Part 2

Two Irishmen, long enemies, met one day, and one of them said: “What’s the sinse of two intilligent min goin’ along, year after year, like a couple of wild cats spittin’ at each other? Here we live in the same tiniment, and ’tis a burnin’ shame that we do be actin’ like a couple of boobies. Come along wid yer and shake hands, and we’ll make up and be friends.” Which they did, and then they went to an adjacent saloon to cement the friendship with a glass of grog. Both stood at the bar in silence. One looked at the other and said: “What are you thinkin’ about?” “O’m thinkin’ the same thing that you are.” “Oh, so ye’re startin’ again, are you?”

* * * * *

“Mr. Mulligan,” said Dennis, “you must have binifitted by the death of your mother-in-law, for whom you had shmall affection while she lived.”

“I did.”

“What did she leave you?”

“She left me alone—isn’t that enough?”

“But I understand you’ve been spinding a hundred dollars, if you’ve spint a cent, to get her out of purgatory.”

“Whisht now, and isn’t it worth it to get her out before I get in.”

* * * * *

“Shure,” said Clancy, as he peeled the paper off a tomato can and threw it to the goat; “an’ it’s a quare langwidge thot we Amer’kans hov. Oi wint out to this Fort Hamilton th’ other day wid Biddy boi me soide, for Oi got to thinkin’ thot it wur th’ dooty av ivry citizen to make himself acquainted wid all thot phwich makes his counthry great. An’ it’s barely in the grounds we are befoor wan av thim sentries sez, sez he, ‘Who goes there?’”

“‘Phwere?’ I asks, turnin’ round.

“Who goes there!” he yells wance agin wid a thrifle higher infliction.

“‘Oi asked yez phwere?’ sez Oi wid some slight asper-ritty in me tones.

“Now phwin he yells ‘Who goes there?’ agin it’s mad Oi got. Oi tould him thot Oi wuz willin’ loike a gintlemon to hilp him wid his quistion, but thot Oi didn’t see anybody goin’ there or annyphwere, an’ thot Oi thought Oi wuz bein’ guyed, an’ afther callin’ him a sassenach Oi threatened to divist his donkey hid av it’s ears, phwich th’ same led to a foight, an’ the foight led me to th’ guard-house. How th’ divil wur Oi to know thot ‘Who goes there?’ means ‘Who are yez?’

“Shure an’ it’s a quare langwidge thot we Amer’kans hov.”

* * * * *

Mike and Murphy had hired a boat for the day. All went well till the afternoon, when, unfortunately, the boat sprang a leak and water rushed in at a terrible rate. Murphy began bailing as hard as he could; but looking up a moment or so later, he saw Mike apparently busy over something else at the other end of the boat.

“Hi, man,” he cried angrily, “what are ye doing?”

“Shure,” said Mike, “I’m boring another hole, bedad, to let the water out!”

* * * * *

TOO PREVIOUS.

A servant went to consult a fortune-teller, and she returned wailing dismally.

“Did she predict some great trouble?” her mistress asked, sympathetically.

“Och! mum, sich terrible news,” moaned Norah, rocking backward and forward, wringing her hands. “She tould me that my father wurks hard for a living shoveling coals and tending foires.”

“But that’s no disgrace or sorrow,” said her mistress, a trifle vexed.

“Och! mum, my poor father,” sobbed Norah, “he’s bin dead these noine years!”

* * * * *

An amusing story of amateur sport comes from Rockville, Maryland, where each year there is held a series of races “for all comers.”

The sun was blazing on a field of hot, excited horses and men, all waiting for a tall raw-boned beast to yield to the importunities of the starter and get into line.

The patience of the starter was nearly exhausted. “Bring up that horse!” he shouted. “Bring him up! You’ll get into trouble pretty soon if you don’t!”

The rider of the refractory beast, a youthful Irishman, yelled back: “I can’t help it. This here’s been a cab horse, and he won’t start till the door shuts, an’ I ain’t got no door!”

* * * * *

GENUINE IRISH RETORT.

At the Criminal Court, a few days since, a learned gentleman, dissatisfied at his success with an Irish witness, complained to the court. Paddy exclaimed, “I’m no lawyer, yer honor, and he wants to puzzle me.”

Counsel—“Come, now, do you swear you are no lawyer?”

Witness—“Faith, an’ I do; and you may swear the same thing about yourself, without fear of being liable for perjury.”

