Phil May, the artist, when once down on his luck in Australia, took a job as waiter in a very low-class restaurant. An acquaintance came into the place to dine, and was aghast when he discovered the artist in his waiter.
"My God!" he whispered. "To find you in such a place as this."
Phil May smiled, as he retorted:
"Oh, but, you see, I don't eat here."
The schoolboy, after profound thought, wrote this definition of the word "spine," at his teacher's request.
"A spine is a long, limber bone. Your head sets on one end and you set on the other."
The visitor to the poet's wife expressed her surprise that the man of genius had failed to dedicate any one of his volumes to the said wife. Whereupon, said wife became flustered, and declared tartly:
"I never thought of that. As soon as you are gone, I'll look through all his books, and if that's so, I never will forgive him!"
An excellent old gentleman grew hard of hearing, and was beset with apprehension lest he become totally deaf. One day, as he rested on a park bench, another elderly citizen seated himself alongside. The apprehensive old gentleman saw that the new comer was talking rapidly, but his ears caught no faintest sound of the other's voice. He listened intently—in vain. He cupped a hand to his ear, but there was only silence. At last, in despair, he spoke his thought aloud:
"It's come at last! I know you've been talking all this while, but I haven't heard a single word."
The answer, given with a grin, was explicit and satisfying to the worried deaf man:
"I hain't been talkin'—jest a-chewin'."
In the smoking-room of a theatre, between the acts, an amiable young man addressed an elderly gentleman who was seated beside him:
"The show is very good, don't you think?"
The old gentleman nodded approvingly, as he replied:
"Me, I always take the surface cars. Them elevated an' subway stairs ketches my breath."
"I said the show was a good one," exclaimed the young man, raising his voice.
Again, the elderly person nodded agreeably.
"They jump about a good deal," was his comment, "but they're on the ground, which the others ain't."
Now, the young man shouted:
"You're a little deaf, ain't you?"
At last the other understood.
"Yes, sir!" he announced proudly. "I'm as deef as a post." He chuckled contentedly. "Some folks thinks as that's a terrible affliction, but I don't. I kin always hear what I'm sayin' myself, an' that's interestin' enough for me."
When a certain officer of the governor's staff died, there were many applicants for the post, and some were indecently impatient. While the dead colonel was awaiting burial, one aspirant buttonholed the governor, asking:
"Would you object to my taking the place of the colonel?"
"Not at all," the governor replied tartly. "See the undertaker."
On Tuesday, a colored maid asked her mistress for permission to be absent on the coming Friday. She explained that she wished to attend the funeral of her fiancé. The mistress gave the required permission sympathetically.
"But you're not wearing mourning, Jenny," she remarked.
"Oh, no, ma'am," the girl replied. "You see, ma'am, he ain't dead yet. The hanging ain't till Friday."
The child came to his mother in tears.
"Oh, mama," he confessed, "I broke a tile in the hearth."
"Never mind, dear," the mother consoled. "But how ever did you come to do it?"
"I was pounding it with father's watch?"
The colored man, passing through the market, saw a turtle for the first time, and surveyed it with great interest. The creature's head was withdrawn, but as the investigator fumbled about the shell, it shot forward and nipped his finger. With a howl of pain he stuck his finger in his mouth, and sucked it.
"What's the matter?" the fishmonger asked with a grin.
"Nothin'—jest nothin' a tall," the colored man answered thickly. "Ah was only wonderin' whether Ah had been bit or stung."
The old farmer and his wife visited the menagerie. When they halted before the hippopotamus cage, he remarked admiringly:
"Darn'd curi's fish, ain't it, ma?"
"That ain't a fish," the wife announced. "That's a rep-tile."
It was thus that the argument began. It progressed to a point of such violence that the old lady began belaboring the husband with her umbrella. The old man dodged and ran, with the wife in pursuit. The trainer had just opened the door of the lions' cage, and the farmer popped in. He crowded in behind the largest lion and peered over its shoulder fearfully at his wife, who, on the other side of the bars, shook her umbrella furiously.
"Coward!" she shouted. "Coward!"
The witness was obviously a rustic and quite new to the ways of a court-room. So, the judge directed him:
"Speak to the jury, sir—the men sitting behind you on the benches."
The witness turned, bowed clumsily and said:
"Good-morning, gentlemen."
The housewife gave the tramp a large piece of pie on condition that he should saw some wood. The tramp retired to the woodshed, but presently he reappeared at the back door of the house with the piece of pie still intact save for one mouthful bitten from the end.
"Madam," he said respectfully to the wondering woman, "if it's all the same to you, I'll eat the wood, and saw the pie."
