Among the Humorists and After Dinner Speakers Part 52

Quite recently an old friend of the Browns went to see them at their new country home. As he approached the house a large dog ran out to the gate and began barking at him through the fence.

As he hesitated about opening the gate, Brown's wife came to the door and exclaimed: "How do you do! Come right in. Don't mind the dog."

"But won't he bite?" exclaimed the friend, not anxious to meet the canine without some a.s.surance of his personal safety.

"That's just what I want to find out," exclaimed Mrs. Brown. "I just bought him this morning."

The late Julian Ralph, one of the most gifted newspaper men of his generation, while being shaved one day, was forced to listen to many of the barber's anecdotes.

Stopping to strop his razor, and prepared, with brush in hand to recommence, he said, "Shall I go over it again?"

"No, thanks," drawled Ralph, "It's hardly necessary. I think I can remember every word."

The following is a typical Ian Maclaren story:

"Who had this place last year?" asked a Southern shooting tenant of his keeper.

"Well," said Donald, "I'm not denyin' that he wa.s.s an Englishman, but he wa.s.s a good man whatever. Oh, yess, he went to kirk and he shot very well, but he wa.s.s narrow, very narrow."

"Narrow," said the other in amazement, for he supposed he meant bigoted, and the charge was generally the other way about. "What was he narrow in?"

"Well," said Donald, "I will be tellin' you, and it wa.s.s this way. The twelfth [the beginning of the grouse shooting] wa.s.s a very good day, and we had fifty-two brace. But it wa.s.s warm, oh! yess, very warm, and when we came back to the Lodge, the gentleman will say to me, 'It is warm.' and I will not be contradicting him. Then he will be saying, 'Maybe you are thirsty,' and I will not be contradicting him.

Afterwards he will take out his flask and be speaking about a dram. I will not be contradicting him, but will just say, 'Toots, toots.' Then he will be pouring it out, and when the gla.s.s wa.s.s maybe half-full I will say, just for politeness, 'Stop.' And he stopped. Oh! yess, a very narrow man."

Mark Twain as a humorist is no respecter of persons, and a story is told of him and Bishop Doane which is worth repeating. It occurred when Mark Twain was living in Hartford, where Mr. Doane was then rector of an Episcopal church. Twain had listened to one of the doctor's best sermons, on Sunday morning, when he approached him and said politely: "I have enjoyed your sermon this morning. I welcomed it as I would an old friend. I have a book in my library that contains every word of it." "Impossible, sir," replied the rector, indignantly.

"Not at all. I a.s.sure you it is true," said Twain. "Then I shall trouble you to send me that book," rejoined the rector with dignity.

The next morning Dr. Doane received, with Mark Twain's compliments, a dictionary.

A friend of Mark Twain's tells of an amusing incident in connection with the first meeting between the humorist and the late James McNeil Whistler, the artist.

The friend having facetiously warned Clemens that the painter was a confirmed joker, Mark solemnly averred that he would get the better of Whistler should the latter attempt "any funny business." Furthermore, Twain determined to antic.i.p.ate Whistler, if possible.

So, when the two had been introduced, which event took place in Whistler's studio, Clemens, a.s.suming an air of hopeless stupidity, approached a just-completed painting, and said:

"Not at all bad, Mr. Whistler, not at all bad. Only," he added, reflectively, with a motion as if to rub out a cloud effect, "if I were you I'd do away with that cloud."

"Great Heavens, sir!" exclaimed Whistler, almost beside himself. "Do be careful not to touch that; the paint is not yet dry!"

"Oh, I don't mind that," responded Twain, with an air of perfect nonchalance; "I am wearing gloves."

This is a story of Italian revenge. A vender of plaster statuettes saw a chance for a sale in a well-dressed, bibulous man who was tacking down the street.

"You buy-a de statuette?" he asked, alluringly holding out his choicest offering. "Gar-r-ribaldi--I sell-a him verra cheep. De gr-reat-a Gar-r-ribaldi--only thirta cents!"

"Oh, t'ell with Garibaldi," said the bibulous one, making a swipe with his arm that sent Garibaldi crashing to the sidewalk.

For a moment the Italian regarded the fragments. Then, his eyes flashing fire, he seized from his stock a statuette of George Washington. "You t'ell-a with my Gar-r-ribaldi?" he hissed between his teeth. "So." He raised the immortal George high above his head and--crash! it flew into fragments alongside of the ill-fated Garibaldi. "Ha! I to h.e.l.l-a wid your George-a Wash! Ha, ha!"

Patrick arrived home much the worse for wear. One eye was closed, his nose was broken, and his face looked as though it had been stung by bees.

"Glory be!" exclaimed his wife.

"Thot Dutchman Schwartzheimer--'twas him," explained Patrick.

"Shame on ye!" exploded his wife without sympathy. "A big shpalpeen the loikes of you to get bate up by a little omadhoun of a Dootchman the size of him! Why--"

"Whist, Nora," said Patrick, "don't spake disrespectfully of the dead!"

One day a teacher in a kindergarten school in New York, preparatory to giving out an exercise said, "Now children I want you all to be very quiet, so quiet that you could hear a pin drop." Everything had quieted down nicely and the teacher was about to speak when a little voice in the rear of the room said, "Go ahead, teacher, and let her drop."

It appears that the late Senator John T. Morgan, who was quite near-sighted, while at dessert one evening in a hotel at Hot Springs, Virginia, experienced considerable difficulty in separating from the plate pa.s.sed him by the colored waiter what he thought was a chocolate eclair. It stuck fast, so Senator Morgan pushed his fork quite under it, and tried again and again to pry it up.

Suddenly he became aware that his friends at the table were convulsed with laughter, which much mystified him. But his surprise was even greater when the waiter quietly remarked:

"Pardon me, Senator, but that's my thumb!"

A doctor named Brown had been the adorer for many years of a Miss White. Unluckily his ardent love was not reciprocated. He had a reputation for ready wit and did not allow even his unfortunate love affair to stand in the way of his exercising it. One night over a gla.s.s of wine in the club the good doctor frequented a wag remarked, "What do you say, doctor, to my giving the toast of Miss White, your old flame?" "You may, and you'll not do any harm either to her or to me by toasting her as often as you please, for I've toasted her all these years and there are still no symptoms of her turning Brown."

Minister (who struggles to exist on $600 a year with wife and six children)--"We are giving up meat as a little experiment, Mrs.

Dasher."

Wealthy parishioner--"Oh, yes! One can live so well on fish, poultry, game, and plenty of nourishing wines."

A woman who traveled a great deal in the West was known as the most inveterate "kicker" a certain hotel had ever known.

One evening after she had been served with dessert this lady, who was always complaining, asked the waiter why the dish served her was called "ice-cream pudding."