Part 8

One of the visitors was a rather grim great-aunt of the family who possesses a most lively scorn of Mrs. Eddy’s so-called science as well as a deep-rooted affection for little Florence. She immediately demanded what had been applied for her relief and as naturally the answer was, “Nothing.” She assumed her most decided expression, drew off her gloves and started upstairs.

“Aunt Molly, what are you going to do? I must repeat it is only a belief in a boil,” expostulated the mother.

“Very well,” retorted Aunt Molly, continuing her march upstairs, “I am merely going to put on a dream of a poultice.”

And she did.

* * * * *

Mistress--“Did the fisherman who stopped here this morning have frog’s legs?”

Nora--“Sure, mum, I dinnaw. He wore pants.”

* * * * *

When the thermometer dropped below zero Mrs. Rogers was much disturbed by the thought that Huldah, the new kitchen maid, slept in an unheated room.

“Huldah,” she said, remembering the good old custom of her girlhood, “it’s going to be pretty cold to-night. I think you had better take a flatiron to bed with you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” assented Huldah without enthusiasm.

Mrs. Rogers, happy in the belief that her maid was comfortable, slept soundly. In the morning she visited the kitchen.

“Well, Huldah, how did you get along with the flatiron?”

Huldah breathed a deep sigh of recollection.

“Vell, ma’am, I got it ’most warm before morning.”

* * * * *

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.”

“Monastery is the place for monsters.”

“Tocsin is something to do with getting drunk.”

“Expostulation is to have the smallpox.”

“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.”

* * * * *

Little Polly, coming in from her walk one morning, informed her mother that she had seen a lion in the park. No amount of persuasion or reasoning could make her vary her statement one hairbreadth. That night, when she slipped down on her knees to say her prayers, her mother said, “Polly, ask God to forgive you for that fib.”

Polly hid her face for a moment. Then she looked straight into her mother’s eyes, her own eyes shining like stars, and said, “I did ask him, mama, dearest, and he said, ‘Don’t mention it, Miss Polly; that big yellow dog has often fooled me.’”

* * * * *

“Boohoo! Boohoo!” wailed little Johnny.

“Why, what’s the matter, dear?” his mother asked comfortingly.

“Boohoo--er--p-picture fell on papa’s toes.”

“Well, dear, that’s too bad, but you mustn’t cry about it, you know.”

“I d-d-didn’t. I l-laughed. Boohoo! Boohoo!”

* * * * *

Two candidates for office in Missouri were stumping the northern part of the State. In one town their appearance was almost simultaneous. The candidate last arriving stopped at a house for a drink of water. To the little girl who answered his knock at the door he said--when she had given him the desired drink and he had offered her some candy in recompense:

“Did the man ahead of me give you anything?”

“Oh, yes,” replied the girl. “He gave me candy.”

“Ah!” exclaimed the candidate. “Here’s five cents for you. I don’t suppose that _he_ gave you any money?”

The youngster laughed. “Yes, he did, too! He gave me ten cents!”

Not to be outdone, the candidate gave the little one another nickel and picking her up in his arms, kissed her.

“Did he kiss you, too?” he asked genially.

“Yes, he did, sir,” responded the little girl, “and he kissed ma, too.”

* * * * *

The owner of a dry-goods store heard a new clerk say to a customer, “No, madam, we have not had any for a long time.”

With a fierce glance at the clerk the smart employer rushed up to the woman and said: “We have plenty of everything in reserve ma’am; plenty upstairs.”

The customer and the clerk looked dazed. Then the proprietor, seeing that something was wrong, said to the customer: “Excuse me, what did you ask for?”

The woman simply replied, “Why, I said to your clerk that we hadn’t had any rain lately.”

* * * * *

Senator W. A. Clark detests nothing more than to be interrupted when busy. One day he was in his office engaged in a business conversation when a petite woman, carrying a black bag, entered. With a compelling smile and an insinuating manner she approached the surly millionaire. Utterly insensible to his repellent mood and indifferent to his abrupt manner she drew from the depths of a bag a handsomely bound volume, the merits and beauty of which she began eloquently to descant upon.

Failing to embarrass her with arctic frigidity and impatient at her persistency under rebuffs all but vulgar, he turned suddenly upon the chattering woman and asked:

“Madam, do you know what my time is worth?”

