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A middle-aged farmer accosted a serious-faced youth outside the Grand

Central Station in New York the other day.



"Young man," he said, plucking his sleeve, "I wanter go to Central

Park."



The youth seemed lost in consideration for a moment.



"Well," he said finally, "you may just this once. But I don't want you

ever, _ever_ to ask me again."





SEEDY VISITOR--"Do you have many wrecks about here, boatman?"



BOATMAN--"Not very many, sir. You're the first I've seen this season."





HER DAD--"No, sir; I won't have my daughter tied for life to a stupid

fool."



HER SUITOR--"Then don't you think you'd better let me take her off your

hands?"





Wendell Phillips was traveling through Ohio once when he fell in with a

car full of ministers returning from a convention. One of the ministers,

a southerner from Kentucky, was naturally not very cordial to the

opinions of the great abolitionist and set out to embarrass Mr.

Phillips. So, before the group of ministers, he said:



"You are Wendell Phillips, are you not?"



"Yes," answered the great abolitionist.



"And you are trying to free the niggers, aren't you?"



"Yes, sir; I am."



"Well, why do you preach your doctrines up here? Why don't you go over

into Kentucky?"



"Excuse me, are you a preacher?"



"I am, sir."



"Are you trying to save souls from hell?"



"Yes, sir; that is my business."



"Well, why don't you go there then?" asked Mr. Phillips.





SOLEMN SENIOR--"So your efforts to get on the team were fruitless, were

they?"



FOOLISH FRESHMAN--"Oh, no! Not at all. They gave me a lemon."--_Harvard

Lampoon_.





A benevolent person watched a workman laboriously windlassing rock from

a shaft while the broiling sun was beating down on his bare head.



"My dear man," observed the onlooker, "are you not afraid that your

brain will be affected in the hot sun?"



The laborer contemplated him for a moment and then replied:



"Do you think a man with any brains would be working at this kind of a

job?"





Winston Churchill, the young English statesman, recently began to raise

a mustache, and while it was still in the budding stage he was asked at

a dinner party to take in to dinner an English girl who had decided

opposing political views.



"I am sorry," said Mr. Churchill, "we cannot agree on politics."



"No, we can't," rejoined the girl, "for to be frank with you I like your

politics about as little as I do your mustache."



"Well," replied Mr. Churchill, "remember that you are not likely to come

into contact with either."





Strickland Gillilan, the lecturer and the man who pole-vaulted into fame

by his "Off Ag'in, On Ag'in, Finnigin" verses, was about to deliver a

lecture in a small Missouri town. He asked the chairman of the committee

whether he might have a small pitcher of ice-water on the platform

table.



"To drink?" queried the committeeman.



"No," answered Gillilan. "I do a high-diving act."





TRAVELER--"Say, boy, your corn looks kind of yellow."



BOY--"Yes, sir. That's the kind we planted."



TRAVELER--"Looks as though you will only have half a crop."



BOY--"Don't expect any more. The landlord gets the other half."



TRAVELER (after a moment's thought)--"Say, there is not much difference

between you and a fool."



BOY--"No, sir. Only the fence."





President Lincoln was busily engaged in his office when an attendant, a

young man of sixteen, unceremoniously entered and gave him a card.

Without rising, the President glanced at the card. "Pshaw. She here

again? I told her last week that I could not interfere in her case. I

cannot see her," he said impatiently. "Get rid of her any way you can.

Tell her I am asleep, or anything you like."



Quickly returning to the lady in an adjacent room, this exceedingly

bright boy said to her, "The President told me to tell you that he is

asleep."



The lady's eyes sparkled as she responded, "Ah, he says he is asleep,

eh? Well, will you be kind enough to return and ask him when he intends

to wake up?"





The garrulous old lady in the stern of the boat had pestered the guide

with her comments and questions ever since they had started. Her meek

little husband, who was hunched toad-like in the bow, fished in silence.

The old lady had seemingly exhausted every possible point in fish and

animal life, woodcraft, and personal history when she suddenly espied

one of those curious paths of oily, unbroken water frequently seen on

small lakes which are ruffled by a light breeze.



"Oh, guide, guide," she exclaimed, "what makes that funny streak in the

water--No, there--Right over there!"



The guide was busy re-baiting the old gentleman's hook and merely

mumbled "U-m-mm."



"Guide," repeated the old lady in tones that were not to be denied,

"look right over there where I'm pointing and tell me what makes that

funny streak in the water."



The guide looked up from his baiting with a sigh.



"That? Oh, that's where the road went across the ice last winter."





Nothing more clearly expresses the sentiments of Harvard men in seasons

of athletic rivalry than the time-honored "To hell with Yale!"



Once when Dean Briggs, of Harvard, and Edward Everett Hale were on their

way to a game at Soldiers' Field a friend asked:



"Where are you going, Dean?"



"To yell with Hale," answered Briggs with a meaning smile.





John Kendrick Bangs one day called up his wife on the telephone. The

maid at the other end did not recognize her "master's voice," and after

Bangs had told her whom he wanted the maid asked:



"Do you wish to speak with Mrs. Bangs?"



"No, indeed," replied the humorist; "I want to kiss her."





A boy took a position in an office where two different telephones were

installed.



"Your wife would like to speak to you on the 'phone, sir," he said to

his employer.



"Which one?" inquired the boss, starting toward the two booths.



"Please, sir, she didn't say, and I didn't know that you had more than

one."





An Englishman was being shown the sights along the Potomac. "Here,"

remarked the American, "is where George Washington threw a dollar across

the river."



"Well," replied the Englishman, "that is not very remarkable, for a

dollar went much further in those days than it does now."



The American would not be worsted, so, after a short pause, he said:

"But Washington accomplished a greater feat than that. He once chucked a

sovereign across the Atlantic."





Pat was busy on a road working with his coat off. There were two

Englishmen laboring on the same road, so they decided to have a joke

with the Irishman. They painted a donkey's head on the back of Pat's

coat, and watched to see him put it on. Pat, of course, saw the donkey's

head on his coat, and, turning to the Englishmen, said:



"Which of yez wiped your face on me coat?"





A district leader went to Sea Girt, in 1912, to see the Democratic

candidate for President. In the course of an animated conversation, the

leader, noticing that Governor Wilson's eyeglasses were perched

perilously near the tip of his nose remarked: "Your glasses, Governor,

are almost on your mouth."



"That's all right," was the quick response. "I want to see what I'm

talking about."





According to the London _Globe_ two Germans were halted at the French

frontier by the customs officers. "We have each to declare three bottles

of red wine," said one of the Germans to the _douaniers_. "How much to

pay?"



"Where are the bottles?" asked the customs man.



"They are within!" laughed the Teuton making a gesture.



The French _douanier_, unruffled, took down his tariff book and read, or

pretended to read: "Wines imported in bottles pay so much, wines

imported in barrels pay so much, and wines _en peaux d'âne_ pay no duty.

You can pass, gentlemen."





A small boy was hoeing corn in a sterile field by the roadside, when a

passer-by stopped and said:



"'Pears to me your corn is rather small."



"Certainly," said the boy; "it's dwarf corn."



"But it looks yaller."



"Certainly; we planted the yaller kind."



"But it looks as if you wouldn't get more than half a crop."



"Of course not; we planted it on halves."