Among the Humorists and After Dinner Speakers Part 60

A woman hurried up to a policeman at the corner of Twenty-third Street in New York City.

"Does this crosstown car take you down to the Bridge toward Brooklyn?"

she demanded.

"Why, madam," returned the policeman, "do you want to go to Brooklyn?"

"No, I don't want to," the woman replied, "but I have to."

Walter Appleton Clark, whose artistic career was cut short by an untimely death, had a strong sense of humor. In going through a millionaire's stables, where the floors and walls were of white tiles, drinking fountains of marble, mahogany mangers, silver tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, and so forth and so on, "Well," said the millionaire proudly, "is there anything lacking?" "I can think of nothing," said Clark, "except a sofa for each horse."

Oliver Herford, equally famous as poet, ill.u.s.trator, and brilliant wit, was entertaining four magazine editors at luncheon when the bell rang, and a maid entered with the mail.

"Oh," said an editor, "an epistle."

"No," said Mr. Herford, tearing open the envelope, "not an epistle, a collect."

An old gentleman on board one of the numerous steamers which ply between Holyhead and the Irish coast missed his handkerchief, and accused a soldier standing by his side of stealing it, which the soldier, an Irishman, denied. Some few minutes afterward the gentleman found the missing article in his hat; he was then most profuse in his apologies to the soldier.

"Not another wurrd," said Pat; "it was a misthake on both sides--ye took me for a thafe, and I took ye for a gintlemon."

The family were gathered in the library enjoying a magnificent thunder-storm when the mother thought of Dorothy alone in the nursery.

Fearing lest the little daughter should be awakened and feel afraid, she slipped away to quiet her. Pausing at the door, however, in a vivid flash of lightning that illuminated the whole room, she saw the little girl sitting up in bed clapping her hands in excitement and shouting, "Bang it again, G.o.d! Bang it again!"

A little girl ate at a feast a great quant.i.ty of chocolate eggs and bananas and cakes and peanuts and things of that sort, and finally the time came for her to go.

"But you will have a little more cake before you go?" her hostess said politely.

"No, thank you, ma'am. I'm full," said the little girl.

"Then," said the hostess, "you'll put some nuts and candies in your pockets, won't you?"

The little girl shook her head regretfully.

"They're full, too," she said.

"My dear, I couldn't match that dress goods."

"You couldn't?"

"No, and after what the various clerks said to me, I can't see why a person in tolerable circ.u.mstances should want to match it."

A boy in a certain school would persist in saying "have went." One day the teacher kept him in, saying, "While I am out of the room you may write 'have gone' fifty times." When the teacher returned she found he had dutifully performed the task, but on the other side of the paper was a message from the absent one: "I have went. John White."

On one of his trips abroad Mr. Evarts landed at Liverpool. The steamer was proceeding slowly up the river to the wharf, and Mr. Evarts, after looking at the muddy waters of the Mersey, said to his companion, "Evidently the quality of mercy is not strained."

Once, at breakfast at a friend's, Phillips Brooks noticed the diminutive but amusingly dignified daughter of the house having constant trouble with the large fork that she was vainly trying to handle properly with her tiny fingers. In a spirit of kindness, mingled with mischief, the Bishop said:

"Why don't you give up the fork, my dear, and use your fingers? You know, fingers were made before forks."

Quick as a flash came the crus.h.i.+ng retort: "Mine weren't."

Two stout old Germans were enjoying their pipes and placidly listening to the strains of the summer-garden orchestra. One of them in tipping his chair back stepped on a parlor match, which exploded with a bang.

"Dot vas not on de program," he said, turning to his companion.

"Vat was not?"

"Vy, dot match."

"Vat match?"

"De match I valked on."

"Vell, I didn't see no match; vat aboud it?"

"Vy, I valked on a match and it vent bang, and I said it vas not on de program."

The other picked up his program and read it through very carefully. "I don't see it on de program," he said.

"Vell, I said it vas not on the program, didn't I?"

"Vell, vat has it got to do mit de program, anyvay? Egsplain yourself."

Charles Dana Gibson, the creator of the "Gibson girl," is one of the tallest men in his profession, standing six feet two inches tall and weighing two hundred pounds.