Among the Humorists and After Dinner Speakers Part 13

"Oh, I know it ain't, but they do it anyhow."

A publisher who occupied a loft in New York directed one of his clerks to hang out a "Boy wanted" sign at the entrance. The card had been swaying in the breeze only a few minutes when a red-headed little tad climbed to the publisher's office with the sign under his arm.

"Say, mister," he demanded of the publisher, "did youse hang out this here 'Boy Wanted' sign?"

"I did," replied the publisher sternly. "Why did you tear it down?"

"Hully gee!" he blurted. "Why, I'm the boy!" And he was.

A distinguished surgeon, Dr. Abernethy by name, famed for his laconic speech as well as for his professional skill, met one day his equal in a woman of few words, who came to him with a hand badly swollen and inflamed.

"Burn?" asked the doctor.

"Bruise."

"Poultice."

The next day the patient returned and the dialogue was resumed.

"Better?"

"Worse."

"More poultice."

Two days later the woman called again, and this was the conversation:

"Better?"

"Well. Fee?"

"Nothing!" exclaimed the doctor. "Most sensible woman I ever met!"

Visitor--"Well, Harold, what are you going to be when you grow up?"

Harold--"Oh, I'm going to be a sailor; but baby's only going to be just an ordinary father."

No amount of persuasion or punishment could keep Johnnie from running away. The excitement of being pursued and of being brought back to a tearful family appealed to his sense of the dramatic and offset the slight discomfort that sometimes followed.

Finally his mother determined upon a new method. She decided, after many misgivings, that the next time Johnnie ran away no notice whatever should be taken of it. He should stay away as long as he pleased and return when he saw fit.

In a few days the youngster again disappeared. His mother was firm in her resolve and no search was made. Great was poor Johnnie's disappointment. He managed to stay away all day, but when it began to grow dark his courage failed and he started for home. He sneaked ignominiously into the kitchen. n.o.body spoke to him. Apparently his absence had not been noticed. This was too much. As soon as opportunity offered he remarked casually, "Well, I see you've got the same old cat."

A gentleman who happened to come in rather late at a dinner found that the guests had finished soup and were on with the next course. When he had sat down a waiter came up and said, "Soup, sir?" "No, thanks," he replied, whereupon the waiter went away. Another waiter, seeing he had nothing, said to him, "Soup, sir?" He replied rather testily, "No, thank you." A third waiter, who saw him come in and took compa.s.sion on him, placed the soup in front of him. "Look here, my man, is this compulsory?" "No, sir; it's mulligatawny," replied the waiter.

A big, burly, fierce-looking man and a meek, inoffensive-looking little chap were sawing timber with a cross-cut saw. A strapping Irishman, pa.s.sing that way, stopped to watch them. Back and forth, back and forth, they pulled at the saw. Finally the Irishman could stand it no longer. With a whoop and a yell he rushed at the big man and brought him to the ground, burying his knees deep into the sawyer's chest.

Biff! Bang! Thump! Biff!

"There," he said, letting him have one parting blow square on the nose, "now m'bbe ye'll let the little felly hev it!"

Oliver Herford once entered a doubtful-looking restaurant in a small New York town and ordered a lamb-chop. After a long delay the waiter returned, bearing a plate on which reposed a dab of mashed potatoes and a much overdone chop of microscopical proportions with a remarkably long and slender rib attached. This the waiter set down before him and then hurried away.

"See here," called Herford, "I ordered a chop."

"Yessir," replied the man, "there it is."

"Ah, so it is," replied Herford, peering at it closely. "I thought it was a crack in the plate."

In one of the elevators of a city skysc.r.a.per, as the elevator shot toward the zenith, a stout man began to sputter. "Bub-but, rt-st-st-b'r'r'r," he said, as the veins stood out upon his neck. At the twenty-third story the stout man's eyes were nearly starting from his head, and as he grasped the arm of the elevator man the latter nervously pulled the lever, and the lift started for the bottom at a terrific rate. The solitary pa.s.senger danced about, gurgling spasmodically. As the car struck bottom, however, he rushed through the door and up to an important individual, whose cap bore the screed "Starter." "S-s-s-say," he sputtered, "t-t-this is the th-th-third trip I-I-I've t-t-taken in the elevator, 'n' I-I-I-I w-w-wanter g-g-g-get off at the sev-sev-seventh fl-fl-fl-floor. Before I-I-I c-c-c-can say sev-sev-seven I-I-I-I'm up to the t-t-top, 'n'

be-be-before I-I-I can cat-cat-catch my br-br-breath I-I-I'm down h-h-here again, 'n' I-I-I-I'm in a de-de-vil of a hurry."

Nervous player (deprecatingly playing card)--"I really don't know what to play. I'm afraid I've made a fool of myself."

Partner (rea.s.suringly)--"That all right. I don't see what else you could have done!"

Some of Darwin's boy friends once plotted a surprise for the naturalist. They slew a centipede, glued on it a beetle's head, and also added to its body the wings of a b.u.t.terfly and the long legs of a gra.s.shopper. Then they put the new insect in a box and knocked at the great man's door. "We found this in the fields," they cried with eager voices. "Do tell us what it can be." Darwin looked at the strange compound and then at the boys' innocent faces. "Did it hum when you caught it?" he asked. "Oh yes, sir," they answered quickly, nudging one another, "it hummed like anything." "Then," said the philosopher, "it is a humbug."

A man had been sent by the house-agents to take an inventory of the drawing-room furniture. He was so long about his task that at last the mistress of the house went to see what was taking place. She found the man slumbering sweetly on the sofa with an empty bottle beside him; it was evident, however, that he had made a pathetic though solitary attempt to do his work, for in the inventory book was written, "One revolving carpet."

The customs of military service require officers to visit the kitchens during cooking hours to see that the soldiers' food is properly prepared. One old colonel, who let it be pretty generally known that his orders must be obeyed without question or explanation, once stopped two soldiers who were carrying a soup-kettle out of a kitchen.

"Here, you," he growled, "give me a taste of that."