Toaster's Handbook Part 132

POLITICS

Politics consists of two sides and a fence.

If I were asked to define politics in relation to the British public, I should define it as a spasm of pain recurring once in every four or five years.--_A.E.W. Mason_.

LITTLE CLARENCE (who has an inquiring mind)--"Papa, the Forty Thieves--"

MR. CALLIPERS--"Now, my son, you are too young to talk politics."--_Puck_.

"Many a man," remarked the milk toast philosopher, "has gone into politics with a fine future, and come out with a terrible past." Lord Dufferin delivered an address before the Greek cla.s.s of the McGill University about which a reporter wrote:

"His lords.h.i.+p spoke to the cla.s.s in the purest ancient Greek, without misp.r.o.nouncing a word or making the slightest grammatical solecism."

"Good heavens!" remarked Sir Hector Langevin to the late Sir John A.

Macdonald, "how did the reporter know that!"

"I told him," was the Conservative statesman's answer.

"But you don't know Greek."

"True; but I know a little about politics."

Little Millie's father and grandfather were Republicans; and, as election drew near, they spoke of their opponents with increasing warmth, never heeding Millie's attentive ears and wondering eyes.

One night, however, as the little maid was preparing for bed, she whispered in a frightened voice: "Oh, mamma, I don't dare to go upstairs. I'm afraid there's a Democrat under the bed."

"The shortest after-dinner speech I ever heard," said Cy Warman, the poet, "was at a dinner in Providence."

"A man was a.s.signed to the topic, 'The Christian in Politics.' When he was called upon he arose, bowed and said: 'Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: The Christian in Politics--he ain't.'"

Politics is but the common pulse-beat of which revolution is the fever spasm.--_Wendell Phillips_.

POVERTY

Poverty is no disgrace, but that's about all that can be said in its favor.

A traveler pa.s.sing through the Broad Top Mountain district in northern Bedford County, Pennsylvania, last summer, came across a lad of sixteen cultivating a patch of miserable potatoes. He remarked upon their unpromising appearance and expressed pity for anyone who had to dig a living out of such soil.

"I don't need no pity," said the boy resentfully.

The traveler hastened to soothe his wounded pride. But in the offended tone of one who has been misjudged the boy added; "I ain't as poor as you think. I'm only _workin'_ here. I don't _own_ this place."

One day an inspector of a New York tenement-house found four families living in one room, chalk lines being drawn across in such manner as to mark out a quarter for each family.

"How do you get along here?" inquired the inspector.

"Very well," was the reply. "Only the man in the farthest corner keeps boarders."

There is no man so poor but that he can afford to keep one dog, and I hev seen them so poor that they could afford to keep three.--_Josh Billings_.

May poverty be always a day's march behind us.

Not he who has little, but he who wishes for more, is poor.--_Seneca_.

PRAISE

WIFE (complainingly)--"You never praise me up to any one."

HUB--"I don't, eh! You should hear me describe you at the intelligence office when I'm trying to hire a cook."

"What sort of a man is he?"

"Well, he's just what I've been looking for--a generous soul, with a limousine body."--_Life_.

PRAYER MEETINGS

A foreigner who attended a prayer meeting in Indiana was asked what the a.s.sistants did. "Not very much," he said, "only they sin and bray."

PRAYERS

During the winter the village preacher was taken sick, and several of his children were also afflicted with the mumps. One day a number of the devout church members called to pray for the family. While they were about it a boy, the son of a member living in the country, knocked at the preacher's door. He had his arms full of things. "What have you there?" a deacon asked him.