Among the Humorists and After Dinner Speakers Part 17

"There was no reply. The small, white hand did not move.

"'Who's there?' he repeated. 'Answer me or I'll shoot.'

"Again there was no reply.

"Snooks cautiously raised himself, took careful aim and fired.

"From that night on he's limped. Shot off two of his own toes."

When the Rev. Dr. Henson, then of Chicago, came to the New York Chautauqua to lecture on "Fools," Bishop Vincent introduced him thus:

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are now to have a lecture on 'Fools' by one of the most distinguished----"

Here there was a long pause, the Bishop's inflection indicating that he had finished. The audience roared with delight, and roared again, so that it was some time before the sentence was concluded--"men of Chicago."

Dr. Henson, who is a man of ready wit, stepped to the front of the platform, and said:

"Ladies and gentlemen, I am not so great a fool as Bishop Vincent----"

and then he paused as if he had finished, and the audience went fairly wild over the situation. When quiet was restored, Dr. Henson concluded--"would have you think."

Doctor (feeling Sandy's pulse in bed)--"What do you drink?"

Sandy (with brightening face)--"Oh, I'm nae particular, doctor!

Anything you've got with ye."

Every employee of the Bank of England is required to sign his name in a book on his arrival in the morning, and, if late, must give the reason therefor. The chief cause of tardiness is usually fog, and the first man to arrive writes "fog" opposite his name, and those who follow write "ditto." One day, however, the first late man gave as the reason, "wife had twins," and twenty other late men mechanically signed "ditto" underneath.

At a dinner in Was.h.i.+ngton there was told a Scotch story of a paris.h.i.+oner who had strayed from his own kirk.

"Why weren't you at the kirk on Sunday?" asked the preacher of the culprit on meeting him a day or two later.

"I was at Mr. McClellan's kirk," said the other.

"I don't like you running about to strange kirks like that," continued the minister. "Not that I object to your hearing Mr. McClellan, but I'm sure you widna like your sheep straying into strange pastures."

"I widna care a grain, sir, if it was better gra.s.s," responded the paris.h.i.+oner.

Tommy, very sleepy, was saying his prayers. "Now I lay me down to sleep," he began. "I pray the Lord my soul to keep."

"'If,'" his mother prompted.

"If he hollers let him go, eeny, meeny, miny, mo!"

Perish the thought that the novelist or playwright should be tied down to historical accuracy! Lady Dorothy Neville quotes an amusing correspondence between Bulwer Lytton and her brother, Horace Walpole.

"My dear Walpole: Here I am at Bath--bored to death. I am thinking of writing a play about your great ancestor Sir Robert. Had he not a sister Lucy, and did she not marry a Jacobite?"

Walpole promptly replied:

"My dear Lytton: I care little for my family, and less still for Sir Robert, but I know that he never had a sister Lucy, so she could not have married a Jacobite."

However, this mattered little to Lord Lytton, for his answer ran:

"My dear Walpole: You are too late! Sir Robert _had_ a sister Lucy, and she _did_ marry a Jacobite."

So in defiance of history, the play "Walpole" was written.

"Here's a curious item, Joshua!" exclaimed Mrs. Lemington, spreading out the Billeville "Mirror" in her ample lap. "The _Nellie E.

Williams_ of Gloucester reports that she saw two whales, a cow and a calf, floating off Cape Cod the day before yesterday."

"Well, ma," replied old Mr. Lemington, "what's the matter with that?"

"Why, it's all right about the two whales, Joshua, but what bothers me is how the cow and the calf got way out there."

A Congressman once declared in an address to the House:

"As Daniel Webster says in his great dictionary--"

"It was Noah who wrote the dictionary," whispered a colleague, who sat at the next desk.

"Noah, nothing," replied the speaker. "Noah built the ark."

Father (who has been called upon in the city and asked for his daughter's hand)--"Louise, do you know what a solemn thing it is to be married?"

Louise--"Oh, yes, pa; but it is a good deal more solemn being single."

Captain Roald Amundsen, Norway's famous explorer, told this story about a National Guard encampment: