after he had gone to bed there echoed through the house a shrill and
sudden lamentation. His mother rushed upstairs with solicitude and
pity.
"Nurse says," he sobbed, "that Paddy has been run over and killed."
"But, dear, I told you that at dinner, and you didn't seem to be
troubled at all."
"No; but--but I didn't know you said Paddy. I--I thought you said
daddy!"
PUP--"Great cats; That's a nerve! Somebody has put up a building right
where I buried a bone!"--_Puck_.
_See also_ Dachshunds.
DOMESTIC FINANCE
LITTLE TOMMY--"What does 'close quarters' mean, Ma?"
WEARY MOTHER--"It's a definition of my trying to get twenty-five cents
from your father."
"Ma, what does the 'home-stretch' mean?"
"Making a fifteen-dollar-a-week allowance go around, my son."
WIFE--"Ta-ta, dearie; I'll write before the end of the week."
HUSBAND--"Good gracious, Alice, you must make that check last longer
than that!"
"Dearie," said the young married man, "I have to go to New York on
business. It will only take a day or so and I hope you won't miss me
too much while I'm gone, but--"
"I won't," answered his young wife, positively, "because I'm going
with you."
"I wish you could, dear, but it won't be convenient this time. What
would you want to go for, anyhow? I'm going to be too busy to be with
you, and--"
"I have to go. I need clothes."
"But, darling--you can get all the clothes you want right here on
Euclid Avenue."
"Thank you. That's all I wanted."
"I'm just waiting for my husband to complain about my extravagance
this month."
"Ready to give him an argument, eh?"
"You bet I am. By mistake his golf-club checks came to the house, and
I've got 'em."
"You are not economical," said the infuriated husband.
"Well," flashed his wife, "if you don't call a woman economical who
saves her wedding dress for a possible second marriage, I'd love to
know just what you do call economy."
"But your fiancé has such a small salary, how are you going to live?"
"Oh, we're going to economize. We're going to do without such a lot of
things that Jack needs."
"Are you an expert accountant," asked the prospective employer.
"Yes, sir," said the applicant.
"Your written references seem to be all right, but tell me more about
yourself."
"Well, my wife kept a household account for thirty days. One night
after supper I sat down and in less than an hour found out how much we
owed our grocer."
"Hang up your hat and coat," said the employer with a glad smile. "The
job is yours."
HE--"My dear, I've warned you before, and now I must insist that we
try to live within our income."
SHE--"Oh, very well, if you want to be considered eccentric by
everybody in our set."
"Now," said the bridegroom to the bride, when they returned from their
honeymoon trip, "let us have a clear understanding before we settle
down to married life. Are you the president or the vice-president of
the society?"
"I want to be neither president nor vice-president," she answered. "I
will be content with a subordinate position."
"What position is that, my dear?"
"Treasurer."
SHE--"When we go anywhere now we have to take the street-car. Before
our marriage you always called a taxi."
HE--"Exactly. And that's the reason we have to go in the street-car
now."
"My wife certainly makes my salary go a long way."
"So does mine--so far that none of it ever comes back."
"I'm having trouble in supporting my wife."
"You don't know what trouble is. Try not supporting her."
WILLIS--"The Highfliers are going to give up their big house this
winter."
MRS. WILLIS--"You must be mistaken. I was talking with Mrs. Highflier
only yesterday."
WILLIS--"Well. I was talking with the mortgagee only this
morning."--_Puck_.
In a certain home-missionary movement every participant was to
contribute a dollar that she had earned herself by hard work. The
night of the collection of the dollars came, and various and droll
were the stories of earning the money. One woman had shampooed
hair, another had made doughnuts, another had secured newspaper
subscriptions, and so on.
The chairman turned to a handsome woman in the front row.
"Now, madam, it is your turn," he said. "How did you earn your
dollar?"
"I got it from my husband," she answered.
"Oh!" said he. "From your husband? There was no hard work about that."
The woman smiled faintly.
"You don't know my husband," she said.
"Before we were married, you used to send around a dozen roses every
week," said she.
"Roses are easy," replied he. "This week I'm going to send around two
tons of coal and a rib-roast."
LANDLADY--"That new boarder is either a married man or a widower."
PRETTY DAUGHTER--"Why, ma, he says he is a bachelor."
LANDLADY--"Well, I don't believe it. When he opens his pocketbook to
pay his board he always turns his back to me."
"Hicks promised to give his wife a dime for every one he spends for
cigars."
"How does it work?"
"First rate. You see we meet every day and he buys me the drinks and I
buy him the cigars."
DOMESTIC RELATIONS
HUSBAND (newly married)--"Don't you think, love, if I were to smoke,
it would spoil the curtains?"
WIFE--"Ah, you are the most unselfish and thoughtful husband in the
world; certainly it would."
HUSBAND--"Well, then, take the curtains down."
Willie's grandmother had come to visit them.
"Are you mamma's mother?" asked Willie by way of conversation.
"No, dear. I'm your grandmother on your father's side."
"Well," said Willie decidedly (he was an observing little fellow),
"all I got to say is you're on the wrong side."
SHE--"Just think of it! A few words mumbled by the minister and people
are married."
HE--"Yes, and, by George, a few words mumbled by a sleeping husband
and people are divorced."
Two friends met in the Strand the morning after an airplane raid.
"Any damage done your way?" the first asked.
"Damage! Rather!" answered the other. "Father and mother were blown
clean out of the window. The neighbors say it's the first time they've
been seen to leave the house together in seventeen years."
_See also_ Families; Marriage.
DREAMS
"Mother, wasn't that a funny dream I had last night?" said a little
boy who was busily engaged with his breakfast cereal.
"Why, I'm sure I don't know!" replied his mother. "I haven't the
slightest idea what your dream was about."
"Why, mother, of course you know!" said the boy reproachfully. "You
were in it."
DRINKING
If all be true that I do think,
There are five reasons we should drink;
Good wine--a friend--or being dry--
Or lest we should be by and by--
Or any other reason why.
--_Dr. Henry Aldrich_.
Maybe one swallow doesn't make a summer, but it would brighten it up
considerably.
_Dangerous Advice_
CURATE--"You should be careful! Don't you know that drink is mankind's
worst enemy?"
JEEMS--"Yes; but don't you teach us to love our enemies?"
"Pussyfoot" Johnson, whose effort to prohibitionize Scotland failed
recently, was discussing his failure with a New York editor.
"Yes, I failed," he ended, "and I'm very sorry. Conditions in Scotland
are very bad."
"Did you ever hear the story of the deacon's daughter? This story
illustrates Scottish conditions very well.
"The wife of a Peebles deacon took a bath one evening, and as it was
rainy, chill November weather, she swallowed a teaspoonful or two of
whisky after her bath to keep herself from catching cold. Then in
her dressing-gown she went to bid her little daughter good night. She
stooped over the child's cot and a kiss was exchanged. After the kiss
the little girl drew back sharply, sniffed and said:
"'Why, mamma, you've been using father's perfume, haven't
you?'"--_Detroit Free Press_.
"Now, Sam," said the speaker, "I want you to be present when I deliver
this speech."
"Yassuh."
"I want you to start the laughter and applause. Every time I take a
drink of water, you applaud; and every time I wipe my forehead with my
handkerchief, you laugh."
"You better switch dem signals, boss. It's a heap mo' liable to make
me laugh to see you standin' up dar deliberately takin' a drink o'
water."
A Washington business man, says the Saturday Evening Post, desiring
to test the relative efficiency of two makes of mucilage, handed the
bottles one morning to his shiny-faced negro messenger.
"Here, John," he said; "try these and see which is the stickiest."
John did not show up at the office again until about noon-time.
He approached his employer's desk somewhat cautiously and gingerly
deposited thereon the two bottles of mucilage.
"Well, John," asked the boss, "which did you find the stickiest?"
"It wuz lak dis, boss," was the reply: "Dis one gummed up ma mouf de
most; but de other one, de taste lasted de longest."
UNABLE SEAMAN--"When I come around again the surgeon, he says to me,
'I'm blooming sorry, mate, I don't know what I was thinking about,'
he says, 'but there's a sponge missin', and I believe it's sewed up
inside yer!' 'What's the odds,' I says, 'let it be.' An there it is to
this day."
GULLIBLE OLD GENTLEMAN--"Bless my soul! Don't it trouble you?"
UNABLE SEAMAN--"I don't feel no particular pain from it, but I do get
most uncommonly thirsty at times, sir."
_See also_ Drunkards; Temperance.
DRUNKARDS
The Lord Mayor of London had been dining pretty well, and Mr. Choate,
Ambassador to England, was seeing his Lordship to the door.
"Now, your Lordship, if you will allow me to advise you," said Mr.
Choate, "when you get to the sidewalk curb you will see two hansoms.
Take the one to the right: the one to the left doesn't exist."
An intoxicated man hailed a cab.
After he had climbed in, the cabby leaned over and asked, "What street
do you want?"
"What streets have you?" he inquired.
"Lots of 'em," smiled the cabby, humoring him.
"Gimme 'em all," he said, waving his arm grandly.
After they had been driving for several hours, the man in the cab
ordered a stop.
"How mush do I owe you?"
"Seven dollars and fifty cents."
"Well--you better drive back till you get to thirty-fi' shents, 'cause
thashall I got."
WIFEY--"I heard a noise when you came in last night."
HUBBY--"Perhaps it was the night falling."
WIFEY (coldly)--"No, it wasn't, it was the day breaking."
DUTCH
BIX--"I see there's a report from Holland that concrete bases for
German cannon have been found there."
DIX--"Don't believe a word you hear from Holland. The geography says
it is a low, lying country."
DYSPEPSIA
_Joy of Eating_
A well-known banker in a down-town restaurant was eating mush and
milk.
"What's the matter?" inquired a friend.
"Got dyspepsia."
"Don't you enjoy your meals?"
"Enjoy my meals?" snorted the indignant dyspeptic. "My meals are
merely guide-posts to take medicine before or after."
"Dyspepsia seldom kills anyone," said Akinside, "but--"
"No," returned old Festus Pester. "It makes them so talkative that
everybody else wants to kill them."
EATING
_If We Didn't Have To Eat_
Life would be an easy matter
If we didn't have to eat.
If we never had to utter,
"Won't you pass the bread and butter,
Likewise push along that platter
Full of meat?"
Yes, if food were obsolete
Life would be a jolly treat,
If we didn't--shine or shower,
Old or young, 'bout every hour--
Have to eat, eat, eat, eat, eat--
'Twould be jolly if we didn't have to eat.
We could save a lot of money
If we didn't have to eat.
Could we cease our busy buying,
Baking, broiling, brewing, frying,
Life would then be oh, so sunny
And complete;
And we wouldn't fear to greet
Every grocer in the street
If we didn't--man and woman,
Every hungry, helpless human--
Have to eat, eat, eat, eat, eat--
We'd save money if we didn't have to eat.
All our worry would be over
If we didn't have to eat.
Would the butcher, baker, grocer
Get our hard-earned dollars? No, Sir!
We would then be right in clover
Cool and sweet.
Want and hunger we could cheat,
And we'd get there with both feet,
If we didn't--poor or wealthy,
Halt or nimble, sick or healthy--
Have to eat, eat, eat, eat, eat--
We could get there if we didn't have to eat.
--_Nixon Waterman_.
ECONOMY
TOM--"I've seen the girl I want to marry. I stood behind her at
the ticket window this morning and she took seven minutes to buy a
five-cent elevated ticket."
ALICE--"Did that make you want to marry her?"
TOM--"Yes, I figured out that she could never spend my income at that
rate."
BOOK AGENT--"This book will teach you the way to economize."
THE VICTIM--"That's no good to me. What I need is a book to teach me
how to live without economizing."
How oft economy grows gay
And boasts of its efficient work,
When it has merely stopped the pay
Of some two-thousand-dollar clerk!
Little June's father had just returned from the store and was opening
up some sheets of sticky fly-paper and placing it about the room. June
watched a minute and then burst out with:
"Oh, papa, down at the corner grocery you can get the paper with the
flies already caught. They have lots of it in the window."
"Well, Albert, I've been acting on your advice. I put a hundred
dollars in the bank this month."
"Fine! It isn't so hard, is it?"
"No; I simply tore up all the bills."--_Life_.
_See also_ Domestic finance; Thrift.
EDITORS
"An editor is a man who puts things in the paper, isn't he?"
"Oh, no, my son; an editor keeps things out of the paper."
The editor of the newspaper in a certain small southern town was given
an article to print, praising in very elegant language the life and
works of a certain southern colonel.
The colonel and the editor were not the best of friends.
The article came out, but in spelling "scarred," in that very
important phrase "battle scarred veteran," one "r" was omitted.
The colonel threatened violence but the editor promised to admit his
error in the next issue.
In the following issue, in large type, appeared: "The editor of this
paper regrets very much an error in spelling in our last issue. In
describing our most worthy colonel, instead of 'battle scared veteran'
it should read, 'bottle scarred veteran.'"
That day the editor ceased to edit. His wife was a widow.
A country editor wrote: "Brother, don't stop your paper just because
you don't agree with the editor. The last cabbage you sent us didn't
agree with us either, but we didn't drop you from our subscription
list on that account."
The girl reporter accepted the editor's invitation to dinner and when
asked how she enjoyed it, said:
"Oh, fine, but I'll never go to dinner with an editor again."
