Toaster's Handbook Part 148

SOLEMN SENIOR--"So your efforts to get on the team were fruitless, were they?"

FOOLISH FRESHMAN--"Oh, no! Not at all. They gave me a lemon."--_Harvard Lampoon_.

A benevolent person watched a workman laboriously windla.s.sing rock from a shaft while the broiling sun was beating down on his bare head.

"My dear man," observed the onlooker, "are you not afraid that your brain will be affected in the hot sun?"

The laborer contemplated him for a moment and then replied:

"Do you think a man with any brains would be working at this kind of a job?"

Winston Churchill, the young English statesman, recently began to raise a mustache, and while it was still in the budding stage he was asked at a dinner party to take in to dinner an English girl who had decided opposing political views.

"I am sorry," said Mr. Churchill, "we cannot agree on politics."

"No, we can't," rejoined the girl, "for to be frank with you I like your politics about as little as I do your mustache."

"Well," replied Mr. Churchill, "remember that you are not likely to come into contact with either."

Strickland Gillilan, the lecturer and the man who pole-vaulted into fame by his "Off Ag'in, On Ag'in, Finnigin" verses, was about to deliver a lecture in a small Missouri town. He asked the chairman of the committee whether he might have a small pitcher of ice-water on the platform table.

"To drink?" queried the committeeman.

"No," answered Gillilan. "I do a high-diving act."

TRAVELER--"Say, boy, your corn looks kind of yellow."

BOY--"Yes, sir. That's the kind we planted."

TRAVELER--"Looks as though you will only have half a crop."

BOY--"Don't expect any more. The landlord gets the other half."

TRAVELER (after a moment's thought)--"Say, there is not much difference between you and a fool."

BOY--"No, sir. Only the fence."

President Lincoln was busily engaged in his office when an attendant, a young man of sixteen, unceremoniously entered and gave him a card.

Without rising, the President glanced at the card. "Pshaw. She here again? I told her last week that I could not interfere in her case. I cannot see her," he said impatiently. "Get rid of her any way you can.

Tell her I am asleep, or anything you like."

Quickly returning to the lady in an adjacent room, this exceedingly bright boy said to her, "The President told me to tell you that he is asleep."

The lady's eyes sparkled as she responded, "Ah, he says he is asleep, eh? Well, will you be kind enough to return and ask him when he intends to wake up?"

The garrulous old lady in the stern of the boat had pestered the guide with her comments and questions ever since they had started. Her meek little husband, who was hunched toad-like in the bow, fished in silence.

The old lady had seemingly exhausted every possible point in fish and animal life, woodcraft, and personal history when she suddenly espied one of those curious paths of oily, unbroken water frequently seen on small lakes which are ruffled by a light breeze.

"Oh, guide, guide," she exclaimed, "what makes that funny streak in the water--No, there--Right over there!"

The guide was busy re-baiting the old gentleman's hook and merely mumbled "U-m-mm."

"Guide," repeated the old lady in tones that were not to be denied, "look right over there where I'm pointing and tell me what makes that funny streak in the water."

The guide looked up from his baiting with a sigh.

"That? Oh, that's where the road went across the ice last winter."

Nothing more clearly expresses the sentiments of Harvard men in seasons of athletic rivalry than the time-honored "To h.e.l.l with Yale!"

Once when Dean Briggs, of Harvard, and Edward Everett Hale were on their way to a game at Soldiers' Field a friend asked:

"Where are you going, Dean?"

"To yell with Hale," answered Briggs with a meaning smile.

John Kendrick Bangs one day called up his wife on the telephone. The maid at the other end did not recognize her "master's voice," and after Bangs had told her whom he wanted the maid asked:

"Do you wish to speak with Mrs. Bangs?"

"No, indeed," replied the humorist; "I want to kiss her."

A boy took a position in an office where two different telephones were installed.

"Your wife would like to speak to you on the 'phone, sir," he said to his employer.

"Which one?" inquired the boss, starting toward the two booths.

"Please, sir, she didn't say, and I didn't know that you had more than one."

An Englishman was being shown the sights along the Potomac. "Here,"

remarked the American, "is where George Was.h.i.+ngton threw a dollar across the river."

"Well," replied the Englishman, "that is not very remarkable, for a dollar went much further in those days than it does now."

The American would not be worsted, so, after a short pause, he said: "But Was.h.i.+ngton accomplished a greater feat than that. He once chucked a sovereign across the Atlantic."