Toaster's Handbook Part 111

"No, sah," said Uncle Mose. "I uster 'member seein' him, but I done fo'got sence I jined de chu'ch."

A noted college president, attending a banquet in Boston, was surprised to see that the darky who took the hats at the door gave no checks in return.

"He has a most wonderful memory," a fellow diner explained. "He's been doing that for years and prides himself upon never having made a mistake."

As the college president was leaving, the darky pa.s.sed him his hat.

"How do you know that this one is mine?"

"I don't know it, suh," admitted the darky.

"Then why do you give it to me?"

"'Cause yo' gave it to me, suh."

"Tommy," said his mother reprovingly, "what did I say I'd do to you if I ever caught you stealing jam again?"

Tommy thoughtfully scratched his head with his sticky fingers.

"Why, that's funny, ma, that you should forget it, too. Hanged if I can remember." Smith is a young New York lawyer, clever in many ways, but very forgetful. He was recently sent to St. Louis to interview an important client in regard to a case then pending in the Missouri courts. Later the head of his firm received this telegram from St.

Louis:

"Have forgotten name of client. Please wire at once."

This was the reply sent from New York:

"Client's name Jenkins. Your name Smith."

When time who steals our years away Shall steal our pleasures too, The mem'ry of the past will stay And half our joys renew.

--_Moore_.

The heart hath its own memory, like the mind, And in it are enshrined The precious keepsakes, into which is wrought The giver's loving thought.

--_Longfellow_.

MEN

Here's to the men! G.o.d bless them!

Worst of me sins, I confess them!

In loving them all; be they great or small, So here's to the boys! G.o.d bless them!

May all single men be married, And all married men be happy.

"What is your ideal man?"

"One who is clever enough to make money and foolish enough to spend it!"

I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.--_Shakespeare_.

Men are four: He who knows and knows not that he knows,-- He is asleep--wake him; He who knows not and knows not that he knows not,-- He is a fool--shun him; He who knows not and knows that he knows not,-- He is a child--teach him; He who knows and knows that He knows,-- He is a king--follow him.

_See also_ Dogs; Husbands.

MESSAGES

"Have you the rent ready?"

"No, sir; mother's gone out washing and forgot to put it out for you."

"Did she tell you she'd forgotten?"

"Yes, sir."

One of the pa.s.sengers on a wreck was an exceedingly nervous man, who, while floating in the water, imagined how his friends would acquaint his wife of his fate. Saved at last, he rushed to the telegraph office and sent this message: "Dear Pat, I am saved. Break it gently to my wife."

METAPHOR

It was a Washington woman, angry because the authorities had closed the woman's rest-room in the Senate office building, who burst out:

"It is almost as if the Senate had hurled its glove into the teeth of the advancing wave that is sounding the clarion of equal rights."

A water consumer in Los Angeles, California, whose supply had been turned off because he wouldn't pay, wrote to the department as follows:

"In the matter of shutting off the water on unpaid bills, your company is fast becoming a regular crystallized Russian bureaucracy, running in a groove and deaf to the appeals of reform. There is no use of your trying to impugn the verity of this indictment by shaking your official heads in the teeth of your own deeds.