Among the Humorists and After Dinner Speakers Part 16

A clergyman was being shaved by a barber, who had evidently become unnerved by the previous night's dissipation. Finally he cut the clergyman's chin. The latter looked up at the artist reproachfully, and said:

"You see, my man, what comes of hard drinking."

"Yes, sir," replied the barber consolingly, "it makes the skin tender."

Mistress--"Did the mustard plaster do you any good, Bridget?"

Maid--"Yes; but, begorry, mum, ut do bite the tongue!"

They had just met; conversation was somewhat fitful. Finally he decided to guide it into literary channels, where he was more at home, and, turning to his companion, asked:

"Are you fond of literature?"

"Pa.s.sionately," she replied. "I love books dearly."

"Then you must admire Sir Walter Scott," he exclaimed with sudden animation. "Is not his 'Lady of the Lake' exquisite in its flowing grace and poetic imagery? Is it not--"

"It is perfectly lovely," she a.s.sented, clasping her hands in ecstasy.

"I suppose I have read it a dozen times."

"And Scott's 'Marmion,'" he continued, "with its rugged simplicity and marvelous description--one can almost smell the heather on the heath while perusing its splendid pages."

"It is perfectly grand," she murmured.

"And Scott's 'Peveril of the Peak' and his n.o.ble 'Bride of Lammermoor'--where in the English language will you find anything more heroic than his grand auld Scottish characters and his graphic, forceful pictures of feudal times and customs? You like them, I am sure."

"I just dote upon them," she replied.

"And Scott's Emulsion," he continued hastily, for a faint suspicion was beginning to dawn upon him.

"I think," she interrupted rashly, "that it's the best thing he ever wrote."

"Why is Jones growing a beard?"

"Oh, I believe his wife made him a present of some ties."

Wife--"Do come over to Mrs. Barker's with me, John. She'll make you feel just as if you were at home."

Her Husband--"Then what's the use of going?"

About forty years ago, walking down Market street, in this city, I heard a darky commenting on a sign he had just spelt out, stretched across the sidewalk in front of a livery stable:

"Jist like 'em. Aftah dars no moh slabry dey stick up signs foh me: 'Man-ure Free'!"

In the audience at a lecture on China there was a very pious old lady who was slightly deaf. She thought the lecturer was preaching, and every time he came to a period she would say "Amen!" or some other pious exclamation. The people in the audience, which was composed mostly of the village church members, knew she was being reverent and did not even smile when she exclaimed, until finally the lecturer mentioned some far-off city in China, saying, "I live there." At this point clearly and distinctly could be heard the old lady, saying, "Thank G.o.d for that."

A pus.h.i.+ng young actor who was playing understudy in one of Mr.

Barrie's plays found his opportunity one night through the illness of his princ.i.p.al. He accordingly flooded his managerial and influential acquaintances with telegrams announcing: "I play So-and-So's part to-night." Except that the theater was comparatively empty this breathless disclosure produced no result, except a telegram in reply from Mr. Barrie, to this effect: "Thanks for the warning."

It was a busy day in the butcher-shop. The butcher yelled to the boy who helped him out in the shop: "Hurry up, John, and don't forget to cut off Mrs. Murphy's leg, and break Mrs. Jones's bones, and don't forget to slice Mrs. Johnson's tongue."

Ralph Waldo Emerson, like other men of genius, was absent-minded, and, when a fit of inspiration seized him, he was oblivious to the things of earth to a ludicrous extent. A story that is vouched for as true ill.u.s.trates this.

The old-fas.h.i.+oned matches, in use in New England in Emerson's time, were made in cards, or flat slabs, the matches being joined at the foot, and separating at the top, like the teeth of a deep comb.

Emerson was accustomed, in the midnight watches, to lie awake communing with his own thoughts, and, if any especial inspiration developed itself, he would get up and write it down, lighting the lamp for that purpose.

One night, Mrs. Emerson was awakened by her gifted husband's voice, as he called to her plaintively:

"What is the matter with the matches, my dear? I have struck seven, and not one will light. Where can I get some good ones?"

Mrs. Emerson got out of bed at once, and found the matches in their accustomed place. Her husband had not touched them.

"Why, what can you have been striking, in mistake for matches?" she asked, anxiously, and beheld her best carved tortoise-sh.e.l.l comb, which the absorbed philosopher, had broken up, tooth by tooth, in mistake for the card of matches.

Instructor in Public Speaking--"What is the matter with you, Mr.

Jones; can't you speak any louder? Be more enthusiastic. Open your mouth and throw yourself into it."

"I confess that the subject of psychical research makes no great appeal to me," Sir William Henry Perkin, the inventor of coal-tar dyes, told some friends in New York. "Personally, in the course of a fairly long career, I have heard at first hand but one ghost story.

Its hero was a man whom I may as well call Snooks.

"Snooks, visiting at a country house, was put in the haunted chamber for the night. He said that he did not feel the slightest uneasiness, but nevertheless, just as a matter of precaution, he took to bed with him a revolver of the latest American pattern.

"He slept peacefully enough until the clock struck two, when he awoke with an unpleasant feeling of oppression. He raised his head and peered about him. The room was wanly illumined by the full moon, and in that weird, bluish light he thought he discerned a small, white hand clasping the rail at the foot of the bed.

"'Who's there?' he asked tremulously.