* * * * *

A gentleman visited the house of a friend. The butler, an Irishman, acted very kindly toward him. He waited upon him at dinner, brushed his clothes, and saw him into his carriage. The gentleman, who was very miserly, never offered a tip, so, as a little reminder, Pat said to him: “Faith, sor, if you lose your purse on the way, remember you didn’t pull it out hereabouts.”

* * * * *

JUST THAT QUICK?

Casey reached heaven in good time.

“Hello, St. Peter,” said he, “’tis a foine job you have.”

“Right, Casey. ’Tis a great place here. We count a million years as a minute and a million dollars as a cent.”

“Is that so,” said Casey, wonderingly. “Well, it’s money I need. Well you lend me a cent, St. Peter?”

“Sure,” replied St. Peter. “In a minute.”

* * * * *

Pat, who had lost his way in the mazes of a large exposition, finally went up to one of the guards and said:

“Will yez tell me the way to the goin’ out intrance?”

* * * * *

MAYBE SO.

In an Irish court-house an old man was called into the witness box, and being confused and somewhat near-sighted he went up the stairs that led to the bench instead of those that led to the box. The Judge good-humoredly said:

“Is it a Judge you want to be, my good man?”

“Ah, sure, yer worship,” was the reply. “I’m an old man now, and mebbe it’s all I’m fit for.”

* * * * *

Not long since Norah was about to industriously swing the broom around the parlor furniture, when she was summoned by her mistress.

“Before you sweep the parlor, Norah,” said the mistress as the servant girl entered the room, “I want to give you some advice about your broom.”

“Yes, mum,” was the wondering rejoinder of Norah; “phat’s the matter wid the broom?”

* * * * *

“Begorra, Moike, we can’t go down thot road.”

“An’ whoy not, Pat?”

“Sure, me bye, it says ‘For Pedestrians Only,’ an’ we both be Oirishmen.”

* * * * *

McGinty was walking along Broadway when it began to rain. In front he thought he saw his friend Dugan, with an umbrella.

He slapped him on the back and said, jokingly: “Halloa! Give me that umbrella!”

When the man turned and McGinty saw his face he realized that he was an utter stranger. Naturally, he was embarrassed. But the other man appeared even more surprised, and immediately handed over the umbrella.

“I beg your pardon,” he apologized. “I didn’t know it belonged to you.”

* * * * *

Cassidy, a green brakeman on the Colorado Mudline was making his first trip to Ute Pass. They were going up a very steep grade, and with unusual difficulty the engineer succeeded in reaching the top. At the Cascade station, looking out of his cab, the engineer saw the new brakeman and said with a sigh of relief:

“I tell you what, my lad, we had a job to get up there, didn’t we?”

“Shure and we did,” said Cassidy, “and if I hadn’t put on the brakes, we’d have slipped back.”

* * * * *

EITHER OR AYTHER.

Two Irishmen, Pat and Mike, stood looking at bricklayers who were working on a building that was being erected, when the following conversation was overheard:

Mike—“Pat, kin yez tell me what kapes them bricks together?”

Pat—“Sure, Mike; it’s the mortar.”

Mike—“Not by a dom sight; that keeps them apart.”

* * * * *

“The noight was that dark, Moike,” said Pat, while relating a past experience; “that no matther how far oi looked oi couldn’t see a step ahead of me.”

* * * * *

An Irishman came home from work one day and said to his wife: “Mary, we had an awful accident on the job to-day!”

“Was annyone hurt?” she asked.

“Well,” he said, “there was twenty-one Eyetalians and one Irishman killed!”

“Well,” said she, “isn’t it too bad about the poor fellow!”

* * * * *

The train had stopped, and the fat old Irish woman put her head out of the window and inquired of a young railway porter what it was stopping for.

The young man was inclined to be facetious.

“Engine out late last night, ma’am,” he remarked, with a smile, “so she’s got a thirst on her this morning; they’re giving ’er a drop o’ water.”

“And are ye shure it’s water?” queried the dame.

“If you’ll wait a minute I’ll inquire whether they’re givin’ ’er port wine,” he grinned.

“Shure, and never mind, young man, don’t be troublin’ yoursilf,” came the answer. “I thought, perhaps, by the way we’ve been gitting along, it was sloe gin!”

* * * * *

O’Donohue:—Oi got the crate of chickens you was sendin’ me allright, but next time Oi wist ye’d fasten them up, more securely. Comin’ from the station the damn things get out. Oi spent hours scouring the neighborhood and thin only found tin of them.

McGinty:—S-s-sh! Oi only sent six.

