Best Short Stories Part 12

The girl's father caught the young man squarely by the shoulders and faced him about.

"He kissed me at the station--before everybody!" sobbed the girl. "Then he kissed mama and the maid and Aunt Jane."

"What is the meaning of this?" said the girl's father, sternly. "How dare you, sir, abuse our hospitality?"

The young man shuddered. His eyes closed. Still in the clutch of his host, there was a tragic silence. Then he opened them once more and gazed feebly about him. He pa.s.sed his hand wearily over his forehead.

"Forgive me!" he whispered. "It is not my fault. I live in bachelor quarters in town. My friends had all gone away and there was nothing for me to do but go to the moving picture shows night after night. I have been doing this for weeks. In the moving pictures the young man hero kisses everybody he meets. It's the regular thing--nothing but kissing, kissing, all the time. My mind has been unhinged by it. Forgive me and take me to some asylum."

Then he burst into tears, threw his arms about the old gentleman--and kissed him, and they led the poor wretch away.

HISTORICAL

At a military church service during the South African War some recruits were listening to the chaplain in church saying, "Let them slay the Boers as Joshua smote the Egyptians," when a recruit whispered to a companion:

"Say, Bill, the old bloke is a bit off; doesn't he know it was Kitchener who swiped the Egyptians?"

MEMORIES

An American lady at Stratford-on-Avon showed even more than the usual American fervor. She had not recovered when she reached the railway station, for she remarked to a friend as they walked on the platform: "To think that it was from this very platform the immortal bard would depart whenever he journeyed to town!"

ECCLESIASTICAL DUES ENFORCED

"I canna get ower it," a Scotch farmer remarked to his wife. "I put a twa s.h.i.+llin' piece in the plate at the kirk this morning instead o' ma usual penny."

The beadle had noticed the mistake, and in silence he allowed the farmer to miss the plate for twenty-three consecutive Sundays.

On the twenty-fourth Sunday the farmer again ignored the plate, but the old beadle stretched the ladle in froat of him and, in a loud, tragic whisper, hoa.r.s.ely said:

"Your time's up noo, Sandy."

STILL COMPANIONABLE

Jennie, the colored maid, arrived one morning with her head swathed in bandages--the result of an argument with her hot-tempered spouse.

"Jennie," said her mistress, "your husband treats you outrageously. Why don't you leave him?"

"Well, I don' 'zactly wants to leave him."

"Hasn't he dragged you the length of the room by your hair?" demanded her mistress.

"Yas'm, he has done dat."

"Hasn't he choked you into insensibility?"

"Yas'm, he sho has choked me."

"And now doesn't he threaten to split your head with an ax?"

"Yas'm, he has done all dat," agreed Jennie, "but he ain' done nothin'

yet so bad I couldn't live wid him."

AN EASY ADJUSTMENT

Andy Donaldson, a well-known character of Glasgow, lay on his deathbed.

"I canna' leave ye thus, Nancy," the old Scotsman wailed. "Ye're ower auld to work, an' ye couldna' live in the workhoose. Gin I dee, ye maun marry anither man, wha'll keep ye in comfort in yer auld age."

"Nay, nay, Andy," answered the good spouse; "I couldna' marry anither man, fer whit wull I daw wi' twa husbands in heaven?"

Andy pondered over this, but suddenly his face brightened.

"I ha'e it, Nancy!" he cried. "Ye ken auld John Clemmens? He's a kind man, but he's no' a member o' the kirk. He likes ye, Nancy, an' gin ye'll marry him, 'twill be a' the same in heaven. John's no' a Christian, and he's no' likely to get there."

APPRAISED

One morning, Mollie, the colored maid, appeared before her mistress, carrying, folded in a handkerchief, a five-dollar gold piece and all her earthly possessions in the way of jewelry.

This package she proffered her mistress, with the request that Miss Sallie take it for safe keeping.

"Why, Mollie!" exclaimed the mistress in surprise. "Are you going away?"

"Naw'm, I ain' goin' nowheres," Mollie declared. "But me an' Jim Harris we wuz married this mawnin'. Yas'm, Jim, he's a new n.i.g.g.e.r in town. You don' know nothin' 'bout him, Miss Sallie. I don' know nothin' 'bout him myself. He's er stranger to me."

Miss Sallie glanced severely at the little package of jewelry.

"But, Mollie," she demanded, "don't you trust him?"

"Yas'm," replied Mollie, unruffled. "Cose I trus' him, personally--but not wid ma valuables."

AN EASY MATTER

How to own your own home is a problem which confronts the great majority. That it is oftentimes easily solved, however, is revealed by the following simple experience as related by H.M. Perley in _Life_:

How did we do it? Simply by going without everything we needed. When I was first married my salary was thirty dollars a month.

My mother-in-law, who lived with us, decided to save enough out of my salary to build us a home.

When the cellar was finished, I became ill and lost my position, and had to mortgage the cellar to make my first payment.

Although we went without food for thirty days the first year, we never missed a monthly payment.