Among the Humorists and After Dinner Speakers Part 51

When asked by the Senator whom he was looking for he replied.

"A little boy who gave his order."

The Senator replied: "I am that boy."

Jack's mother had been walking up and down the piazza with him repeating Mother Goose. She began the "Solomon Grundy" one, going through it rapidly without taking breath, ending laughingly:

"Worse on Friday, Died on Sat.u.r.day, Buried on Sunday, And that was the end Of Solomon Grundy."

Jack took his thumb out of his mouth, looked reprovingly at his mother and said:

"Don't laugh, mama: that's _awful_."

"I'm a terror, I be," announced the new arrival in Frozen Dog to one of the men behind the bar.

"Be ye?"

"Take three men to handle me, once I get started," he went on.

"Oh, well," he remarked, as he arose painfully and dusted off his clothes, "of course, if ye're short-handed, I suppose two kin do it on a pinch."

David B. Hill, former Governor of and Senator from New York, has a secluded hatter somewhere in the State who makes his high hats after elaborate plans drawn by Mr. Hill many years ago, and not changed since.

One night Governor Odell, of New York, was giving a reception in Albany, and President Roosevelt, then elected Vice-President, met Mr.

Hill on the steps of the New York Executive mansion.

Roosevelt wore a black rough-rider hat and Hill had one of his peculiar sky-pieces.

"Senator," said Roosevelt, "you should wear a hat like this one that I have on. They are much easier on the head, preserve the hair and are altogether better than silk ones."

Mr. Hill looked at the coming Vice-President. "My dear sir," he said, "I haven't worn a hat like that since I went out of the show business."

A negress was brought before a magistrate charged with cruelly treating her child. Evidence was clear that she had severely beaten the youngster, who was in court to exhibit his marks and bruises.

Before imposing sentence the magistrate asked the woman if she had anything to say. "Kin Ah ask yo' honah a question?" His honor nodded.

"Well, yo' honah, I'd like to ask yo' whether yo' was ever the father of a puffectly wuthless culled chile?"

A member of an eminent St. Louis law firm went to Chicago to consult a client. When he arrived he found that he had unaccountably forgotten the client's name. He telegraphed his partner, "What is our client's name?" The answer read, "Brown, Walter E. Yours is Allen, William B."

A traveling man stopped at an Indiana hotel. The proprietor told him he had not a room in the house. The man said he must have a room.

Finally the proprietor told him there was a room, a little room separated by a thin part.i.tion from a nervous man who had lived in the house for ten years.

"He is so nervous," said the landlord, "I don't dare put any one in that room. The least noise might give him a nervous spell that would endanger his life."

"Oh, give me a room," said the traveler. "I'll be so quiet he'll not know I'm there."

The room was given the traveler. He slipped in noiselessly and began to disrobe. He took off one article of clothing after another as quietly as a burglar. At last he came to his shoes. He unlaced a shoe and dropped it.

The shoe fell to the floor with a great noise. The offending traveler, horrified at what he had done, waited to hear from the nervous man.

Not a sound. He took off the second shoe and placed it noiselessly upon the floor; then in absolute silence finished undressing and crawled between the sheets.

Half an hour went by. He had dropped into a doze when there came a tremendous knocking on the part.i.tion.

The traveler sat up in bed trembling and dismayed. "Wh-wha-what's the matter?" he asked.

Then came the voice of the nervous man:

"Hang you! Drop that other shoe, will you?"

There was once an Irishman, who sought employment as a diver, bringing with him his native enthusiasm and a certain amount of experience.

Although he had never been beneath the water, he had crossed an ocean of one variety and swallowed nearly an ocean of another. But he had the Hibernian smile, which is convincing, and the firm chanced to need a new man. And so on the following Monday morning Pat hid his smile for the first time in a diving helmet.

Now, the job upon which the crew to which Pat had attached himself was working in comparatively shallow water, and Pat was provided with a pick and told to use it on a ledge below in a manner with which he was already familiar.

Down he went with his pick, and for about fifteen minutes nothing was heard from him. Then came a strong, determined, deliberate pull on the signal rope, indicating that Pat had a very decided wish to come to the top. The a.s.sistants pulled him hastily to the raft and removed his helmet.

"Take off the rest of it," said Pat.

"Take off the rest of it?"

"Yis," said Pat, "Oi'll worruk no longer in a dark place where Oi can't spit on me hands."

On the first day that a young man began his duties as reporter on a popular paper a report came from a near-by town that there was a terrible fire raging. The editor of the paper immediately sent the new reporter to the place, and, upon arriving there, he found that the firemen were unable to get control of the fire, so he sent this telegram to the editor: "Fire still raging. What shall I do?" The editor was so mad that he wired back at once: "Find out where the fire is the hottest and jump in."

"One day," related Denny to his friend Jerry, "when Oi had wandered too far inland on me sh.o.r.e leave Oi suddenly found thot there was a great big haythen, tin feet tall, chasin' me wid a knife as long as yer ar-rm. Oi took to me heels an' for fifty miles along the road we had it nip an' tuck. Thin Oi turned into the woods an' we run for one hundhred an' twinty miles more, wid him gainin' on me steadily, owin'

to his knowledge of the counthry. Finally, just as Oi could feel his hot breath burnin' on the back of me neck, we came to a big lake. Wid one great leap Oi landed safe on the opposite sh.o.r.e, leavin' me pursuer confounded and impotent wid rage."

"Faith an' thot was no great jump," commented Jerry, "considerin' the runnin' sthart ye had."