There’s a grocer who is notorious for his wretched horse flesh.

The grocer’s boy is rather a reckless driver.  He drove one of his master’s worst nags a little too hard one day, and the animal fell ill and died.

“You’ve killed my horse, curse you!” the grocer said to the boy the next morning.

“I’m sorry, boss,” the lad faltered.

“Sorry be durned!” shouted the grocer.  “Who’s going to pay me for my horse?”

“I’ll make it all right, boss,” said the boy soothingly.  “You can take it out of my next Saturday’s wages.”

Before Abraham Lincoln became President he was called out of town on important law business.  As he had a long distance to travel he hired a horse from a livery stable.  When a few days later he returned he took the horse back to the stable and asked the man who had given it to him:  “Keep this horse for funerals?”

“No, indeed,” answered the man indignantly.

“Glad to hear it,” said Lincoln; “because if you did the corpse wouldn’t get there in time for the resurrection.”

HOSPITALITY

Night was approaching and it was raining hard.  The traveler dismounted from his horse and rapped at the door of the one farmhouse he had struck in a five-mile stretch of traveling.  No one came to the door.

As he stood on the doorstep the water from the eaves trickled down his collar.  He rapped again.  Still no answer.  He could feel the stream of water coursing down his back.  Another spell of pounding, and finally the red head of a lad of twelve was stuck out of the second story window.

“Watcher want?” it asked.

“I want to know if I can stay here over night,” the traveler answered testily.

The red-headed lad watched the man for a minute or two before answering.

“Ye kin fer all of me,” he finally answered, and then closed the window.

The old friends had had three days together.

“You have a pretty place here, John,” remarked the guest on the morning of his departure.  “But it looks a bit bare yet.”

“Oh, that’s because the trees are so young,” answered the host comfortably.  “I hope they’ll have grown to a good size before you come again.”

A youngster of three was enjoying a story his mother was reading aloud to him when a caller came.  In a few minutes his mother was called to the telephone.  The boy turned to the caller and said “Now you beat it home.”  Ollie James, the famous Kentucky Congressman and raconteur, hails from a little town in the western part of the state, but his patriotism is state-wide, and when Louisville made a bid for the last Democratic national convention she had no more enthusiastic supporter than James.  A Denver supporter was protesting.

“Why, you know, Colonel,” said he, “Louisville couldn’t take care of the crowds.  Even by putting cots in the halls, parlors, and the dining-rooms of the hotels there wouldn’t be beds enough.”