Among the Humorists and After Dinner Speakers Part 62

Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson, of Concord, is fond of telling of an old servant whose heart was exceedingly kind, and in whom the qualities of pity and compa.s.sion were developed nearly to perfection. He was once driving his master and Emerson through the country. As they approached a new house that the master was building, they saw an old woman sneaking away with a bundle of wood. "Jabez, Jabez," cried the master, "do you see that old woman taking my wood?" Jabez looked with pity at the old woman, then with scorn at his master. "No, sir," he said stoutly, "I don't see her, and I didn't think that you would see her either."

"They said that we would never be happy," moaned the young bride.

"But you _are_ happy."

"But now they say it won't last."

"That fellow," said Alfred Henry Lewis, the other day, when a certain well-known Tammany man was mentioned, "puts up a good bluff, but there is nothing to him. Open the front door and you are in his back yard."

Little Paul trying on his grandmother's gla.s.ses--"Grandma, what is it between my eyes and the gla.s.ses, I can't see anything."

"Eighty years, my dear."

To Richard Mansfield an enthusiastic woman admirer had paid tribute of praise, adding: "I suppose, sir, that when in the spirit of those great roles you forget your real self for days."

"Yes, madam, for days, as well as nights. It is then I do those dreadful things--trample on the upturned features of my leading lady and hurl tenderloin steaks at waiters."

"And you do not know of it at all?"

"Not a solitary thing, until I read the papers the next day," said Mr.

Mansfield solemnly.

When Marquis Ito was in the United States, in 1901, an inexperienced St. Paul reporter sought an interview with him. He met Ito's secretary, and made known his mission. "Me newspaper man. Me writee news. Me heardee marquis velly ill. He better to-day? You savve?"

began the reporter, to the secretary's amazement. But the latter was equal to the occasion. "Me savve," he said gravely. "Marquis he no better. Belly blad. Catchee cold. Doctor him no lettee him leave bled to-day. You savve?" The interview proceeded in this way, but at its termination the secretary, with a twinkle in his eye, remarked: "The marquis is greatly fatigued by his arduous journey, but--" But the reporter had fled.

Professor Phelps, who disliked mathematics, was once walking with Professor Newton, who began discussing a problem so deep that his companion could not follow it. He fell into a brown study, from which he was aroused by Newton's emphatic a.s.sertion, "And that, you see, gives us _x_!" "Does it?" asked Mr. Phelps, politely. "Why, doesn't it?" exclaimed the professor, excitedly, alarmed at the possibility of a flaw in his calculations. Quickly his mind ran back and detected a mistake. "You are right, Mr. Phelps. You are right!" shouted the professor. "It doesn't give us _x_; it gives us _y_." And from that time Professor Phelps was looked upon as a mathematical prodigy, the first man who ever tripped Newton.

Amba.s.sador Choate and his daughter visited the restaurant made famous by Dr. Samuel Johnson. It is the custom there to give the guests lark pie, such as Johnson used to eat, and the Choates were served with one of the pasties. Choate was in the chair that Johnson was wont to occupy, and had just begun his meal, when his daughter exclaimed: "Isn't it funny, papa? You are in Johnson's chair and eating a tradition." "Eating a tradition!" retorted the amba.s.sador struggling valiantly; "I have got hold of one of Johnson's larks."

A New England school-teacher recited "The Landing of the Pilgrims" to her pupils, then asked each of them to draw from their imagination a picture of Plymouth Rock. One little fellow hesitated and then raised his hand. "Well, Willie, what is it?" asked the teacher. "Please teacher, do you want us to draw a hen or a rooster?"

An English gentleman had sent a private note to a marquis, on a personal matter, by hand, and on the return of the man questioned him as to his reception. "Ah, sir," said the man, "there's no use writing him any letter, he can't see to read them. He's blind."

"Blind!"

"Yes, sir. He asked me twice where my hat was, and I had it on my head all the time."

A magician was performing in a Kentucky town, and during the evening announced that in his next trick he would need a pint flask of whisky.

No move was made to supply the liquor. "Perhaps you did not understand me. Will some gentleman kindly loan me a pint flask of whisky?" Then a lank man in the rear of the hall arose. "Mistah," said he, "will a quart flask do?" "Just as well, sir," replied the magician, and every gentleman in the hall arose with flask extended.

"Phoebe," said a mistress in reproof to her colored servant whom she found smoking a short pipe after having repeatedly threatened to discharge her if again caught in the act, "if you won't stop that bad habit for any other reason do so because it is right. You are a good church member--and, don't you know that smoking makes the breath unpleasant, and that nothing unclean can enter Heaven?" "'Deed, missie, I does," said the woman, "but bress' yo' heart, when I go to Heaben I'll leave my bref behin'."

It was the custom of a certain deacon, when dining at the home of one of his best friends, to drink a gla.s.s of milk, as a prelude to his dinner. One day when the minister was scheduled to appear, instead of the rich, foamy gla.s.s of milk, his friend placed beside his plate a gla.s.s of milk punch. After the blessing, the deacon seized his gla.s.s and drank to the last drop, and then exclaimed as he closed his eyes and smacked his lips, "_Oh_, what a cow!"

Dean Hole of Rochester, England, told of a very innocent and obliging curate who went to a Yorkshire parish where many of the parishioners bred horses and sometimes raced them. A few Sundays after his arrival he was asked to invite the prayers of the congregation for Lucy Grey.

He did so. They prayed for three Sundays for her. On the fourth, the church clerk told the curate that he need not do it any more. "Why,"

he asked, "is she dead?" "No," said the clerk, "she's won the steeplechase."

The late Richard Henry Stoddard while endeavoring to procure an impromptu luncheon for a number of his friends after his wife and the servants had retired, found a box of sardines. His vigorous remarks, inspired by the sardine-can's objections to the "open sesame" of a dull jack-knife, attracted the attention of Mrs. Stoddard on the floor above.

"What _are_ you doing?" she called down.

"Opening a can of sardines."

"With what?"

"A dashed old jack-knife," cried the exasperated poet; "what did you think I was opening it with?"

"Well, dear," she answered, "I didn't think you were opening it with prayer."

"What is the matter with your father, Gladys?" asked the child's aunt.

"He's awful sick with a headache," the little girl answered, "an' he's hurt, too, 'cause mama said he's broke his resolution."

Colored people are proverbially fond of funerals, and Mrs. Walker's cook was trying to make her mistress realize what she had missed by not attending the funeral of a prominent citizen of their village.

"Mis' f.a.n.n.y," she said, "you sholy orto hev been thar. I ain' nevvah seen sech a big funril in dis heah town. Dey had all de kerridges fum bofe liberty stables, 'mos' all de private conveniences, an' dat new fambly fum de North was dere in a two-hoss syringe!"