Chapter 24

POLITICIAN--"Congratulate me, my dear, I've won the nomination."

HIS WIFE (in surprise)--"Honestly?"

POLITICIAN--"Now what in thunder did you want to bring up that point for?"

"What makes you think the baby is going to be a great politician?" asked the young mother, anxiously.

"I'll tell you," answered the young father, confidently; "he can say more things that sound well and mean nothing at all than any kid I ever saw."

"The mere proposal to set the politician to watch the capitalist has been disturbed by the rather disconcerting discovery that they are both the same man. We are past the point where being a capitalist is the only way of becoming a politician, and we are dangerously near the point where being a politician is much the quickest way of becoming a capitalist."--_G.K. Chesterton_.

At a political meeting the speakers and the audience were much annoyed and disturbed by a man who constantly called out: "Mr. Henry! Henry, Henry, Henry! I call for Mr. Henry!" After several interruptions of this kind during each speech, a young man ascended the platform, and began an eloquent and impassioned speech in which he handled the issues of the day with easy familiarity. He was in the midst of a glowing period when suddenly the old cry echoed through the hall: "Mr. Henry! Henry, Henry, Henry! I call for Mr. Henry!" With a word to the speaker, the chairman stepped to the front of the platform and remarked that it would oblige the audience very much if the gentleman in the rear of the hall would refrain from any further calls for Mr. Henry, as that gentleman was then addressing the meeting.

"Mr. Henry? Is that Mr. Henry?" came in astonished tones from the rear. "Thunder! that can't be him. Why, that's the young man that asked me to call for Mr. Henry."

A political speaker, while making a speech, paused in the midst of it and exclaimed: "Now gentlemen, what do you think?"

A man rose in the assembly, and with one eye partially closed, replied modestly, with a strong Scotch brogue: "I think, sir, I do, indeed, sir--I think if you and I were to stump the country together we could tell more lies than any other two men in the country, sir, and I'd not say a word myself during the whole time, sir."

The Rev. Dr. Biddell tells a lively story about a Presbyterian minister who had a young son, a lad about ten years of age. He was endeavoring to bring him up in the way he should go, and was one day asked by a friend what he intended to make of him. In reply he said:

"I am watching the indications. I have a plan which I propose trying with the boy. It is this: I am going to place in my parlor a Bible, an apple and a silver dollar. Then I am going to leave the room and call in the boy. I am going to watch him from some convenient place without letting him know that he is seen. Then, if he chooses the Bible, I shall make a preacher of him; if he takes the apple, a farmer he shall be; but if he chooses the dollar, I will make him a business man."

The plan was carried out. The arrangements were made and the boy called in from his play. After a little while the preacher and his wife softly entered the room. There was the youngster. He was seated on the Bible, in one hand was the apple, from which he was just taking a bite, and in the other he clasped the silver dollar. The good man turned to his consort. "Wife," he said, "the boy is a hog. I shall make a politician of him."

Senator Mark Hanna was walking through his mill one day when he heard a boy say:

"I wish I had Hanna's money and he was in the poorhouse."

When he returned to the office the senator sent for the lad, who was plainly mystified by the summons.

"So you wish you had my money and I was in the poorhouse," said the great man grimly. "Now supposing you had your wish, what would you do?"

"Well," said the boy quickly, his droll grin showing his appreciation of the situation, "I guess I'd get you out of the poorhouse the first thing."

Mr. Hanna roared with laughter and dismissed the youth.

"You might as well push that boy along," he said to one of his assistants; "he's too good a politician to be kept down."

_See also_ Candidates; Public Speakers.

POLITICS

Politics consists of two sides and a fence.

If I were asked to define politics in relation to the British public, I should define it as a spasm of pain recurring once in every four or five years.--_A.E.W. Mason_.

LITTLE CLARENCE (who has an inquiring mind)--"Papa, the Forty Thieves--"

MR. CALLIPERS--"Now, my son, you are too young to talk politics."--_Puck_.