A zealous church member in a Kentucky village made an earnest effort to convert a particularly vicious old mountaineer named Jim, who was locally notorious for his godlessness. But the old man was hard-headed and stubborn, firmly rooted in his evil courses, so that he resisted the pious efforts in his behalf.
"Jim," the exhorter questioned sadly at last, "ain't you teched by the story of the Lord what died to save yer soul?"
"Humph!" Jim retorted contemptuously. "Air ye aimin' to tell me the Lord died to save me, when He ain't never seed me, ner knowed me?"
"Jim," the missionary explained with fervor, "it was a darn sight easier for the Lord to die fer ye jest because He never seed ye than if He knowed ye as well as we-alls do!"
His companion bent over the dying man, to catch the last faintly whispered words. The utterance came with pitiful feebleness, yet with sufficient clearness:
"I am dying—yes. Go to Fannie. Tell her—I died—with her name—on my lips, that I—loved her—her alone—always ... And Jennie—tell Jennie—the same thing."
The child had been greatly impressed by her first experience in Sunday school. She pressed her hands to her breast, and said solemnly to her sister, two years older:
"When you hear something wite here, it is conscience whispering to you."
"It's no such thing," the sister jeered. "That's just wind on your tummie."
"I suppose I must admit that I do have my faults," the husband remarked in a tone that was far from humble.
"Yes," the wife snapped, "and in your opinion your faults are better than other folks' virtues."
The widow was deep in suds over the family wash, when she saw her pastor coming up the path to the door. She gave directions to her young son to answer the bell, and to tell the clergyman that his mother had just gone down the street on an errand. Since the single ground floor room of the cottage offered no better hiding place against observation from the door, she crouched behind a clothes-horse hung with drying garments. When the boy had opened the door to the minister, and had duly delivered the message concerning his mother's absence, the reverend gentleman cast a sharp look toward the screen of drying clothes, and addressed the boy thus:
"Well, my lad, just tell your mother I called. And you might say to her that the next time she goes down the street, she should take her feet along."
In former times, when royalties were more important, a lady at a court ball was intensely gratified when a prince selected her as a partner. She was almost overwhelmed with pride when he danced a second measure with her.
"Oh," she gushed, as she reposed blissfully in his arms, "your highness does me too great honor."
The prince answered coldly:
"But no, madam. Merely, my physician has directed me to perspire."
The young man, dancing with the girl to whom he had just been introduced, remarked with the best of intentions, but rather unfortunately:
"That's the new waltz. My sister was raving about it. I think it's pretty bad. I expect she danced it with somebody rather nice."
"Would you like a lock of my hair?" asked the gallant old bachelor of the spinster who had been a belle a few decades past.
"Why don't you offer me the whole wig?" the maiden lady gibed, with a titter.
The bachelor retorted with icy disdain:
"You are very biting, madam, considering that your teeth are porcelain."
Isaac and Moses dined in a restaurant that was new to them, and were pained seriously by the amount of the check. Moses began to expostulate in a loud voice, but Isaac hushed him with a whisper:
"'Sh! I haf the spoons in my pocket."
The young man at the summer resort, who had become engaged to the pretty girl, received information that led him to question her:
"Is it true that since you came up here you've got engaged to Billy, Ed, George and Harry, as well as me?"
The young lady assumed an air of disdain.
"What is that to you?" she demanded.
"Just this," he replied gently. "If it's so, and you have no objection, we fellows will all chip in together to buy an engagement ring."
The mother catechised her young son just before the hour for the arrival of the music teacher.
"Have you washed your hands very carefully?"
"Yes, mother."
"And have you washed your face thoroughly?"
"Yes, mother."
"And were you particular to wash behind your ears?"
"On her side I did, mother."
The little boy was clad in an immaculate white suit for the lawn party, and his mother cautioned him strictly against soiling it. He was scrupulous in his obedience, but at last he approached her timidly, and said:
"Please, mother, may I sit on my pants?"
The old negro attended a service in the Episcopal Church for the first time in his life. Someone asked him afterward how he had enjoyed the experience.
"Not much, shohly not much," he declared, shaking his head. "Dat ain't no church for me. No' suh! Dey wastes too much time readin' the minutes ob the previous meetin'."
The young members of the family had been taught to be punctilious in contributing to the collection at church. One Sunday morning, when the boxes were being passed, James, aged six, ran his eye over those in the pew, and noticed that a guest of his sister had no coin in her hand. "Where is your money?" he whispered. She answered that she hadn't any. But James was equal to the emergency:
"Here, take mine," he directed. "That'll pay for you. I'll get under the seat."
Which he did.
