Toaster's Handbook Part 25

One winter morning Henry Clay, finding himself in need of money, went to the Riggs Bank and asked for the loan of $250 on his personal note. He was told that while his credit was perfectly good, it was the inflexible rule of the bank to require an indorser. The great statesman hunted up Daniel Webster and asked him to indorse the note.

"With pleasure," said Webster. "But I need some money myself. Why not make your note for five hundred, and you and I will split it?"

This they did. And to-day the note is in the Riggs Bank--unpaid.

BOSSES

The insurance agent climbed the steps and rang the bell.

"Whom do you wish to see?" asked the careworn person who came to the door.

"I want to see the boss of the house," replied the insurance agent. "Are you the boss?"

"No," meekly returned the man who came to the door; "I'm only the husband of the boss. Step in, I'll call the boss."

The insurance agent took a seat in the hall, and in a short time a tall dignified woman appeared.

"So you want to see the boss?" repeated the woman. "Well, just step into the kitchen. This way, please. Bridget, this gentleman desires to see you."

"Me th' boss!" exclaimed Bridget, when the insurance agent asked her the question. "Indade Oi'm not! Sure here comes th' boss now."

She pointed to a small boy of ten years who was coming toward the house.

"Tell me," pleaded the insurance agent, when the lad came into the kitchen, "are you the boss of the house?"

"Want to see the boss?" asked the boy. "Well, you just come with me."

Wearily the insurance agent climbed up the stairs. He was ushered into a room on the second floor and guided to the crib of a sleeping baby.

"There!" exclaimed the boy, "that's the real boss of this house."

BOSTON

A tourist from the east, visiting an old prospector in his lonely cabin in the hills, commented: "And yet you seem so cheerful and happy."

"Yes," replied the one of the pick and shovel. "I spent a week in Boston once, and no matter what happens to me now, it seems good luck in comparison."

A little Boston girl with exquisitely long golden curls and quite an angelic appearance in general, came in from an afternoon walk with her nurse and said to her mother, "Oh, Mamma, a strange woman on the street said to me, 'My, but ain't you got beautiful hair!'"

The mother smiled, for the compliment was well merited, but she gasped as the child innocently continued her account:

"I said to her, 'I am very glad to have you like my hair, but I am sorry to hear you use the word "ain't"!'"--_E. R. Bickford_.

NAN--"That young man from Boston is an interesting talker, so far as you can understand what he says; but what a queer dialect he uses."

FAN--"That isn't dialect; it's vocabulary. Can't you tell the difference?"

A Bostonian died, and when he arrived at St. Peter's gate he was asked the usual questions:

"What is your name, and where are you from?"

The answer was, "Mr. So-and-So, from Boston."

"You may come in," said Peter, "but I know you won't like it."

There was a young lady from Boston, A two-horned dilemma was tossed on, As to which was the best, To be rich in the west Or poor and peculiar in Boston.

BOXING

John L. Sullivan was asked why he had never taken to giving boxing lessons.

"Well, son, I tried it once," replied Mr. Sullivan. "A husky young man took one lesson from me and went home a little the worse for wear. When he came around for his second lesson he said: 'Mr Sullivan, it was my idea to learn enough about boxing from you to be able to lick a certain young gentleman what I've got it in for. But I've changed my mind,' says he. 'If it's all the same to you, Mr. Sullivan, I'll send this young gentleman down here to take the rest of my lessons for me.'"

BOYS

A certain island in the West Indies is liable to the periodical advent of earthquakes. One year before the season of these terrestrial disturbances, Mr. X., who lived in the danger zone, sent his two sons to the home of a brother in England, to secure them from the impending havoc.

Evidently the quiet of the staid English household was disturbed by the irruption of the two West Indians, for the returning mail steamer carried a message to Mr. X., brief but emphatic:

"Take back your boys; send me the earthquake."

Aunt Eliza came up the walk and said to her small nephew: "Good morning, Willie. Is your mother in?"

"Sure she's in," replied Willie truculently. "D'you s'pose I'd be workin' in the garden on Sat.u.r.day morning if she wasn't?"

An iron hoop bounded through the area railings of a suburban house and played havoc with the kitchen window. The woman waited, anger in her eyes, for the appearance of the hoop's owner. Presently he came.