"Why not?"
"Well, the dinner was fine, but he blue-penciled about three-quarters
of my order."
You may know the trade classic about the exchange editor. The new
owner of the newspaper asked who that man was in the corner. "The
exchange editor," he was informed. "Well, fire him," said he. "All he
seems to do is sit there and read all day."
A little boy was given the stunt by his father to write an essay on
editors and here is the result:
"If an editor makes a mistake folks say he ought to be hung; but if
a doctor makes a mistake he buries it and people dassent say nothing
because doctors can read and write Latin. When the editor makes a
mistake there is lawsuits and a big fuss; but if a doctor makes one
there is a funeral, cut flowers and perfek silence. A doctor can use
a word a yard long without anyone knowing what it means; but if the
editor uses one he has to spell it. If the doctor goes to see another
man's wife he charges for the visit but if the editor goes he gets a
charge of buckshot. When the doctor gets drunk it's a case of being
overcome by the heat and if he dies it's from heart trouble; when an
editor gets drunk it's a case of too much booze and if he dies it's
the jim-jams. Any college can make a doctor; an editor has to be
born."
Wanted, an editor, who can read, write and argue politics, and at
the same time be religious, funny, scientific and historical at will,
write to please everybody, know everything, without asking or being
told, always having something good to say of everything and everybody
else, live on wind and make more money than enemies. For such a man, a
good opening will be made in the "graveyard." He is too good to live.
Life in a newspaper office is one compliment after another. "You look
so funny when you think," observed the blandishing Miss Harriette
Underbill as she passed the given point known as our desk late
yesterday afternoon.
COUNTRY EDITOR (to new assistant)--"I shall expect you to write all
the editorials, do the religious and sporting departments and turn out
a joke column."
ASSISTANT--"What are you going to do?"
"Edit your copy."
EDUCATION
Education--the sum total of all the things we haven't been taught.
WILLIE (doing his homework)--"What is the distance to the nearest
star, Auntie?"
"I'm sure I don't know, Willie."
"Well, I hope, then, you'll feel sorry tomorrow when I'm getting
punished for your ignorance."
Henry was the neighborhood magistrate. He had been settling a dispute
between two blockaders. The one in whose favor the verdict was cast
was filled with admiration for the facility with which Henry made out
the papers.
"You are one of those 'read' men, ain't you Henry?"
"Yes, I kin read right smart," modestly admitted Henry.
"You been to school, ain't you?" With just pride Henry nodded his
head.
"I reckon you been through algebra!"
"Yes, I have," said Henry, "but it was night and I didn't see
nothing."
EMPLOYER--"For this job you've got to know French and Spanish, and the
pay is eighteen dollars a week."
"Lord, Mister! I ain't got no edication; I'm after a job in the
yards."
"See the yard-boss. We'll start you in at forty."--_Life_.
When James A. Garfield was president of Oberlin College, a man brought
for entrance as a student his son, for whom he wished a shorter course
than the regular one.
"The boy can never take all that in," said the father. "He wants to
get through quicker. Can you arrange it for him?"
"Oh, yes," said Mr. Garfield. "He can take a short course; it all
depends on what you want to make of him. When God wants to make an
oak he takes a hundred years, but he takes only two months to make a
squash."
Doubtless the old woman in this story from the London Post will now be
able to enlighten her husband on a troublesome subject.
"Doctor," she inquired of a country physician, "can you tell me how it
is that some folks be born dumb?"
"Why--hem!--why, certainly, ma'am," replied the doctor. "It is because
they come into the world without power of speech."
"Dear me," remarked the woman, "just see what it is to have a physical
edication! I'm right glad I axed you. I've axed my old man a hundred
times that there same question, and all he would ever say was, 'Cause
they be.'"
PROFESSOR--"So, sir, you said that I was a learned jackass, did you?"
FRESHIE--"No, sir, I merely remarked that you were a burro of
information."
EFFICIENCY
After many trials and tribulations Mrs. Timson had managed to get a
"maid" of sorts.
"Now, Thurza," said she, "be careful about the water. We only use the
well water for drinking, as we have to pay a man to pump it. The rain
water is good enough for washing up and so on."
After tea Mrs. Timson asked:
"Did you remember about the water, Thurza?"
"Oh, yes, mum!" said Thurza. "I filled the kettle half full of water
from the butt and the other half with water from the well. I thought
the bottom half might as well be getting hot at the same time for
washing up after tea."
An elderly rancher took some fine Kentucky horses to the West in
the early sixties. He was proud of them, and justly so. The old
gentleman's son had once seen a teamster lock one of his wagon-wheels
in going down a declivity. This precaution appealed to the young
fellow's idea of "safety first." He duly reported the occurrence to
his father, and begged him to get a, lock-chain.
"My son," said the old gentleman, "if I ever send you out with a team
that can't outrun the wagon, let 'em go to hell."
SOLICITOR (to business man absorbed in detail)--"I have here a most
marvelous system of efficiency, condensed into one small volume. It
will save you fully 50 per cent of your time, and so--"
BUSINESS MAN (interrupting irritably)--"I already have a system by
which I can save 100 per cent of my time and yours. I'll demonstrate
it now--Good-day!"
The hours I spend at work, dear heart
Are as arithmetic to me;
I count my motions every one apart--
Efficiency.
Each hour a task, each task a test,
Until my heart with doubt is wrung;
I conservate my darndest, but at best
The boss is stung.
O theories that twist and turn!
O frantic gain and laggard loss!
I'll standardize and stint at last to learn
To please the boss
By gum!
To please the boss.
"But," he adds, "as in everything else, there are exceptions. There
was Boggins, for instance. Boggins was a great efficiency man in the
office, but even more so at home. Why, every time Boggins Junior was
naughty his father laid him on the floor and spread a rug over him,
so that the beating would kill two birds with one stone, as you might
say."
A worm won't turn if you step on it right.
Efficiency is an admirable quality, but it can be overdone, according
to Representative M. Clyde Kelly, of Pennsylvania.
"Last election day," Mr. Kelly explains, "the city editor of my
newspaper in Braddock sent his best reporter out to learn if the
saloons were open in defiance of the law. Four days later he returned
and reported, 'They were.'"
"Sambo, I don't understand how you can do all your work so quickly,
and so well."
"I'll tell yuh how 'tis, boss. I sticks de match ob enthusiasm to de
fuse ob yenergy--and jes natchurally explodes, I does."
"Don't be so long-winded in your reports as you have been in the
past," said the manager of the "Wild West" railway to his overseer.
"Just report the condition of the track as ye find it, and don't put
in a lot of needless words that ain't to the point. Write a business
letter, not a love-letter."
A few days later the railway line was badly flooded, and the overseer
wrote his report to the manager in one line: "Sir--Where the railway
was the river is.--Yours faithfully,----."
In Montana a railway-bridge had been destroyed by fire, and it was
necessary to replace it. The bridge-engineer and his staff were
ordered in haste to the place. Two days later came the superintendent
of the division. Alighting from his private car, he encountered the
old master bridge-builder.
"Bill," said the superintendent--and the words quivered with
energy--"I want this job rushed. Every hour's delay costs the company
money. Have you got the engineer's plans for the new bridge?"
"I don't know," said the bridge-builder, "whether the engineer has
the picture drawed yet or not, but the bridge is up and the trains is
passin' over it."--_Harper's_.
"Better consider my course in efficiency training. I can show you how
to earn more money than you are getting."
"I do that now."
The boy was very small and the load he was pushing in the wheelbarrow
was very, very big.
A benevolent old gentleman, putting down his bundles, lent him a
helping hand.
"Really, my boy," he puffed, "I don't see how you manage to get that
barrow up the gutters alone."
"I don't," replied the appreciative kid. "Dere's always some jay
a-standin' round as takes it up for me."--_Puck_.
MRS. CASEY--"Me sister writes me that every bottle in that box we sent
her was broken. Are you sure yez printed 'This side up, with care' on
it!"
CASEY--"Oi am. An' for fear they shouldn't see it on the top, Oi
printed it on the bottom, as well."
COW--"Can you beat it? There's so much system around here now that
they file me in the barn under the letter C."
HEN--"Yes, I have my troubles with efficiency too. They've put a
rubber stamp in my nest so I can date my eggs two weeks ahead."
EGOTISM
SMITH--"You seldom see such beautiful golf as that man plays. His
drives were corking, his approaches superb and he never missed a
putt."
JONES--"How much were you beaten by?"
SMITH--"Why, I won!"
_"I" and "Myself" and "Me"_
When on myself I sometimes turn
My gaze, with introspection stern,
Three persons there I seem to see,
"I" and "Myself," they are, and "Me."
"I" stands alone with confidence,
Pugnacious, quick to take offense,
Assertive, masterful and strong,
Forever right and _never_ wrong,
As Lewis Carroll once avowed,
"I" is extremely "stiff and proud."