* * * * *

BREAKING THE NEWS.

Pat had been delegated by his fellow employees to tell Mrs. Casey the news of her husband’s accidental death. On the way to the Casey home, Pat pondered on how to break the news to the widow. Finally he hit on what seemed to him a most humane way of preparing Mrs. Casey for the sad news.

Knowing the violent hatred which Mrs. Casey as well as all loyal Irishmen have for the A. P. A., he said on greeting the woman:

“Ah, Mrs. Casey, it is bad news I have to bring you. Your husband, Mike, has turned an A. P. A.”

“Mike turned A. P. A.! The scoundrel, I hope he is dead.”

“He is,” answered Pat.

* * * * *

THEIR USE.

“What good are the figures set down in these railway time-tables?” asked the sarcastic and angry would-be passenger.

“Why,” explained the genial Irish station-master, “if it weren’t for them figures we’d have no way of findin’ out how late the trains are.”

* * * * *

Tom Callahan got a job on the section working for a railroad. The superintendent told him to go along the line looking for washouts.

“And don’t be as long-winded in your next reports as you have been in the past,” said the superintendent; “just report the condition of the roadbed as you find it, and don’t use a lot of needless words that are not to the point. Write like a business letter, not like a love-letter.”

Tom proceeded on his tour of inspection and when he reached the river, he wrote his report to the superintendent:

“Sir: Where the railroad was, the river is.”

* * * * *

An unfaithful steward had embezzled a large sum of money, and his employer asked advice from friends as to how he should be dealt with.

“Get rid of him at once,” advised an Englishman. “Keep him on and deduct the sum from his wages,” said a Scotchman.

“But,” said the landlord, “the sum he has embezzled is far bigger than his wages.”

“Then raise his wages,” suggested an Irishman.

* * * * *

A Galway man named Pat Carr was met one day by an English tourist, who said to him:

“What’s your name?”

“Carr,” said Pat.

“Well, well,” said the Englishman, “you’re the first car I ever saw going without an ass, so you’re a great curiosity to me.”

“Well,” said Pat, “you’re not the first ass I saw going without a car, so you’re no curiosity to me.”

* * * * *

During some building operations it was necessary for the workmen to walk across a single plank some distance from the ground. Whenever it came to Pat’s turn, the foreman noticed that he walked across on all fours. So he went up to Pat and asked contemptuously:

“What’s the trouble, man? Are you afraid of walking on the plank?”

“No, begorra,” said Pat, “but I’m afraid of walking off it.”

* * * * *

“What do we need for dinner, Bridget?” asked the lady of the house.

“Shure, mum, Oi tripped over th’ cat an’ we nade a complete new set av dishes.”

* * * * *

A GET-RICH-QUICK SCHEME.

Two young Irishmen in a Canadian regiment were going into the trenches for the first time, and their captain promised them five shillings each for every German they killed.

Pat lay down to rest, while Mick performed the duty of watching. Pat had not lain long when he was awakened by Mick shouting:

“They’re comin’! They’re comin’!”

“Who’s comin’?” shouts Pat.

“The Germans,” replies Mick.

“How many are there?”

“About fifty thousand.”

“Begorra,” shouts Pat, jumping up and grabbing his rifle, “our fortune’s made!”

* * * * *

Patrick had called on his Betsy and she gave him a handsome helping of her special make of apple pie. Patrick was loud in its praise.

“I tried a new way,” said Betsy, beaming. “I put a few gooseberries in to flavor it.”

“Begorra!” cried Patrick. “If a few gooseberries give so good a flavor to an apple pie, what a darlint of an apple pie it would be made o’ gooseberries entoirely!”

* * * * *

PROVED BY EXPERIMENT.

Mouldy Mike—These ’ere newspapers is just a pack o’ lies, that’s wot they are.

Ragged Robert—Wot yeh been readin’.

“I read an account of a feller from New York wot went inter a big hotel in a small town, an’ said he wanted to buy the hotel, an’ made ’em an offer, an’ give ’em a check wot wasn’t no good, an’ lived there a week on the fat o’ the land ’fore he had to light out w’en the check came back, an’ it never cost him a cent—that’s wot the paper said.”

“Mebby that’s true.”

“No, it ain’t.”

“How do yer know?”

“How do I know? Why, quick as I read it I tried it meself—an’ they kicked me out.”

* * * * *

Pat, with a little bit of drink in him, was standing on the sidewalk sneering at a Jewish peddler. The peddler stood the jeers for some time, but Pat became too personal.

