“Doctor, if you will be kind enough to rise and pick out your legs, I will take what remains,” she said cheerfully.

“Help!  Help!” cried an Italian laborer near the mud flats of the Harlem river.

“What’s the matter there?” came a voice from the construction shanty.

“Queek!  Bringa da shov’!  Bringa da peek!  Giovanni’s stuck in da mud.”

“How far in?”

“Up to hees knees.”

“Oh, let him walk out.”

“No, no!  He no canna walk!  He wronga end up!”

  There once was a lady from Guam,
  Who said, “Now the sea is so calm
    I will swim, for a lark”;
    But she met with a shark. 
  Let us now sing the ninetieth psalm.

BRICKLAYER (to mate, who had just had a hodful of bricks fall on his feet)—­“Dropt ’em on yer toe!  That’s nothin’.  Why, I seen a bloke get killed stone dead, an’ ‘e never made such a bloomin’ fuss as you’re doin’.”

A preacher had ordered a load of hay from one of his parishioners.  About noon, the parishioner’s little son came to the house crying lustily.  On being asked what the matter was, he said that the load of hay had tipped over in the street.  The preacher, a kindly man, assured the little fellow that it was nothing serious, and asked him in to dinner.

“Pa wouldn’t like it,” said the boy.

But the preacher assured him that he would fix it all right with his father, and urged him to take dinner before going for the hay.  After dinner the boy was asked if he were not glad that he had stayed.

“Pa won’t like it,” he persisted.

The preacher, unable to understand, asked the boy what made him think his father would object.

“Why, you see, pa’s under the hay,” explained the boy.

  There was an old Miss from Antrim,
  Who looked for the leak with a glim. 
    Alack and alas! 
    The cause was the gas. 
  We will now sing the fifty-fourth hymn.

  —­Gilbert K. Chesterton.

  There was a young lady named Hannah,
  Who slipped on a peel of banana. 
    More stars she espied
    As she lay on her side
  Than are found in the Star Spangled Banner.

  A gentleman sprang to assist her;
  He picked up her glove and her wrister;
    “Did you fall, Ma’am?” he cried;
    “Did you think,” she replied,
  “I sat down for the fun of it, Mister?”

  At first laying down, as a fact fundamental,
  That nothing with God can be accidental.

  —­Longfellow.

ACTING

Hopkinson Smith tells a characteristic story of a southern friend of his, an actor, who, by the way, was in the dramatization of Colonel Carter.  On one occasion the actor was appearing in his native town, and remembered an old negro and his wife, who had been body servants in his father’s household, with a couple of seats in the theatre.  As it happened, he was playing the part of the villain, and was largely concerned with treasons, stratagems and spoils.  From time to time he caught a glimpse of the ancient couple in the gallery, and judged from their fearsome countenance and popping eyes that they were being duly impressed.