hard, which cooled the fevered brow of the lunatic and enabled him to think with great clearness. In consequence, he called down to the drenched fisherman:
"Caught anything?"
The man on the bank looked up, and shook his head glumly.
"How long you been there?" the lunatic next demanded.
"Three hours," was the answer.
The lunatic grinned hospitably, and called down an invitation:
"Come inside!"
The retired colonel, who had seen forty years of active service, gave his body servant, long his orderly, explicit instructions:
"Every morning, at five sharp, Sam, you are to wake me up, and say, 'Time for the parade, sir.'
"Then, I'll say, 'Damn the parade!' and turn over and go to sleep again."
The juryman petitioned the court to be excused, declaring:
"I owe a man twenty-five dollars that I borrowed, and as he is leaving town to-day for some years I want to catch him before he gets to the train and pay him the money."
"You are excused," the judge announced in a very cold voice. "I don't want anybody on the jury who can lie like you."
* * *
The tender young mother detected her baby boy in a deliberate lie. With tears in her eyes, and a catch in her voice, she sought to impress upon him the enormity of his offense.
"Do you know," she questioned severely, "what happens to little boys who tell falsehoods?"
The culprit shook his head in great distress, and the mother explained carefully:
"Why, a great big black man, with horns on his head and one eye in the center of his forehead, comes along and grabs the little boy who has told a falsehood, and flies with him up to the moon, and keeps him there sifting ashes all the rest of his life. You won't ever tell another falsehood, will you, darling? It's wicked!"
Mother's baby boy regarded the speaker with round-eyed admiration.
"Oh, ma," he gurgled, "what a whopper!"
