Best Short Stories Part 17

AN ANGLOMANIAC

"What are you studying now?" asked Mrs. Johnson.

"We have taken up the subject of molecules," answered her son.

"I hope you will be very attentive and practise constantly," said the mother. "I tried to get your father to wear one, but he could not keep it in his eye."

YANKEE FODDER

Senator h.o.a.r used to tell with glee of a Southerner just home from New England who said to his friend, "You know those little white round beans?"

"Yes," replied the friend; "the kind we feed to our horses?"

"The very same. Well, do you know, sir, that in Boston the enlightened citizens take those little white round beans, boil them for three or four hours, mix them with mola.s.ses and I know not what other ingredients, bake them, and then--what do you suppose they do with the beans?"

"They--"

"They eat 'em, sir," interrupted the first Southerner impressively; "bless me, sir, they eat 'em!"

ONE EXPLANATION

At the meeting of the Afro-American Debating Club the question of capital punishment for murder occupied the attention of the orators for the evening. One speaker had a great deal to say about the sanity of persons who thus took the law into their own hands. The last speaker, however, after a stirring harangue, concluded with great feeling: "Ah disagrees wif capital punishment an' all dis heah talk 'bout sanity. Any pusson 'at c'mits murdeh ain't in a sanitary condition."

REMORSE

"I got son in army," said a wrinkled old chief to United States Senator Clapp during his recent visit to an Indian reservation in Minnesota.

"Fine," exclaimed the Senator. "You should be proud that he is fighting for all of us."

"Who we fight?" the redskin continued.

"Why," the Senator replied, surprised. "We are fighting the Kaiser--you know, the Germans."

"Hah," mourned the chief. "Too dam bad."

"Why bad?" protested Senator Clapp, getting primed for a lecture on Teutonic kultur and its horrors.

"Too dam bad," repeated the old Indian. "Couple come through reservation last week. I could killed um, easy as not. Too dam bad."

He wrapped his face in his blanket and refused to be comforted.

THE REAL CULPRIT

The Crown Prince had been so busy that he hadn't had time to get together with his father and have a confidential chat. But one evening when there was a lull in the 808-centimeter guns, they managed to get a few moments off. The Crown Prince turned to his father and said:

"Dad, there is something I have been wanting to ask you for a long time.

Is Uncle George really responsible for this sc.r.a.p?"

"No, my son."

"Well, did Cousin Nick have anything to do with it?"

"Not at all"

"Possibly you did?"

"No, sir."

"Then would you mind telling me who it was?"

The anointed one was silent for a moment. Then he turned to his son and said:

"I'll tell you how it happened. About two or three years ago there was a wild man came over here from the United States, one of those rip-roaring rough riders that you read about in dime novels, but he certainly did have about him a plausible air. I took him out and showed him our fleet.

Then I showed him the army, and after he had looked them over he said to me, 'Bill, you could lick the world,' And I was d.a.m.n fool enough to believe him."

A MATTER OF NOMENCLATURE

A Negro was recently brought into police court in a little town in Georgia, charged with a.s.sault and battery. The Negro, who was well known to the judge, was charged with having struck another "unbleached American" with a brick. After the usual preliminaries the judge inquired:

"Why did you hit this man?"

"Jedge, he called me a d.a.m.n black rascal."

"Well, you are one, aren't you?"

"Yessah, I _is_ one. But, Jedge, s'pose somebody'd call you a d.a.m.n black rascal, wouldn't you hit 'em?"

"But I'm not one, am I?"

"Naw, sah, naw, sah, you ain't one; but s'pose somebody'd call you de kind o' rascal you _is_, what'd you do?"

"IT IS FORBIDDEN"

Early in the war J.B. adopted a French soldier and furnishes him with a monthly allowance of tobacco. Incidentally, he is also lubricating his rusty French by carrying on a correspondence with his "_filleul de guerre_" who writes him from the trenches, "somewhere in France."

In a recent letter, the soldier informed his American benefactor that "_hier j'ai tue deux Boches. Ils sont alles a l'enfer._" (Yesterday I killed two Boches. They went straight to h.e.l.l.) The censor wrote between the lines, "_Il est defendu de dire ou est l'ennemi._" (It is forbidden to tell where the enemy is!)

HER PRAYER

A visitor to a Glasgow working woman whose son was at the front was treated to a fluent harangue on the misdeeds of that "auld blackguard,"

the Kaiser. She ventured to suggest that we should love our enemies and pray for them.