"Many a man," remarked the milk toast philosopher, "has gone into politics with a fine future, and come out with a terrible past." Lord Dufferin delivered an address before the Greek class of the McGill University about which a reporter wrote:

"His lordship spoke to the class in the purest ancient Greek, without mispronouncing a word or making the slightest grammatical solecism."

"Good heavens!" remarked Sir Hector Langevin to the late Sir John A. Macdonald, "how did the reporter know that!"

"I told him," was the Conservative statesman's answer.

"But you don't know Greek."

"True; but I know a little about politics."

Little Millie's father and grandfather were Republicans; and, as election drew near, they spoke of their opponents with increasing warmth, never heeding Millie's attentive ears and wondering eyes.

One night, however, as the little maid was preparing for bed, she whispered in a frightened voice: "Oh, mamma, I don't dare to go upstairs. I'm afraid there's a Democrat under the bed."

"The shortest after-dinner speech I ever heard," said Cy Warman, the poet, "was at a dinner in Providence."

"A man was assigned to the topic, 'The Christian in Politics.' When he was called upon he arose, bowed and said: 'Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: The Christian in Politics--he ain't.'"

Politics is but the common pulse-beat of which revolution is the fever spasm.--_Wendell Phillips_.

POVERTY

Poverty is no disgrace, but that's about all that can be said in its favor.

A traveler passing through the Broad Top Mountain district in northern Bedford County, Pennsylvania, last summer, came across a lad of sixteen cultivating a patch of miserable potatoes. He remarked upon their unpromising appearance and expressed pity for anyone who had to dig a living out of such soil.

"I don't need no pity," said the boy resentfully.

The traveler hastened to soothe his wounded pride. But in the offended tone of one who has been misjudged the boy added; "I ain't as poor as you think. I'm only _workin'_ here. I don't _own_ this place."

One day an inspector of a New York tenement-house found four families living in one room, chalk lines being drawn across in such manner as to mark out a quarter for each family.

"How do you get along here?" inquired the inspector.

"Very well," was the reply. "Only the man in the farthest corner keeps boarders."

There is no man so poor but that he can afford to keep one dog, and I hev seen them so poor that they could afford to keep three.--_Josh Billings_.

May poverty be always a day's march behind us.

Not he who has little, but he who wishes for more, is poor.--_Seneca_.

PRAISE

WIFE (complainingly)--"You never praise me up to any one."

HUB--"I don't, eh! You should hear me describe you at the intelligence office when I'm trying to hire a cook."

"What sort of a man is he?"

"Well, he's just what I've been looking for--a generous soul, with a limousine body."--_Life_.

PRAYER MEETINGS

A foreigner who attended a prayer meeting in Indiana was asked what the assistants did. "Not very much," he said, "only they sin and bray."

PRAYERS

During the winter the village preacher was taken sick, and several of his children were also afflicted with the mumps. One day a number of the devout church members called to pray for the family. While they were about it a boy, the son of a member living in the country, knocked at the preacher's door. He had his arms full of things. "What have you there?" a deacon asked him.

"Pa's prayers for a happy Thanksgiving," the boy answered, as he proceeded to unload potatoes, bacon, flour and other provisions for the afflicted family.

A little girl in Washington surprised her mother the other day by closing her evening prayers in these words: "Amen; good bye; ring off."

TEACHER--"Now, Tommy, suppose a man gave you $100 to keep for him and then died, what would you do? Would you pray for him?"

TOMMY--"No, sir; but I would pray for another like him."

A well-known revivalist whose work has been principally among the negroes of a certain section of the South remembers one service conducted by him that was not entirely successful. He had had very poor attendance, and spent much time in questioning the darkies as to their reason for not attending.

"Why were you not at our revival?" he asked one old man, whom he encountered on the road.

"Oh, I dunno," said the backward one.

"Don't you ever pray?" demanded the preacher.

The old man shook his head. "No," said he; "I carries a rabbit's foot."--_Taylor Edwards_.

A little girl attending an Episcopal church for the first time, was amazed to see all kneel suddenly. She asked her mother what they were going to do. Her mother replied, "Hush, they're going to say their prayers."

"What with all their clothes on?"