She confessed it was a conundrum.

“Well,” he said, petulantly, “it’s worth $30 an hour!”

He turned away with the air of one who had settled the matter definitely beyond any further controversy. But he didn’t know the woman.

“Oh, I’m so grateful to you, Mr. Clark,” she replied, with a tone of pathos in her voice. “Thirty dollars an hour, did you say?”

“Yes; that’s what I said, and it’s cheap at that,” and he smiled cynically.

“Oh, I know it’s dirt cheap,” she chirped with winsome blitheness. “I am so glad you told me”--rummaging in her reticule, from which she quickly flashed out a purse gorged with currency. Moving near to the astonished millionaire, who now regarded her movements with unfeigned curiosity, she counted two bills, a ten and a five, off the roll. These she pushed along the top of the sloping desk toward him and said: “Yes, I’m glad you told me, because I hadn’t expected to get it so cheap. There is $15. Now, I want a half hour of your uninterrupted attention while I talk to you about this book.”

Clark pushed the money back and subscribed and paid for two copies of the book.

* * * * *

The following bit from a letter of thanks is cherished by its recipient: “The beautiful clock you sent us came in perfect condition, and is now in the parlor on top of the book-shelves, where we hope to see you soon, and your husband, also, if he can make it convenient.”

* * * * *

Tourist (in French restaurant)--“This is awful! I’ve ordered three dishes from this menu and they are all potatoes!”

* * * * *

“Mistah Brown,” said the old colored woman, coming into the cross-roads store, “you ain’t got no spool-cotton number thirty, is you?”

“Why, aunt Sally, I didn’t say I didn’t have it, did I?”

“You go long, Mistah Brown. I didn’t ax you ’aint you got it?’ I axed you ‘is you’?--ain’t you?”

* * * * *

An old “befo-de-wah” darky was called upon to make a few remarks over the grave of a friend. He removed his hat and stepped reverently and sadly toward the open grave and in solemn funereal tones said: “Friday Vizer, you is gone. We hope you is gone whar we spects you ain’t!”

* * * * *

A New Yorker who does his bit of “globe trotting” tells of two odd entries that he saw in the visitors’ book of a fashionable resort on the Rhine.

A few years ago one of the Paris members of the Rothschild family had registered as follows:

“R. de Paris.”

It chanced that the next visitor to inscribe his name in the book was Baron Oppenheim, the banker of Cologne, and he wrote beneath Rothschild’s:

“O. de Cologne.”

* * * * *

The Stranger--“And who are the Murphys’ ancestors?”

Mr. M.--“Ancestors? What’s that?”

The Stranger--“I mean who do the Murphys spring from?”

Mr. M.--“The Murphys spring from no one. They spring _at_ thim!”

* * * * *

At a wedding-feast recently the bridegroom was called upon, as usual, to respond to the given toast, in spite of the fact that he had previously pleaded to be excused. Blushing to the roots of his hair, he rose to his feet. He intended to imply that he was unprepared for speechmaking, but he unfortunately placed his hand upon his bride’s shoulder, and looked down at her as he stammered out his opening and concluding words:

“This--er--thing has been forced upon me.”

* * * * *

Very much excited and out of breath, a young man who could not have been married very long rushed up to an attendant at one of the city hospitals and inquired after Mrs. Brown, explaining between breaths that it was his wife whom he felt anxious about.

The attendant looked at the register and replied that there was no Mrs. Brown in the hospital.

“My God! Don’t keep me waiting in this manner,” said the excited young man. “I must know how she is.”

“Well, she isn’t here,” again said the attendant.

“She must be,” broke in the visitor, “for here is a note I found on the kitchen-table when I came home from work.”

The note read:

“_Dear Jack_--Have gone to have my kimono cut out. ANNIE.”

* * * * *

While an Irishman was gazing in the window of a Washington bookstore the following sign caught his eye:

DICKENS’ WORKS ALL THIS WEEK FOR ONLY $4.00.

“The divvle he does!” exclaimed Pat in disgust. “The dirty scab!”

