More Toasts Part 43

Thereupon thirteen women and one man proceeded to the altar.

The Irish lad and the Yiddish boy were engaged in verbal combat.

Finally the subject came down to their respective churches.

"I guess I know that Father Harrity knows more than your Rabbi," the little Irish boy insisted.

"Shure, he does; vy not?" replied the Jewish boy. "You tell him everything."

CONFIDENCES

A man got in a cab at a Southern railway station and said: "Drive me to a haberdasher's."

"Yaas, suh," said the driver, whipped up his horse and drove a block; then he leaned over to address his pa.s.senger: "'Scuse me, boss; whar d' you say you wanter go?"

"To a haberdasher's."

"Yaas, suh; yaas, suh." After another block there was the same performance: "'Scuse me, boss, but whar d' you say you wanter go?"

"To a haberdasher's," was the somewhat impatient reply.

Then came the final appeal: "Now, look-a-here, boss, I be'n drivin'

in dis town twenty year', an' I ain't never give n.o.body away yit. Now, you jes tell dis n.i.g.g.e.r whar't is you wanter go."

CONGRESS

"How is the law made?" asked the instructor in United States history.

"Oh," replied the maiden, cheerfully, "the Senate has to ratify it; and then the President has to--has to veto it; and then the House of Representatives has to"--she hesitated for a moment, and knit her pretty forehead.

"Oh, yes! I remember now," she said. "The House of Representatives has to adjourn until the next session!"

"Has this bill been endorsed by the Prohibition party?"

"Yes."

"And met with the approval of the I.W.W. and the Bolsheviki?"

"Yes."

"And O.K.'d by Mr. Hearst?"

"Certainly."

"Then instruct Congress to pa.s.s it as another great measure restoring the rights of the people."

CONSCIENCE

Wilson and Wilton were discussing the moralities when the first put this question: "Well, what is conscience, anyhow?"

"Conscience," said Wilton, who prides himself upon being a bit of a pessimist, "is the thing we always believe should bother the other fellow."

A young fellow who was the crack sprinter of his town--somewhere in the South--was unfortunate enough to have a very dilatory laundress.

One evening, when he was out for a practice run in his rather airy and abbreviated track costume, he chanced to dash past the house of that dusky lady, who at the time was a couple of weeks in arrears with his was.h.i.+ng.

He had scarcely reached home again when the bell rang furiously and an excited voice was wafted in from the porch:

"Foh de Lawd's sake! won't you-all tell Ma.r.s.e Bob please not to go out no moh till I kin git his clo'es round to him?"

Many a man feels that he could be quite comfortable if his conscience would meet him halfway.

CONSCRIPTION

He was a homesick colored soldier in a labor battalion, and he saw no chance of a discharge.

"De nex' wah dey has," he announced to a friend, "dey's two men dat ain't goin'--me an' de man dey sends to git me."

A negro registrant from a farming district was called to service.

Arriving in town, he found the local board had moved to another street. At the new address another negro languished in the doorway.

"Is dis whar de redemtion bo'd is at?" queried the newcomer.

"Sho' is," answered the second. "But de blessed redeemer done gone out fo' lunch."

Zeb Smith was a drafted man. He saw heavy fighting in France and was wounded. On his return to the United States he was interviewed by one whose duty it was to interest himself in the men.

"Smith, what do you intend to do when you are released from the service?"