The new minister in a Georgia church was delivering his first sermon. The darky janitor was a critical listener from a back corner of the church. The minister's sermon was eloquent, and his prayers seemed to cover the whole category of human wants.

After the services one of the deacons asked the old darky what he thought of the new minister. "Don't you think he offers up a good prayer, Joe?"

"Ah mos' suhtainly does, boss. Why, dat man axed de good Lord fo' things dat de odder preacher didn't even know He had!"

Hilma was always glad to say her prayers, but she wanted to be sure that she was heard in the heavens above as well as on the earth beneath.

One night, after the usual "Amen," she dropped her head upon her pillow and closed her eyes. After a moment she lifted her hand and, waving it aloft, said, "Oh, Lord! this prayer comes from 203 Selden Avenue."

Willie's mother had told him that if he went to the river to play he should go to bed. One day she was away, and on coming home about two o'clock in the afternoon found Willie in bed.

"What are you in bed for?" asked his mother.

"I went to the river to play, and I knew you would put me in bed, so I didn't wait for you to come."

"Did you say your prayers before you went to bed?" asked his mother.

"No," said Willie. "You don't suppose God would be loafing around here this time of day, do you? He's at the office."

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, mamma, dearest, and he said, 'Don't mention it, Miss Polly; that big yellow dog has often fooled me.'"

Prayer is the spirit speaking truth to Truth.--_Bailey_.

Pray to be perfect, though material leaven Forbid the spirit so on earth to be; But if for any wish thou darest not pray, Then pray to God to cast that wish away.

--_Hartley Coleridge_.

_See also_ Courage.

PREACHING

The services in the chapel of a certain western university are from time to time conducted by eminent clergymen of many denominations and from many cities.

On one occasion, when one of these visiting divines asked the president how long he should speak, that witty officer replied:

"There is no limit, Doctor, upon the time you may preach; but I may tell you that there is a tradition here that the most souls are saved during the first twenty-five minutes."

One Sunday morning a certain young pastor in his first charge announced nervously:

"I will take for my text the words, 'And they fed five men with five thousand loaves of bread and two thousand fishes.'"

At this misquotation an old parishioner from his seat in the amen corner said audibly:

"That's no miracle--I could do it myself."

The young preacher said nothing at the time, but the next Sunday he announced the same text again. This time he got it right:

"And they fed five thousand men on five loaves of bread and two fishes."

He waited a moment, and then, leaning over the pulpit and looking at the amen corner, he said:

"And could you do that, too, Mr. Smith?"

"Of course I could," Mr. Smith replied.

"And how would you do it?" said the preacher.

"With what was left over from last Sunday," said Mr. Smith.

The late Bishop Foss once visited a Philadelphia physician for some trifling ailment. "Do you, sir," the doctor asked, in the course of his examination, "talk in your sleep?"

"No sir," answered the bishop. "I talk in other people's. Aren't you aware that I am a divine?"

"Yes, sir," said the irate man, "I got even with that clergyman. I slurred him. Why, I hired one hundred people to attend his church and go to sleep before he had preached five minutes."

A noted eastern Judge when visiting in the west went to church on Sunday; which isn't so remarkable as the fact that he knew beforehand that the preacher was exceedingly tedious and long winded to the last degree. After the service the preacher met the Judge in the vestibule and said: "Well, your Honor, how did you like the sermon?"

"Oh, most wonderfully," replied the Judge. "It was like the peace of God; for it passed all understanding, and, like His mercy, I thought it would have endured forever."

The preacher's evening discourse was dry and long, and the congregation gradually melted away. The sexton tiptoed up to the pulpit and slipped a note under one corner of the Bible. It read:

"When you are through, will you please turn off the lights, lock the door, and put the key under the mat?"

The new minister's first sermon was very touching and created much favorable comment among the members of the church. One morning, a few days later, his nine-year-old son happened to be alone in the pastor's study and with childish curiosity started to read through some papers on the desk. They happened to be this identical sermon, but he was most interested in the marginal notes. In one place in the margin were written the words, "Cry a little." Further on in the discourse appeared another marginal remark, "Cry a little more." On the next to the last sheet the boy found his good father had penned another remark, "Cry like thunder."

