Toaster's Handbook Part 122

"And who are you?" he next inquired, turning his resentful gaze on the chocolate-colored office-devil clearing out the waste basket.

"Me?" rejoined the darky, grinning from ear to ear. "Ah guess ah's de cul'ud supplement."

Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.--_Napoleon I_.

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.--_Charles Lamb_.

OBESITY

_See_ Corpulence.

OBITUARIES

If you have frequent fainting spells, accompanied by chills, cramps, corns, bunions, chilblains, epilepsy and jaundice, it is a sign that you are not well, but liable to die any minute. Pay your subscription in advance and thus make yourself solid for a good obituary notice.--_Mountain Echo_.

_See_ also Epitaphs.

OBSERVATION

In his daily half hour confidential talk with his boy an ambitious father tried to give some good advice.

"Be observing, my son," said the father on one occasion. "Cultivate the habit of seeing, and you will be a successful man. Study things and remember them. Don't go through the world blindly. Learn to use your eyes. Boys who are observing know a great deal more than those who are not."

Willie listened in silence.

Several days later when the entire family, consisting of his mother, aunt and uncle, were present, his father said:

"Well, Willie, have you kept using your eyes as I advised you to do?"

Willie nodded, and after a moment's hesitation said:

"I've seen a few things right around the house. Uncle Jim's got a bottle of hair dye hid under his trunk, Aunt Jennie's got an extra set of teeth in her dresser, Ma's got some curls in her hat, and Pa's got a deck of cards and a box of chips behind the books in the secretary."

OCCUPATIONS

Mrs. Hennessey, who was a late arrival in the neighborhood, was entertaining a neighbor one afternoon, when the latter inquired:

"An' what does your old man do, Mrs. Hennessey?"

"Sure, he's a di'mond-cuttter."

"Ye don't mane it!"

"Yis; he cuts th' gra.s.s off th' baseball grounds."--_L.F. Clarke_.

All business men are apt to use the technical terms of their daily labors in situations outside of working hours. One time a railroad man was entertaining his pastor at dinner and his sons, who had to wait until their elders had finished got into mischief. At the end of the meal, their father excused himself for a moment saying he had to "switch some empties."

"Professor," said Miss Skylight, "I want you to suggest a course in life for me. I have thought of journalism--"

"What are your own inclinations?"

"Oh, my soul yearns and throbs and pulsates with an ambition to give the world a life-work that shall be marvelous in its scope, and weirdly entrancing in the vastness of its structural beauty!"

"Woman, you're born to be a milliner."

A woman, when asked her husband's occupation, said he was a mixologist.

The city directory called him a bartender.

"A good turkey dinner and mince pie," said a well-known after-dinner orator, "always puts us in a lethargic mood--makes us feel, in fact, like the natives of Nola Chucky. In Nola Chucky one day I said to a man:

"'What is the princ.i.p.al occupation of this town?'

"'Wall, boss,' the man answered, yawning, 'in winter they mostly sets on the east side of the house and follers the sun around to the west, and in summer they sets on the west side and follers the shade around to the east.'"

JONES--"How'd this happen? The last time I was here you were running a fish-market, and now you've got a cheese-shop."

SMITH--"Yes. Well, you see the doctor said I needed a change of air."

The ugliest of trades have their moments of pleasure. Now, if I were a grave-digger, or even a hangman, there are some people I could work for with a great deal of enjoyment--_Douglas Jerrold_.