Toaster's Handbook Part 21

BETTING

The officers' mess was discussing rifle shooting.

"I'll bet anyone here," said one young lieutenant, "that I can fire twenty shots at two hundred yards and call each shot correctly without waiting for the marker. I'll stake a box of cigars that I can."

"Done!" cried a major.

The whole mess was on hand early next morning to see the experiment tried.

The lieutenant fired.

"Miss," he calmly announced.

A second shot.

"Miss," he repeated.

A third shot.

"Miss."

"Here, there! Hold on!" protested the major. "What are you trying to do?

You're not shooting for the target at all."

"Of course not," admitted the lieutenant. "I'm firing for those cigars."

And he got them.

Two old cronies went into a drug store in the downtown part of New York City, and, addressing the proprietor by his first name, one of them said:

"Dr. Charley, we have made a bet of the ice-cream sodas. We will have them now and when the bet is decided the loser will drop in and pay for them."

As the two old fellows were departing after enjoying their temperance beverage, the druggist asked them what the wager was.

"Well," said one of them, "our friend George bets that when the tower of the Singer Building falls, it will topple over toward the North River, and I bet that it won't."

BIBLE INTERPRETATION

"Miss Jane, did Moses have the same after-dinner complaint my papa's got?" asked Percy of his governess.

"Gracious me, Percy! Whatever do you mean, my dear?"

"Well, it says here that the Lord gave Moses two tablets."

"Mr. Preacher," said a white man to a colored minister who was addressing his congregation, "you are talking about Cain, and you say he got married in the land of Nod, after he killed Abel. But the Bible mentions only Adam and Eve as being on earth at that time. Who, then, did Cain marry?"

The colored preacher snorted with unfeigned contempt. "Huh!" he said, "you hear dat, brederen an' sisters? You hear dat fool question I am axed? Cain, he went to de land o' Nod just as de Good Book tells us, an'

in de land o' Nod Cain gits so lazy an' so s.h.i.+f'less dat he up an'

marries a gal o' one o' dem no' count pore white trash families dat de inspired apostle didn't consider fittin' to mention in de Holy Word."

BIGAMY

There once was an old man of Lyme.

Who married three wives at a time: When asked, "Why a third?"

He replied, "One's absurd!

And bigamy, sir, is a crime."

BILLS

The proverb, "Where there's a will there's a way" is now revised to "When there's a bill we're away."

YOUNG DOCTOR--"Why do you always ask your patients what they have for dinner?"

OLD DOCTOR--"It's a most important question, for according to their menus I make out my bills."

Farmer Gray kept summer boarders. One of these, a schoolteacher, hired him to drive her to the various points of interest around the country.

He pointed out this one and that, at the same time giving such items of information as he possessed.

The school-teacher, pursing her lips, remarked, "It will not be necessary for you to talk."

When her bill was presented, there was a five-dollar charge marked "Extra."

"What is this?" she asked, pointing to the item.

"That," replied the farmer, "is for sa.s.s. I don't often take it, but when I do I charge for it."--_E. Egbert_.

PATIENT (_angrily_)--"The size of your bill makes my blood boil."

DOCTOR--"Then that will be $20 more for sterilizing your system."