Toaster's Handbook Part 92

_See also_ Cowards; Domestic finance.

HYBRIDIZATION

We used to think that the smartest man ever born was the Connecticut Yankee who grafted white birch on red maples and grew barber poles. Now we rank that gentleman second. First place goes to an experimenter attached to the Berlin War Office, who has crossed carrier pigeons with parrots, so that Wilhelmstra.s.se can now get verbal messages through the enemy's lines.--_Warwick James Price_.

HYPERBOLE

"Speakin' of fertile soil," said the Kansan, when the others had had their say, "I never saw a place where melons growed like they used to out in my part of the country. The first season I planted 'em I thought my fortune was sure made. However, I didn't harvest one."

He waited for queries, but his friends knew him, and he was forced to continue unurged:

"The vines growed so fast that they wore out the melons draggin' 'em 'round. However, the second year my two little boys made up their minds to get a taste of one anyhow, so they took turns, carryin' one along with the vine and--"

But his companions had already started toward the barroom door.

News comes from Southern Kansas that a boy climbed a cornstalk to see how the sky and clouds looked and now the stalk is growing faster than the boy can climb down. The boy is clear out of sight. Three men have taken the contract for cutting down the stalk with axes to save the boy a horrible death by starving, but the stalk grows so rapidly that they can't hit twice in the same place. The boy is living on green corn alone and has already thrown down over four bushels of cobs. Even if the corn holds out there is still danger that the boy will reach a height where he will be frozen to death. There is some talk of attempting his rescue with a balloon.--_Topeka Capital_.

HYPOCRISY

Hypocrisy is all right if we can pa.s.s it off as politeness.

TEACHER-"Now, Tommy, what is a hypocrite?"

TOMMY-"A boy that comes to school with a smile on his face."--_Graham Charteris_.

IDEALS

The fact that his two pet bantam hens laid very small eggs troubled little Johnny. At last he was seized with an inspiration. Johnny's father, upon going to the fowl-run one morning, was surprised at seeing an ostrich egg tied to one of the beams, with this injunction chalked above it:

"Keep your eye on this and do your best."

ILLUSIONS AND HALLUCINATIONS

A doctor came up to a patient in an insane asylum, slapped him on the back, and said: "Well, old man, you're all right. You can run along and write your folks that you'll be back home in two weeks as good as new."

The patient went off gayly to write his letter. He had it finished and sealed, but when he was licking the stamp it slipped through his fingers to the floor, lighted on the back of a c.o.c.kroach that was pa.s.sing, and stuck. The patient hadn't seen the c.o.c.kroach--what he did see was his escaped postage stamp zig-zagging aimlessly across the floor to the baseboard, wavering up over the baseboard, and following a crooked track up the wall and across the ceiling. In depressed silence he tore up the letter he had just written and dropped the pieces on the floor.

"Two weeks! h.e.l.l!" he said. "I won't be out of here in three years."

IMAGINATION

One day a mother overheard her daughter arguing with a little boy about their respective ages.

"I am older than you," he said, "'cause my birthday comes first, in May, and your's don't come till September."

"Of course your birthday comes first," she sneeringly retorted, "but that is 'cause you came down first. I remember looking at the angels when they were making you."

The mother instantly summoned her daughter. "It's breaking mother's heart to hear you tell such awful stories," she said. "Don't you remember what happened to Ananias and Sapphira?"

"Oh, yes, mamma, I know; they were struck dead for lying. I saw them carried into the corner drug store!"

IMITATION

Not long ago a company was rehearsing for an open-air performance of _As You Like It_ near Boston. The garden wherein they were to play was overlooked by a rising brick edifice.

One afternoon, during a pause in the rehearsal, a voice from the building exclaimed with the utmost gravity:

"I prithee, malapert, pa.s.s me yon brick."

INFANTS

A wife after the divorce, said to her husband: "I am willing to let you have the baby half the time."