Toaster's Handbook Part 81

The old rebel smiled grimly. "Because," he replied, "you're the first Yank I ever saw trimmed up just to suit me."

At dinner one day, it was noticed that a small daughter of the minister was putting aside all the choice pieces of chicken and her father asked her why she did that. She explained that she was saving them for her dog. Her father told her there were plenty of bones the dog could have so she consented to eat the dainty bits. Later she collected the bones and took them to the dog saying, "I meant to give a free will offering but it is only a collection."

A little newsboy with a cigarette in his mouth entered a notion store and asked for a match.

"We only _sell_ matches," said the storekeeper.

"How much are they?" asked the future citizen.

"Penny a box," was the answer.

"Gimme a box," said the boy.

He took one match, lit the cigarette, and handed the box back over the counter, saying, "Here, take it and put it on de shelf, and when anodder sport comes and asks for a match, give him one on me."

Little Ralph belonged to a family of five. One morning he came into the house carrying five stones which he brought to his mother, saying:

"Look, mother, here are tombstones for each one of us."

The mother, counting them, said:

"Here is one for father, dear! Here is one for mother! Here is brother's! Here is the baby's; but there is none for Delia, the maid."

Ralph was lost in thought for a moment, then cheerfully cried:

"Oh, well, never mind, mother; Delia can have mine, and I'll live!"

She was making the usual female search for her purse when the conductor came to collect the fares.

Her companion meditated silently for a moment, then, addressing the other, said:

"Let us divide this Mabel; you fumble and I'll pay."

GENTLEMEN

"Sadie, what is a gentleman?"

"Please, ma'am," she answered, "a gentleman's a man you don't know very well."

Two characters in Jeffery Farnol's "Amateur Gentleman" give these definitions of a gentleman:

"A gentleman is a fellow who goes to a university, but doesn't have to learn anything; who goes out into the world, but doesn't have to work at anything; and who has never been black-balled at any of the clubs."

"A gentleman is (I take it) one born with the G.o.d-like capacity to think and feel for others, irrespective of their rank or condition.... One who possesses an ideal so lofty, a mind so delicate, that it lifts him above all things ign.o.ble and base, yet strengthens his hands to raise those who are fallen--no matter how low."

GERMANS

The poet Heine and Baron James Rothschild were close friends. At the dinner table of the latter the financier asked the poet why he was so silent, when usually so gay and full of witty remarks.

"Quite right," responded Heine, "but to-night I have exchanged views with my German friends and my head is fearfully empty."

GHOSTS

"I confess, that the subject of psychical research makes no great appeal to me," Sir William Henry Perkin, the inventor of coal-tar dyes, told some friends in New York recently. "Personally, in the course of a fairly long career, I have heard at first hand but one ghost story. Its hero was a man whom I may as well call Snooks.

"Snooks, visiting at a country house, was put in the haunted chamber for the night. He said that he did not feel the slightest uneasiness, but nevertheless, just as a matter of precaution, he took to bed with him a revolver of the latest American pattern.

"He slept peacefully enough until the clock struck two, when he awoke with an unpleasant feeling of oppression. He raised his head and peered about him. The room was wanly illumined by the full moon, and in that weird, bluish light he thought he discerned a small, white hand clasping the rail at the foot of the bed.

"'Who's there?' he asked tremulously.

"There was no reply. The small white hand did not move.

"'Who's there?' he repeated. 'Answer me or I'll shoot.'

"Again there was no reply.

"Snooks cautiously raised himself, took careful aim and fired.

"From that night on he's limped. Shot off two of his own toes."

GIFTS

When Lawrence Barrett's daughter was married Stuart Robson sent a check for $5000 to the bridegroom. The comedian's daughter, Felicia Robson, who attended the wedding conveyed the gift.

"Felicia," said her father upon her return, "did you give him the check?"