A young preacher, who was staying at a clergy-house, was in the habit of retiring to his room for an hour or more each day to practice pulpit oratory. At such times he filled the house with sounds of fervor and pathos, and emptied it of almost everything else. Phillips Brooks chanced to be visiting a friend in this house one day when the budding orator was holding forth.

"Gracious me!" exclaimed the Bishop, starting up in assumed terror, "pray, what might that be?"

"Sit down, Bishop," his friend replied. "That's only young D---- practising what he preaches."

A distinguished theologian was invited to make an address before a Sunday-school. The divine spoke for over an hour and his remarks were of too deep a character for the average juvenile mind to comprehend. At the conclusion, the superintendent, according to custom, requested some one in the school to name an appropriate hymn to be sung.

"Sing 'Revive Us Again,'" shouted a boy in the rear of the room.

A clergyman was once sent for in the middle of the night by one of his woman parishioners.

"Well, my good woman," said he, "so you are ill and require the consolations of religion? What can I do for you?"

"No," replied the old lady, "I am only nervous and can't sleep!"

"But how can I help that?" said the parson.

"Oh, sir, you always put me to sleep so nicely when I go to church that I thought if you would only preach a little for me!"

I never see my rector's eyes; He hides their light divine; For when he prays, he shuts his own, And when he preaches, mine.

A stranger entered the church in the middle of the sermon and seated himself in the back pew. After a while he began to fidget. Leaning over to the white-haired man at his side, evidently an old member of the congregation, he whispered:

"How long has he been preaching?"

"Thirty or forty years, I think," the old man answered.

"I'll stay then," decided the stranger. "He must be nearly done."

Once upon a time there was an Indian named Big Smoke, employed as a missionary to his fellow Smokes.

A white man encountering Big Smoke, asked him what he did for a living.

"Umph!" said Big Smoke, "me preach."

"That so? What do you get for preaching?"

"Me get ten dollars a year."

"Well," said the white man, "that's damn poor pay."

"Umph!" said Big Smoke, "me damn poor preacher."

_See also_ Clergy.

PRESCRIPTIONS

After a month's work in intensely warm weather a gardener in the suburbs became ill, and the anxious little wife sent for a doctor, who wrote a prescription after examining the patient. The doctor, upon departing, said: "Just let your husband take that and you'll find he will be all right in a short time."

Next day the doctor called again, and the wife opened the door, her face beaming with smiles. "Sure, that was a wonderful wee bit of paper you left yesterday," she exclaimed. "William is better to-day."

"I'm glad to hear that," said the much-pleased medical man.

"Not but what I hadn't a big job to get him to swallow it." she continued, "but, sure, I just wrapped up the wee bit of paper quite small and put it in a spoonful of jam and William swallowed it unbeknownst. By night he was entirely better."

PRESENCE OF MIND

"What did you do when you met the train-robber face to face?"

"I explained that I had been interviewed by the ticket-seller, the luggage-carriers, the dining-car waiters, and the sleeping-car porters and borrowed a dollar from him."

PRINTERS

The master of all trades: He beats the farmer with his fast "hoe," the carpenter with his "rule," and the mason in "setting up tall columns"; and he surpasses the lawyer and the doctor in attending to the "cases," and beats the parson in the management of the devil.

PRISONS

A man arrested for stealing chickens was brought to trial. The case was given to the jury, who brought him in guilty, and the judge sentenced him to three months' imprisonment. The jailer was a jovial man, fond of a smile, and feeling particularly good on that particular day, considered himself insulted when the prisoner looking around the cell told him it was dirty, and not fit for a hog to be put in. One word brought on another, till finally the jailer told the prisoner if he did not behave himself he would put him out. To which the prisoner replied: "I will give you to understand, sir, I have as good a right here as you have!"

SHERIFF--"That fellow who just left jail is going to be arrested again soon."

"How do you know?"

SHERIFF--"He chopped my wood, carried the water, and mended my socks. I can't get along without him."

PRODIGALS

"Why did the father of the prodigal son fall on his neck and weep?"