* * * * *

A dear old New England spinster, the embodiment of the timid and shrinking, passed away at Carlsbad, where she had gone for her health. Her nearest kinsman, a nephew, ordered her body sent back to be buried--as was her last wish--in the quiet little country churchyard. His surprise can be imagined, when on opening the casket, he beheld, instead of the placid features of his aunt Mary, the majestic port of an English General in full regimentals, whom he remembered had chanced to die at the same time and place as his aunt.

At once he cabled to the General’s heirs explaining the situation and requesting instructions.

They came back as follows: “Give the General quiet funeral. Aunt Mary interred to-day with full military honors, six brass bands, saluting guns.”

* * * * *

Early in the morning session, when the pupils were feeling bright and happy, the teacher thought it a good plan to give them sentences to correct, both as to grammar and sense. She accordingly wrote on the blackboard: “The hen has four legs. He done it.” Thoughtful little Ignatius, at the foot of the class, pondered deeply, and at the end of the fifteen minutes’ time allowed for correction he wrote: “_He_ didn’t done it: God done it.”

* * * * *

The late John Stetson, famous in his day as a theatrical manager, was having a yacht built, and a friend, meeting him on the street, asked him what he was going to name the boat. “I haven’t decided yet,” replied John, “but it will be some name commencing with S, probably either ‘Psyche’ or ‘Cinch.’”

* * * * *

A clergyman was on board a steamer which was caught in a severe gale. The rolling was constant and seemed to get worse as time went on. At last the good man got thoroughly frightened. He believed they were destined for a watery grave, so he went to the captain and asked if he might have prayers. The captain took him by the arm and led him to the forecastle, where the tars were singing and swearing. “There,” said he, “when you hear the men swearing you may know there is no danger.” The clergyman went back feeling better, but still the storm increased and his alarm also. Disconsolate, he managed to stagger to the forecastle again, where he heard the sailors swearing as hard as ever. “Mary,” he said to his sympathetic wife as he crawled back to his berth, “Mary, thank God, they’re swearing yet.”

* * * * *

“Hawaiian servants,” said a woman with some experience of them, “are the best in the world, but they are strangely unsophisticated, strangely naive. They insist on calling you by your first name. Ours were always saying to my husband, ‘Yes, John,’ or ‘all right, John,’ and to me ‘very well, Ann,’ or ‘Ann, I am going out.’ At last I got tired of this and to John, when we got a new cook, I said: Don’t ever call me by my first name in the cook’s presence. Then, perhaps, not knowing my name, he’ll have to say ‘Mrs.’ to me. So John was careful to address me as ‘dearie,’ or ‘sweetheart,’ the watchful chap gave me no title at all. One day we had some English officers to dine. I told them how I had overcome, in my new cook’s case, the native servants’ abuse of their employer’s Christian names, and I said, By this servant, at least, you won’t hear me called ‘Ann.’” Just then the new cook entered the room. He bowed to me respectfully and said:

“‘Sweetheart, dinner is served!’

“‘What?’ I stammered.

“‘Dinner is served, dearie!’ answered the cook.”

* * * * *

Early one morning, on the second day out, a terribly seasick passenger, pale and hollow-eyed, came out of his stateroom and ran into a lady, who was coming along the passageway, clad in the scantiest raiment. She screamed and started to run. “Don’t be alarmed,” groaned the man. “Don’t be alarmed, madam; I shall never live to tell it.”

* * * * *

Mike and Pat worked for a wealthy farmer. They planned to turn burglars and steal the money which the farmer had hid in one of the rooms of his house. They waited until midnight, then started to do the job.

In order to get the money they had to pass the farmer’s bedroom. Mike said, “I’ll go first, and if it’s all right you can follow and do just the same as I.”

Mike started to pass the room. Just as he got opposite the door the floor creaked. This awoke the farmer, who called out, “Who’s there?”

Mike answered with a “meaow!” (imitating a cat). The farmer’s wife being awake, too, said, “Oh, John, it’s the cat,” and all was quiet.

Now Pat started to pass the door, and as he got opposite it the floor creaked again. The farmer called out again, louder than before, “Who’s there?”

Pat answered, “Another cat.”

* * * * *

Softleigh--“Good evening, Mrs. Moran. I came to see if your daughter, Miss Mabel, would go for a walk with me.”

Miss Mabel--“How do you do, Mr. Softleigh? I shall be delighted. Mama, do I look fit to go to a restaurant?”

* * * * *

They were on their honeymoon. He had bought a catboat and had taken her out to show her how well he could handle a boat, putting her to tend the sheet. A puff of wind came, and he shouted in no uncertain tones, “Let go the sheet.” No response. Then again, “Let go that sheet, quick.” Still no movement. A few minutes later, when both were clinging to the bottom of the overturned boat, he said:

“Why didn’t you let go that sheet when I told you to, dear?”

“I would have,” said the bride, “if you had not been so rough about it. You ought to speak more kindly to your wife.”

* * * * *

Madam--“Put plenty of nuts in the cake.”

Cook--“I’ll crack no more nuts to-day, me jaw hurts me already.”

* * * * *

Mother--“Alice, it is bedtime. All the little chickens have gone to bed.”

Alice--“Yes, mama, and so has the hen.”

* * * * *

Few men have ever been so ready and witty as Mark Twain in introducing others to public audiences. At Hartford, December 12, 1877, he presented Mr. Howells, and, after a word or two as to his literary work, said, “But I am not here to speak of his literary reputation, but simply to (a long pause) back up his moral character.”

* * * * *

A Lancashire vicar was asked by the choir to call upon old Betty, who was deaf, but who insisted in joining in the solo of the anthem, and to ask her only to sing in the hymns. He shouted into her ear: “Betty! I’ve been requested to speak to you about your singing.” At last she caught the word “singing,” and replied: “Not to me be the praise, sir; it’s a gift.”

* * * * *

The proprietor of a large drug store recently received this curt and haughty note written in an angular, feminine hand: “I do not want vasioline, but glisserine. Is that plain enough? I persoom you can spell.”

* * * * *

It was in a Maine Sunday-school that a teacher recently asked a Chinese pupil she was teaching to read if he understood the meaning of the words “an old cow.”

“Been cow a long time,” was the prompt answer.

* * * * *

Upon moving into a new neighborhood the small boy of the family was cautioned not to fight with his new acquaintances. One day Willie came home with a black eye and very much spattered with dirt.

“Why, Willie,” said mama, “I thought I told you to count a hundred before you fought!”

“I did, mama,” said Willie, “and look what Tommy Smith did while I was counting!”

* * * * *

“The rolling stone gathers no moss,” quoted the man who had never been outside his home county.

“True,” rejoined the globe-trotter, “but it acquires an enviable polish.”

* * * * *

Curate (who is going to describe his little holiday in Lucerne)--“My dear friends--I will not call you ladies and gentlemen, since I know you too well.”

* * * * *

Daniel Purcell, the famous punster, was desired to make a pun extempore.

“Upon what subject?” said Daniel.

“The king,” answered the other.

“Oh! sir,” said he “the king is no subject.”

* * * * *

Illustrative of “that troublesome Henglish haitch” an American traveler relates the following:

Once I dined with an English farmer. We had ham--very delicious baked ham. The farmer’s son soon finished his portion and passed his plate again.

“More ’am, father,” he said.

The farmer frowned.

“Don’t say ’am, son. Say _‘am_.”

“I did say ’am,” the lad protested in an injured tone.

“You said _‘am_,” cried the father fiercely. “’Am’s what it should be. ’Am, not _‘am_.”

In the middle of the squabble the farmer’s wife turned to me and, with a deprecatory little laugh, explained:

“They both think they’re sayin’ ’am, sir.”

* * * * *

Passing along Princes Street, Edinburgh, one day a herculean Scots Grey stopped at the post-office and called on a street arab to polish his boots. The feet of the dragoon were in proportion to his height and, looking at the tremendous boots before him, the arab knelt down on the pavement and shouted out to his chum across the road, “Jamie, come ower an’ gie’s a hand, I’ve got an army contract.”

* * * * *

The younger man had been complaining that he could not get his wife to mend his clothes.

“I asked her to sew a button on this vest last night, and she hasn’t touched it,” he said. At this the older man assumed the air of a patriarch.

“Never ask a woman to mend anything,” he said. “You haven’t been married very long, and I think I can give you some serviceable suggestions. When I want a shirt mended I take it to my wife, flourish it around a little and say, ‘Where’s that rag-bag?’

“‘What do you want of the rag-bag?’ asks my wife. Her suspicions are roused at once.