“Don’t you know,” said the Hebrew, “that the country is financed by the Jews?”

“Maybe they does,” retorted Pat, “but bejabbers the Irish runs it.”

* * * * *

A sewerman returned home one distressingly hot day thoroughly exhausted, to find his better-half also tired out after spending the greater part of the day at the washtub. At the time he entered, however, she was seated, fanning herself vigorously. “Ain’t ye got no supper?” he asked somewhat angrily. “Supper, is it?” she asked. “Go on wid you! Me all tired out from a hard day’s wurruk in the hate, an’ you come home an’ ask for yer supper! Aisy indade for you all day down in a nice cool sewer!”

* * * * *

“Which would yez rather be in, Casey, an explosion or a collision?” asked his friend McCarthy.

“In a collision,” replied Casey.

“Why?”

“Because in a collision, there yez are; but in an explosion, where are yez?”

* * * * *

“What’s your name prisoner?”

“Casey, yer honor.”

“Your full name.”

“Casey, sorr, full or sober!”

* * * * *

“Arrah, me darlint,” cried Jamie O’Flanigan to his loquacious sweetheart, who had given him no opportunity of even answering her remarks during a two hours ride behind his little bay nags in his oyster wagon—“are yes afther knowing why yer cheeks are like my ponies there?”

“Shure, and it’s because they’re red, is it?” quoth the blushing Bridget.

“Faith and a better reason than that, mavourneen. Because there is one of them each side of a waggin’ tongue!”

* * * * *

Pat and Mike were passing the butcher’s stall, where there was a pair of chickens for sale.

“We’ll buy them,” said Mike, “and who ever has the best dream to-night can cook them for himself to-morrow.”

When they awoke that morning Pat related his dream.

“I dreamt that angels carried me up to heaven.”

“You’re right,” chimed Mike. “I saw you going up and thought you would never come back, so I got up, cooked the fowls and ate them.”

* * * * *

IN IRELAND.

“We never needed any of them new-fangled scales in Ireland,” said O’Hara. “There’s an aisy way to weigh a pig without scales. You get a plank and put it across a stool. Then you get a big stone. Put the pig on one end of the plank and the stone on the other end, and shift the plank until they balance. Then you guess the weight of the stone and you have the weight of the pig.”

* * * * *

The Irishman announced that he was about to be married.

“Married!” exclaimed his friend. “An old man like you?”

“Well, you see,” the old man explained, “it’s just because I’m getting an ould bhoy now. ’Tis a foine thing, Pat, to have a wife near ye to close the eyes of ye when ye come to the end.”

“Arrah, now, ye old fule!” exclaimed Pat. “Don’t be so foolish. What do ye know about it? Close yer eyes, indade! I’ve had a couple of thim, an’, faith, they both of thim opened mine!”

* * * * *

The Irishman was walking along the bank of the river. He was fuming with rage, for that day he had a dispute with a neighbor over the ownership of a pig. Suddenly a cry for help rent the air and, turning round, he saw a man struggling in the water.

Seeing Mike on the bank, the man in the water waved his hand and shouted:

“Hey, mate, drope me a line!”

In a flash the man on the bank recognized his adversary in the pig dispute. Thrusting his hands in his pockets he made to resume his walk, remarking over his shoulder:

“Shure, but there ain’t no post offices where ye’re goin’ to!”

* * * * *

A ganger on one of our large lines of railways had a keen Irish wit. One warm afternoon, while walking along the line, he found one of his men placidly sleeping on the embankment. The “boss” looked disgustedly at the delinquent for a full minute, and then remarked:

“Slape on, ye lazy spalpeen, slape on, fur as long as you slape you’ve got a job, but when you wake up you ain’t got none.”

* * * * *

WOULDN’T NEED TO.

Pat walked into the Post Office. After getting into the telephone box he called a wrong number. As there was no such number the switch attendant did not answer him. Pat shouted again, but received no answer.

The lady of the Post Office opened the door and told him to shout a little louder, which he did, but still no answer.

Again she said he would require to speak louder.

Pat got angry at this, and, turning to the lady, said:

“Begorra, if I could shout any louder I wouldn’t use your bloomin’ ould telephone at all!”

* * * * *

Pat had just arrived from Ireland when Mike, who had been in America for some years, spied him.

“Faith, Pat!” exclaimed Mike, “what are you doing over here?”

“I’ve come over,” answered Pat, “to try if I can make an honest living.”