"Cos he had ter kill the fatted calf, an' de son wasn't wort' it."

PROFANITY

THE RECTOR--"It's terrible for a man like you to make every other word an oath."

THE MAN--"Oh, well, I swear a good deal and you pray a good deal, but we don't neither of us mean nuthin' by it."

FIRST DEAF MUTE--"He wasn't so very angry, was he?"

SECOND DEAF MUTE--"He was so wild that the words he used almost blistered his fingers."

The little daughter of a clergyman stubbed her toe and said, "Darn!"

"I'll give you ten cents," said father, "if you'll never say that word again."

A few days afterward she came to him and said: "Papa, I've got a word worth half a dollar."

Very frequently the winter highways of the Yukon valley are mere trails, traversed only by dog-sledges. One of the bishops in Alaska, who was very fond of that mode of travel, encountered a miner coming out with his dog-team, and stopped to ask him what kind of a road he had come over.

The miner responded with a stream of forcible and picturesque profanity, winding up with:

"And what kind o' trail did you have?"

"Same as yours," replied the bishop feelingly.--_Elgin Burroughs_.

A scrupulous priest of Kildare, Used to pay a rude peasant to swear, Who would paint the air blue, For an hour or two, While his reverence wrestled in prayer.

Donald and Jeanie were putting down a carpet. Donald slammed the end of his thumb with the hammer and began to pour forth his soul in language befitting the occasion.

"Donald, Donald!" shrieked Jeanie, horrified. "Dinna swear that way!"

"Wummun!" vociferated Donald; "gin ye know ony better way, now is the time to let me know it!"

"It is not always necessary to make a direct accusation," said the lawyer who was asking damages because insinuations had been made against his client's good name. "You may have heard of the woman who called to the hired girl, 'Mary, Mary. come here and take the parrot downstairs--the master has dropped his collar button!'"

Little Bartholomew's mother overheard him swearing like a mule-driver. He displayed a fluency that overwhelmed her. She took him to task, explaining the wickedness of profanity as well as its vulgarity. She asked where he had learned all those dreadful words. Bartholomew announced that Cavert, one of his playmates, had taught him.

Cavert's mother was straightway informed and Cavert was brought to book. He vigorously denied having instructed Bartholomew, and neither threats nor tears could make him confess. At last he burst out:

"I didn't tell Bartholomew any cuss words. Why should I know how to cuss any better than he does? Hasn't his father got an automobile, too?"

They were in Italy together.

"If you would let me curse them black and blue," said the groom, "we shouldn't have to wait so long for the trunks."

"But, darling, please don't. It would distress me so," murmured the bride.

The groom went off, but quickly returned with the porters before him trundling the trunks at a double quick.

"Oh, dearest, how did you do it? You didn't--?"

"Not at all. I thought of something that did quite as well. I said, '_S-s-s-susquehanna, R-r-r-rappahannock!'"--Cornelia C. Ward_.

A school girl was required to write an essay of two hundred and fifty words about a motorcar. She submitted the following:

"My uncle bought a motorcar. He was riding in the country when it busted up a hill. I guess this is about fifty words. The other two hundred are what my uncle said when he was walking back to town, but they are not fit for publication."

The ashman was raising a can of ashes above his head to dump the contents into his cart, when the bottom of the can came out. Ethel saw it and ran in and told her mother.

"I hope you didn't listen to what he said," the mother remarked.

"He didn't say a word to me," replied the little girl; "he just walked right off by the side of his cart, talking to God."

A young man entered the jeweler's store and bought a ring, which he ordered engraved. The jeweler asked what name.

"George Osborne to Harriet Lewis, but I prefer only the initials, G.O. to H.L."

For it comes to pass oft that a terrible oath, with a swaggering accent sharply twanged off, gives manhood more approbation than ever proof itself would have earned him.--_Shakespeare_.

PROHIBITION

"Talking about dry towns, have you ever been in Leavenworth, Kansas?" asked the commercial traveler in the smoking-car. "No? Well, that's a dry town for you, all right."

"They can't sell liquor at all there?" asked one of the men.