Among the Humorists and After Dinner Speakers Part 56

A woman suffrage lecturer brought down the house with the following argument: "I have no vote, but my groom has, but I am sure if I were to go to him and say, 'John, will you exercise the franchise?' he would reply, 'Please, mum, which horse be that?'"

"Maude was afraid the girls wouldn't notice her engagement ring." "Did they?" "_Did_ they? Six of them recognized it at once."

Mr. George Broadhurst, author of the play, "The Man of the Hour," is an Englishman, and recently made a visit to his native country. After having lived a week at one of the large hotels in London, he was surprised on the evening of his departure, although at a very late hour, to see an endless procession of waiters, maids, porters, and pages come forward with the expectant smile and empty hand. When each and all had been well bestowed, even boots and under-boots and then another boots, he dashed for the four-wheeler that was to carry him safely away.

Settling himself with a sigh of relief, he was about to be off when a page popped his head into the window and breathlessly exclaimed:

"I beg pardon, sir, but the night-lift man says he's waiting for a message from you, sir."

"A message from me?"

"Yes, sir; he says he cawn't go to sleep without a message from you, sir."

"Really, he can't go to sleep without a message from me?"

"No, sir."

"How touching. Then tell him, 'Pleasant dreams.'"

Representative Tawney, of Minnesota, chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, sent out some of his quota of garden seeds to his const.i.tuents not long ago. One man in Winona wrote to Tawney: "Dear Jim: I received your seeds, but I don't care much for them. If you really want to do something for me, please send me up a suit of union underwear."

In his younger days Thomas Bailey Aldrich was not a little of a dandy.

This foible led an unusually energetic Boston bluestocking to refer to him in a caustic style on one occasion as "effeminate."

When a friend told the poet of her remark he smiled grimly.

"So I am," he a.s.sented, "compared with her."

Tennyson's customary manner toward women was one of grave and stately courtesy. One evening at Aldworth, Sir Edward Hamley, the soldier and expert writer on the art of war, who had been visiting through the day, rose to take leave. Tennyson pressed him to stay over night, adding: "There are three ladies who wish it," meaning Mrs. Tennyson and the two guests who were in the house.

"There are three other ladies who oppose it," Sir Edward answered.

"Who are they?" Tennyson asked.

"The Fates," Sir Edward replied.

"The Fates may be on one side," Tennyson rejoined, "but the Graces are on the other."

Douglas Jerrold's genius for repartee is perhaps best shown in his most famous reply to Albert Smith, whom he disliked and frequently abused. Smith grew tired of being made the b.u.t.t of the other's wit, and one day plaintively remarked: "After all, Jerrold, we row in the same boat." "Yes," came the answer, "but not with the same skulls."

Mr. Brown, a Kansas gentleman, is the proprietor of a boarding-house.

Around his table at a recent dinner sat his wife, Mrs. Brown; the village milliner, Mrs. Andrews; Mr. Black, the baker; Mr. Jordan, a carpenter; and Mr. Hadley, a flour, feed, and lumber merchant. Mr.

Brown took a ten-dollar bill out of his pocketbook and handed it to Mrs. Brown, with the remark that there was ten dollars toward the twenty he had promised her. Mrs. Brown handed the bill to Mrs.

Andrews, the milliner, saying, "That pays for my new bonnet." Mrs.

Andrews, in turn, pa.s.sed it on to Mr. Jordan, remarking that it would pay for the carpentry work he had done for her. Mr. Jordan handed it to Mr. Hadley, requesting his receipted bill for flour, feed, and lumber. Mr. Hadley gave the bill back to Mr. Brown, saying, "That pays ten dollars on my board." Mr. Brown again pa.s.sed it to Mrs. Brown, remarking that he had now paid her the twenty dollars he had promised her. She, in turn, paid it to Mr. Black to settle her bread and pastry account. Mr. Black handed it to Mr. Hadley, asking credit for the amount on his flour bill, Mr. Hadley again returning it to Mr. Brown, with the remark that it settled for that month's board; whereupon Brown put it back into his pocketbook, observing that he had not supposed a greenback would go so far.

A doctor came up to a patient in an insane asylum, slapped him on the back, and said: "Well, old man, you're all right, you can run along and write your folks that you'll be back home in two weeks as good as new." The patient went off gaily to write his letter. He had it finished and sealed, but when he was licking the stamp it slipped through his fingers to the floor, lighted on the back of a c.o.c.kroach that was pa.s.sing and stuck. The patient hadn't seen the c.o.c.kroach--what he did see was his escaped postage stamp zig-zagging aimlessly across the floor to the baseboard, wavering up over the baseboard and following a crooked track up the wall and across the ceiling. In depressed silence he tore up the letter and dropped the pieces on the floor. "Two weeks! h.e.l.l!" he said. "I won't be out of here in three years."

A Bostonian, arriving at the gate of Heaven, asked for admittance.

"Where are you from?" inquired the genial Saint.

"Boston."

"Well, you can come in, but you won't like it."

A well-known bishop, after a long journey to conduct a service in a distant village, was asked by the spokesman of the reception committee if he would like a whisky and soda to keep out the cold. "No," he replied, "for three reasons. First, because I am chairman of the Temperance Society; secondly, I am just going to enter a church; and--thirdly, because--I have just had one."

A frivolous young English girl, with no love for the Stars and Stripes, once exclaimed at a celebration where the American flag was very much in evidence: "Oh, what a silly-looking thing the American flag is! It suggests nothing but checker-berry candy."

"Yes," replied a bystander, "the kind of candy that has made everybody sick who ever tried to lick it."

A hungry Irishman went into a restaurant on Friday and said to the waiter:

"Have yez any whale?"

"No."

"Have yez any shark?"

"No."

"Have yez any swordfish?"