“‘I want to throw this shirt away; it’s worn out,’ I say, with a few more flourishes.

“‘Let me see that shirt,’ my wife says then. ‘Now, John, hand it to me at once.’

“Of course, I pass it over, and she examines it. ‘Why, John Taylor,’ she is sure to say, ‘I never knew such extravagance! This is a perfectly good shirt. All it needs is----’ And then she mends it.”

* * * * *

A browbeating counsel asked a witness how far he had been from a certain place. “Just four yards, two feet, and six inches,” was the reply. “How come you to be so exact, my friend?” “I expected some fool or other would ask me, so I measured it.”

* * * * *

“Now, see here, porter,” said the drummer briskly, “I want you to put me off at Syracuse. You know we get in there about six o’clock in the morning, and I may over-sleep myself. But it is important that I should get out. Here’s a five-dollar gold piece. Now, I may wake up hard. Don’t mind if I kick. Pay no attention if I’m ugly. I want you to put me off the train no matter how hard I fight. Understand?”

“Yes, sah,” answered the sturdy Nubian. “It shall be did, sah!”

The next morning the coin-giver was awakened by a stentorian voice calling: “Rochester!”

“Rochester!” he exclaimed, sitting up. “Where’s that porter?”

Hastily slipping on his trousers, he went in search of the negro, and found him in the porter’s closet, huddled up, with his head in a bandage, his clothes torn, and his arm in a sling.

“Well,” said the drummer, “you are a sight. Why didn’t you put me off at Syracuse?”

“Wha-at!” gasped the porter, jumping up, as his eyes bulged from his head. “Was you de gemman dat give me a five-dollah gold piece?”

“Of course I was, you idiot!”

“Well, den, befoah de Lawd, who was dat gemman I put off at Syracuse?”

* * * * *

A right reverend prelate, himself a man of extreme good-nature, was frequently much vexed in spirit by the proud, froward, perverse, and untractable temper of his next vicar. The latter, after an absence much longer than usual, one day paid a visit to the bishop, who kindly inquired the cause of his absence, and was answered by the vicar that he had been confined to his house for some time past by an obstinate stiffness in his knee. “I am glad of that,” replied the prelate; “’tis a good symptom that the disorder has changed place, for I had a long time thought it immovably settled in your neck.”

* * * * *

Bride--“George, dear, when we reach our destination let us try to avoid giving the impression that we are newly married.”

George--“All right, Maud; you can carry the suitcase and umbrellas.”

* * * * *

Francis Wilson was speaking at the Players Club of New York City, not long ago, of the all too prevalent ignorance of dramatic literature in the country to-day.

“Why,” said Mr. Wilson, “a company was playing ‘She Stoops to Conquer’ in a small Western town last winter when a man without any money, wishing to see the show, stepped up to the box office and said:

“‘Pass me in, please.’

“The box office man gave a loud, harsh laugh.

“‘Pass you in? What for?’ he asked.

“The applicant drew himself up and answered, haughtily: ‘What for? Why, because I am Oliver Goldsmith, author of the play.’

“‘Oh, I beg your pardon, sir,’ replied the other in a meek voice, as he hurriedly wrote an order for a box.”

* * * * *

Lady Bountiful--“All I can say is, Jenkins, that if these people insist on building these horrid little villas near my gates, I shall leave the place.”

Jenkins--“Exactly what I told them at the meeting, your ladyship. I said, ‘Do you want to drive away the goose that lays the golden eggs?’”

* * * * *

Old Lady (to conductor--her first drive on an electric tram).--“Would it be dangerous, conductor, if I was to put my foot on the rail?”

Conductor (an Edison manqué).--“No, mum, not unless you was to put the other one on the overhead wire!”

* * * * *

After a few weeks at boarding-school Alice wrote home as follows:

“_Dear Father_--Though I was homesick at first, now that I am getting acquainted, I like the school very much. Last evening Grayce and Kathryn (my roommates) and I had a nice little chafing-dish party, and we invited three other girls, Mayme and Carrye Miller and Edyth Kent. I hope you are all well at home. I can’t write any more now for I have a lot of studying to do. With lots of love to all.

“Your affectionate daughter,

“ALYSS.”

To this she received the following reply: