Toaster's Handbook Part 159

"What are her days at home?"

"Oh, a society leader has no days at home anymore. Nowadays she has her telephone hours."

Society consists of two cla.s.ses, the upper and the lower. The latter cultivates the dignity of labor, the former the labor of dignity.--_Punch_.

There was a young person called Smarty, Who sent out his cards for a party; So exclusive and few Were the friends that he knew That no one was present but Smarty.

SOLECISMS

A New York firm recently hung the following sign at the entrance of a large building: "Wanted: Sixty girls to sew b.u.t.tons on the sixth floor."

Reporters are obliged to write their descriptions of accidents hastily and often from meager data, and in the attempt to make them vivid they sometimes make them ridiculous; for example, a New York City paper a few days ago, in describing a collision between a train and a motor bus, said: "The train, too, was filled with pa.s.sengers. Their shrieks mingled with the _cries of the dead_ and the dying of the bus!"

SONS

"I thought your father looked very handsome with his gray hairs."

"Yes, dear old chap. I gave him those."

SOUVENIRS

"A friend of mine, traveling in Ireland, stopped for a drink of milk at a white cottage with a thatched roof, and, as he sipped his refreshment, he noted, on a center table under a gla.s.s dome, a brick with a faded rose upon the top of it.

"'Why do you cherish in this way,' my friend said to his host, 'that common brick and that dead rose?'

"'Shure, sir,' was the reply, 'there's certain memories attachin' to them. Do ye see this big dent in my head? Well, it was made by that brick.'

"'But the rose?' said my friend.

His host smiled quietly. "'The rose,' he explained, 'is off the grave of the man that threw the brick.'"

SPECULATION

There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate: when he can't afford it, and when he can.--_Mark Twain_.

SPEED

"I always said old Cornelius Husk was slow," said one Quag man to another.

"Why, what's he been doin' now?" the other asked.

"Got himself run over by a hea.r.s.e!"

"So you heard the bullet whiz past you?" asked the lawyer of the darky.

"Yes, sah, heard it twict."

"How's that?"

"Heard it whiz when it pa.s.sed me, and heard it again when I pa.s.sed it."

A near race riot happened in a southern town. The negroes gathered in one crowd and the whites in another. The whites fired their revolvers into the air, and the negroes took to their heels. Next day a plantation owner said to one of his men: "Sam, were you in that crowd that gathered last night?" "Ya.s.sir." "Did you run like the wind, Sam?" "No, sir. I didn't run like the wind,'deed I didn't. But I pa.s.sed two n.i.g.g.e.rs that was running like the wind."

A guest in a Cincinnati hotel was shot and killed. The negro porter who heard the shooting was a witness at the trial.

"How many shots did you hear?" asked the lawyer.

"Two shots, sah," he replied.

"How far apart were they?"

'"Bout like dis way," explained the negro, clapping his hands with an interval of about a second between claps.

"Where were you when the first shot was fired?"

"s.h.i.+nin' a gemman's shoe in the bas.e.m.e.nt of de hotel."

"Where were you when the second shot was fired?"

"Ah was pa.s.sin' de Big Fo' depot."