More Toasts Part 175

The big man with the I-know-it-all expression sneeringly watched the little man who was eating from a sack of peanuts.

"Down where I come from we use peanuts to fatten hogs," remarked the big man.

"That so?" asked the little man. "Here, have some."

EINSTEIN--"I hear you already, and I d.i.n.ks you vas talking to yourself."

ROSENBERG--"You vas a liar and a scoundrel! Do you hear dot?"

"What would you say," began the voluble prophet, "if I were to tell you that in a very short s.p.a.ce of time all the rivers will dry up?"

"I would say," replied the patient man, "go thou and do likewise."

"I'm tired of always being the goat!"

"Then, why don't you stop b.u.t.ting in?"

"Oh, say, who was here to see you last night?"

"Only Myrtle, father."

"Well, tell Myrtle that she left her pipe on the piano."

"Willie, your master's report of your work is very bad. Do you know that when Woodrow Wilson was your age he was head of the school?"

"Yes, pa; and when he was your age he was President of the United States."

"You are an angel."

"I guess that's right. An angel has but one gown and for her the styles never change."

A stern old preacher had issued to his people a command against dancing, believing it to be a device of the devil.

A few of the young people disobeyed and attended a dance given at a neighboring town. Finally it reached the ears of the preacher, and, meeting one of the culprits on the street one morning, he said in a stern voice:

"Good morning, child of the devil!"

"Good morning, father!" smilingly answered the pretty miss.

CUSTOMER--"The price of these shoes seems high. Wasn't there something said about a movement to have it reduced?"

CLERK--"Yes--but it's not on foot yet."

UNCLE SILAS (visiting city relatives who use electrical appliances for cooking at the table)--"Well, I swan! You make fun of us for eatin' in the kitchen. I don't see as it makes much difference whether you eat in the kitchen or cook in the dining-room."--_Life_.

There had been a quarrel. "You're no lidy," remarked the party of the first part "Ah!" replied the other. "If it wasn't that I _was_ a lidy, p'raps I'd be able to tell _you_ wot kind of a lidy _you_ ain't."

FIRST TRAVELER (cheerily)--"Fine day, isn't it?"

SECOND DITTO (haughtily)--"Sir! You have the advantage of me. I don't know you."

FIRST DITTO--"Humph! I fail to see the advantage."

"We need brains in this business, sir."

"I know you do. The business shows it."

"Well! well!" exclaimed Mrs. Talker, looking up from the morning paper. "Boots and shoes should be getting much cheaper now. Here's a paragraph that states that they are being made from all sorts of skins, even rat skins"; and then, trying to be funny, she added, "I wonder what they do with banana and orange skins?"

"Oh, my dear," replied her husband, "they make slippers!"

The usual large crowd was gathered at the New York end of the Brooklyn Bridge waiting for trolley-cars. An elderly lady, red in the face, fl.u.s.tered and fussy, dug her elbows into convenient ribs irrespective of owners.

A fat man on her left was the recipient of a particularly vicious jab.

She yelled at him, "Say!"

He winced slightly and moved to one side.

She, too, sidestepped and thumped him vigorously on the back.

"Say!" she persisted, "does it make any difference which of these cars I take to Greenwood Cemetery?"

"Not to me, madam," he answered, slipping through an opening in the crowd.

AUSTRALIAN SOLDIER (to American)--"You Yanks think you've done a lot, but you forget we Australians have been at the game for four years."

"Well, what have you done, anyway?"

"Done? We've been at Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, the plains of Bethlehem, and--"

"The plains of Bethlehem?"

"Yes; I slept a week there myself."