Toaster's Handbook Part 120

"Yes, sah, Colonel, but it didn't do no good."

"Have you tried brown paper and a hot iron?"

"Yes, sah, Colonel, I'se done tried 'mos' everything I knows of, but dat spot wouldn't come out."

"Well, George, have you tried ammonia?" the colonel asked as a last resort.

"No, sah, Colonel, I ain't tried 'em on yet, but I knows dey'll fit."

A negro went into a hardware shop and asked to be shown some razors, and after critically examining those submitted to him the would-be purchaser was asked why he did not try a "safety," to which he replied: "I ain'

lookin' for that kind. I wants this for social purposes."

Before a house where a colored man had died, a small darkey was standing erect at one side of the door. It was about time for the services to begin, and the parson appeared from within and said to the darkey: "De services are about to begin. Aren't you a-gwine in?"

"I'se would if I'se could, parson," answered the little negro, "but yo'

see I'se de c.r.a.pe."

_See also_ Chicken stealing.

NEIGHBORS

THE MAN AT THE DOOR--"Madame, I'm the piano-tuner."

THE WOMAN--"I didn't send for a piano-tuner."

THE MAN--"I know it, lady; the neighbors did."

NEW JERSEY

"You must have had a terrible experience with no food, and mosquitoes swarming around you," I said to the s.h.i.+pwrecked mariner who had been cast upon the Jersey sands.

"You just bet I had a terrible experience," he acknowledged. "My experience was worse than that of the man who wrote 'Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.' With me it was bites, bites everywhere, but not a bite to eat."

NEW YORK CITY

At a convention of Methodist Bishops held in Was.h.i.+ngton, the Bishop of New York made a stirring address extolling the powers and possibilities of his state. Bishop Hamilton, of California, like all good Californians, is imbued with the conviction that it would be hard to equal a place he knows of on the Pacific, and following the Bishop of New York he gave a glowing picture of California, concluding:

"Not only is it the best place on earth to live in, but it has superior advantages, too, as a place to die in; for there we have at our threshold the beautiful Golden Gate, while in New York they only have--well, you know which gate it is over at New York!" One night Dave Warfield was playing at David Belasco's new theatre, supported by one of Mr. Belasco's new companies. The performance ran with a smoothness of a Standard Oil lawyer explaining rebates to a Federal court. A worthy person of the farming cla.s.ses, sitting in G 14, was plainly impressed.

In an interval between the acts he turned to the metropolitan who had the seat next him.

"Where do all them troopers come from?" he inquired.

"I don't think I understand," said the city-dweller.

"I mean them actors up yonder on the stage," explained the man from afar. "Was they brought on specially for this show, or do they live here?"

"I believe most of them live here in town," said the New Yorker.

"Well, they do purty blamed well for home talent," said the stranger.

A traveler in Tennessee came across an aged negro seated in front of his cabin door basking in the suns.h.i.+ne.

"He could have walked right on the stage for an Uncle Tom part without a line of makeup," says the traveler. "He must have been eighty years of age."

"Good morning, uncle," says the stranger.

"Mornin', sah! Mornin'," said the aged one. Then he added, "Be you the gentleman over yonder from New York?"

Being told that such was the case the old darky said; "Do you mind telling me something that has been botherin' my old haid? I have got a grandson--he runs on the Pullman cyars--and he done tell me that up thar in New York you-all burn up youah folks when they die. He is a poherful liar, and I don't believe him."

"Yes," replied the other, "that is the truth in some cases. We call it cremation."

"Well, you suttenly surprise me," said the negro and then he paused as if in deep reflection. Finally he said: "You-all know I am a Baptist. I believe in the resurrection and the life everlastin' and the coming of the Angel Gabriel and the blowin' of that great horn, and Lawdy me, how am they evah goin' to find them folks on that great mawnin'?"

It was too great a task for an offhand answer, and the suggestion was made that the aged one consult his minister. Again the negro fell into a brown study, and then he raised his head and his eyes twinkled merrily, and he said in a soft voice:

"Meanin' no offense, sah, but from what Ah have heard about New York I kinder calcerlate they is a lot of them New York people that doan'

wanter be found on that mornin'."

NEWS

Soon after the installation of the telegraph in Fredericksburg, Virginia, a little darky, the son of my father's mammy, saw a piece of newspaper that had blown up on the telegraph wires and caught there.

Running to my grandmother in a great state of excitement, he cried, "Miss Liza, come quick! Dem wires done buss and done let all the news out!"--_Sue M.M. Halsey_.

"Our whole neighborhood has been stirred up," said the regular reader.

The editor of the country weekly seized his pen. "Tell me about it," he said. "What we want is news. What stirred it up?"