A gentleman in conversation with his wife at dinner, said, “Mary, I
heard a good conundrum down town to-day. If the devil should lose his
tail, where would he go to get it repaired?” The answer was, “In the
place where they re-tail bad spirits.” In the course of the evening a
lady visitor dropped in, and Mary remarked, “Oh, I must tell you a good
thing my husband got off at dinner. If the devil should lose his tail,
where would he get it repaired?” The lady confessed her inability to
answer, whereupon Mary said, “Why it’s where they sell liquor by the
glass.”
“I’ve been digging over my garden,” said Brown, “and I’m all worn out.”
“Ah!” remarked Fogg; “a new variety of earthenware, eh?” Fenderson, who
was present, thought it was a good joke, and seeing Smith a short time
afterward, of course he had to tell it. “I say, Smith,” said he, “Fogg
just got off a neat thing. Brown was saying that he was all worn out
digging in his garden, and Fogg asked him if that wasn’t a new kind of
crockery-ware. What do you think of that?” “I don’t see the point.”
“Darned if I do, either, now; but I thought I did when Fogg told it.”
A college professor, on parting with a student who had called on him,
noticed that he had a new coat, and remarked that it was too short.
The student, with an air of resignation, replied, “It will be long
enough before I get another.”
The professor enjoyed the joke heartily, and going to a meeting of the
college faculty just afterwards, he entered the room in great glee and
said, “Young Sharp got off such a good joke just now. He called on me a
little while ago, and as he was leaving I noticed his new coat, and told
him it was too short, and he said, ‘It will be a long time before I get
another.’”
No one laughed, and the professor, sobering down, remarked, “It don’t
seem as funny as when he said it.”
Sam Ward was once seated opposite a well-known Senator at a dinner in
Washington. This Senator was very bald, and the light shining on the
breadth of scalp attracted Ward’s attention.
“Can you tell me,” he asked his neighbor, “why the Senator’s head is
like Alaska?”
“I’m sure I don’t know.”
“Because it’s a great white bear place.”
The neighbor was immensely tickled, and he hailed the Senator across the
table:
“Say, Senator, Ward’s just got off a very smart thing about you.”
“What is it?”
“Do you know why your head is like Alaska?”
“No.”
“Because it’s a great place for white bears.”
A few miles beyond Hammersmith, a village on the banks of the Thames, in
England, is another village called Turnham Green. One day at a tavern
the peas were of an unmistakable yellow, and one of the guests said to
the waiter that he ought to send them to Hammersmith.
“Why?” asked the waiter. “Because,” returned the wag, “that’s the best
way to _Turnham Green_.”
This was overheard by Oliver Goldsmith, who, a few days afterwards,
undertook to palm the _bon mot_ off as his own; therefore, calling the
waiter to him, he pointed to the peas, which were very far from green,
and told him to take them to Hammersmith.
“Why?” asked the other. “Because that is the way to _make ’em_ green.”
As the point of the joke was lost, nobody laughed, whereat Goldsmith
said in an angry tone, “Why don’t you laugh? That was an excellent joke
when I heard it a week ago, and I laughed heartily at it.”
An unfortunate attempt at reproducing another’s wit was made by a man
who had more money than education. He did not understand the pun, but
judged from the applause with which it was greeted that it must be
excellent. During the dinner at which he was a guest, a waiter let a
boiled tongue slip off the plate on which he was bearing it, and it fell
on the table.
The host at once apologized for the mishap as a _lapsus linguæ_ (slip of
the tongue). The joke was the best thing at the dinner, and our friend
concluded to bring it up at his own table.
He accordingly invited his company, and instructed a servant to let fall
a roast of beef as he was bringing it to the table.
When the “accident” occurred, he exclaimed: “That’s a _lapsus linguæ_.”
Nobody laughed, and he said again, “I say that’s a _lapsus linguæ_,” and
still no one laughed.
A screw was loose somewhere; so he told about the tongue falling, and
they did laugh.
A red-haired lady, who was ambitious of literary distinction, found but
a poor sale for her book. A gentleman, in speaking of her
disappointment, said: “Her hair is red [read] if her book is not.” An
auditor, in attempting to relate the joke elsewhere, said, “She has red
hair, if her book hasn’t.”
“Why is this,” said the waiter, holding up a common kitchen utensil,
“more remarkable than Napoleon Bonaparte? Because Napoleon was a great
man, but this is a grater.” When the funny man reproduced it in his
circle, he asked the question right, but answered it, “Because Napoleon
was a great man, but this is a nutmeg grater.”
A man who owns a book store facetiously remarked that he couldn’t leave
Chicago this summer because he kept stationery. Smarty heard him, and he
went away to spring a joke. This is the way he sprung it: “Mitchell
can’t go out of town this summer. Why?” “Don’t know.” “Because he sells
books and papers.” And he never can understand why the other fellow
didn’t laugh.
In a certain court in Maine the proceedings were delayed by the failure
of a witness named Sarah Mony to arrive. After waiting a long time for
Sarah the court concluded to wait no longer, and wishing to crack his
little joke, remarked, “This court will adjourn without Sarah-mony.”
Everybody laughed except one man, who sat in solemn meditation for five
minutes, and then burst into a hearty guffaw, exclaiming, “I see it! I
see it!” When he went home he tried to tell the joke to his wife. “There
was a witness named Mary Mony who didn’t come,” said he, “and so the
court said, ‘We’ll adjourn without Mary-mony,’” “I don’t see any point
to that,” said his wife. “I know it,” said he, “I didn’t at first; but
you will in about five minutes.”
It is interesting to observe how the old stories turn up, in brand-new
clothes, but the same old stories. A Boston paper said that Dr. Oliver
Wendell Holmes and the venerable Dr. Peabody, of Cambridge, once had an
appointment to see a statue of Eurydice. Dr. Holmes arrived first, and
when a few moments later his friend drove up in a cab he greeted him
with the very obvious pun: “Ah, you rid, I see.” Dr. Peabody was
wonderfully pleased with this sally, and on his return attempted to
repeat it to his family. “Dr. Holmes was extremely witty this
afternoon,” he said. “We went to see the Eurydice, and when I drove up
he said just as quick as a flash, ‘Ah, Doctor, I see you came in a
buggy.’” The same week that this appeared in print the following
appeared in a New York weekly journal: Speaking of how some people
always misquote, a Southern lady once told the following: “A cavalry
officer, bespattered with mud, entered an opera box during the
representation of ‘Orpheus and Eurydice,’ and exclaimed: ‘Well I have
just ridden ten miles to see Orpheus—’ ‘And Eurydice,’ remarked a young
belle, amid much laughter. Having occasion to visit the opposite box, he
was asked what caused all that laughter, whereupon he laughed heartily
and said, ‘Oh, that Miss Eyre is the wittiest girl I know; when I said I
had come to see Orpheus,’ she said, ‘And I presume that you came on
horseback, Captain.’”
Fenderson heard a good joke the other day about a man who had two cork
legs, the key of the same being that he was born in Cork. Fenderson
determined to spring it at the supper table. And this is how he did it:
“I heard a funny thing to-day. It was about a man who had two cork legs,
and he got along just as well as anybody else, and he suffered with cold
feet, too. They were cork legs, you know, because he was born in Dublin.
Good joke, eh? No? It doesn’t seem to be much of a joke, that’s a fact;
but you’d ought to hear the fellows laugh when they heard it last night.
I laughed myself, but there doesn’t seem to be much in it, after all. I
guess the fun was in the way that chap told it.”