“Begorra, Mike, me boy, that’s dead aisy over here, for it’s dommed little competition you’ll have in this country.”

* * * * *

In the court-house an Irishman stood charged with stealing a watch from a fellow citizen. He stoutly denied the impeachment, and brought a counter-accusation against his accuser for assault and battery committed with a frying-pan. The judge was inclined to take a common sense view of the case, and regarding the prisoner, said, “Why did you allow the prosecutor, who is a smaller man than yourself, to assault you, without resistance? Had you nothing in your hand to defend yourself with?” “Bedad, your honor,” answered Pat, “I had his watch, but what was that against a frying-pan?”

* * * * *

Pat (reading notice on bank door)—“This bank will reopen after the meeting of the assignees.” “Begob, it will be a long time before their assandknees meet.”

* * * * *

Clancy:—Dugan ate something that poisoned him.

Dick:—Croquette?

Clancy:—Not yit begorra, but he’s very sick.

* * * * *

For three solid hours the captain had been lecturing his men on “the duties of a soldier,” and he thought it was time to see how much they had understood of his discourse.

Casting his eyes round the room, he fixed on Private Murphy as his first victim.

“Private Murphy,” he asked, “why should a soldier be ready to die for his country?”

Private Murphy scratched his head for a moment and then a smile of enlightenment crossed his face.

“Sure, Captain,” he said, pleasantly, “you’re quite right. Why should he?”

* * * * *

Maggie: “What’s wrong with the car? It squeaks dreadfully.”

Patty: “Shure and it can’t be helped; there’s pig-iron in the axles.”

* * * * *

Mistress: “Mary, were you entertaining a man in the kitchen last night?”

Mary: “That’s for him to say, mum. I was doin’ the best I could with the materials I could find.”

* * * * *

Pat Rooney was a new arrival on the job. Having gone to the top of the building and failed to return, the foreman shouted up:

“Come on, Pat, what’s keeping ye?”

“Sure,” said Pat, “I can’t find my way down.”

“Well, come down the way ye went up,” shouted the foreman.

“Faith, an’ I won’t,” says Pat, “for I came up head first.”

* * * * *

It was during the dry spell a few months ago, and a shower having come up, Dr. Blank remarked to his gardener, “This rain will do a lot of good, Patrick.”

“Ye may well say that, sorr,” returned Pat. “Shure an hour of it now will do more good in five minutes than a month of it would do in a week at any other time.”

* * * * *

REVERSED.

Mike—“What makes you order ice cream for the first course and soup for the last?”

Pat—“Well, my stomach is upset, so I eat the meal backwards.”

* * * * *

NONE OF HIS BUSINESS.

Pat (shyly)—I want to see some weddin’ rings.

Jeweler—Eighteen karats?

Pat (loudly)—No, I’ve been atin’ onions and I don’t know that it is any of your business what I’ve been atin’.

* * * * *

Pat: “Phwat was the last card Oi dealt ye, Mike?”

Mike: “A spade.”

Pat: “Oi knew it was, Oi saw ye spit on yer hand before ye picked it up.”

* * * * *

“If everyone in the world was as dishonest as you are,” remarked an Irish judge, as he addressed a swindler before him; “I don’t know what would become of the rest of us.”

* * * * *

“It’s thrue,” said Paddy to Dennis one day, “it wor a grand soight. But whoile ye’re standin’ sit down, an’ Oi’ll tell ye all about it.”

* * * * *

MIKE’S PRECAUTION.

Mike—“Begorra, an’ I had to go thru the woods the other night where Casey was murdered last year an’ that they say is haunted, an’, bedad, I walked backward the whole way.”

Pat—“An’ what for wuz we after doin’ that?”

Mike—“Faith, man, so that I could see if anything wuz comin’ up behind me.”

* * * * *

Mrs. Murphy: “I want to see some mirrors.”

Shopwalker: “Hand mirrors, Madam?”

Mrs. Murphy: “No. Some that you can see your face in.”

* * * * *

Patrick—“Will you marry me?”

Intended:—“Yes, darlin’.”

“Darlin’, why don’t you say something.”

Patrick:—“Oi’ve said too much already.”

* * * * *

Mike—Yus, poor Sullivan is dead. He hadn’t got an enemy in the world.

Pat—What did he die of?

Mike—Oh; he wur killed in a foight.

* * * * *

ASPIRATION.

An Irish mother who had occasion to reprove her eldest son exclaimed, “I just wish that your father was at home some evening to see how you behave yourself when he is out!”

* * * * *