Toaster's Handbook Part 130

PLEASURE

BILLY--"Huh! I bet you didn't have a good time at your birthday party yesterday."

WILLIE--"I bet I did."

BILLY--"Then why ain't you sick today?"

Winnie had been very naughty, and her mamma said: "Don't you know you will never go to Heaven if you are so naughty?"

After thinking a moment she said: "Oh, well, I have been to the circus once and 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' twice. I can't expect to go everywhere."

In Concord, New Hampshire, they tell of an old chap who made his wife keep a cash account. Each week he would go over it, growling and grumbling. On one such occasion he delivered himself of the following:

"Look here, Sarah, mustard-plasters, fifty cents; three teeth extracted, two dollars! There's two dollars and a half in one week spent for your own private pleasure. Do you think I am made of money?"

Here's to beauty, wit and wine and to a full stomach, a full purse and a light heart.

A dinner, coffee and cigars, Of friends, a half a score.

Each favorite vintage in its turn,-- What man could wish for more?

The roses of pleasure seldom last long enough to adorn the brow of him who plucks them; for they are the only roses which do not retain their sweetness after they have lost their beauty.--_Hannah More_.

_See also_ Amus.e.m.e.nts.

POETRY

Poetry is a gift we are told, but most editors won't take it even at that.

POETS

EDITOR--"Have you submitted this poem anywhere else?"

JOKESMITH--"No, sir."

EDITOR--"Then where did you get that black eye?"--_Satire_.

"Why is it," asked the persistent poetess, "that you always insist that we write on one side of the paper only? Why not on both?"

In that moment the editor experienced an access of courage--courage to protest against the acc.u.mulated wrongs of his kind.

"One side of the paper, madame," he made answer, "is in the nature of a compromise."

"A compromise?"

"A compromise. What we really desire, if we could have our way, is not one, or both, but neither."

Sir Lewis Morris was complaining to Oscar Wilde about the neglect of his poems by the press. "It is a complete conspiracy of silence against me, a conspiracy of silence. What ought I to do, Oscar?" "Join it," replied Wilde.

G.o.d's prophets of the Beautiful, These Poets were.

--_E.B. Browning_.

We call those poets who are first to mark Through earth's dull mist the coming of the dawn,-- Who see in twilight's gloom the first pale spark, While others only note that day is gone.

--_O.W. Holmes_.

POLICE

A man who was "wanted" in Russia had been photographed in six different positions, and the pictures duly circulated among the police department.

A few days later the chief of police wrote to headquarters: "Sir, I have duly received the portraits of the six miscreants. I have arrested five of them, and the sixth will be secured shortly."

"I had a message from the Black Hand," said the resident of Graftburg.

"They told me to leave $2,000 in a vacant house in a certain street."

"Did you tell the police?"

"Right away."

"What did they do?"

"They said that while I was about it I might leave them a couple of thousand in the same place."