THE LITTLE BOY (explosively)—­“What’s th’ matter with you ma!  Don’t you know me?  I’m your little boy!”

  Here’s to the happiest hours of my life—­
  Spent in the arms of another man’s wife: 
    My mother!

                Happy he
  With such a mother! faith in womankind
  Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high
  Comes easy to him, and though he trip and fall,
  He shall not blind his soul with clay.

  —­Tennyson.

                Women know
  The way to rear up children (to be just);
  They know a simple, merry, tender knack
  Of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes,
  And stringing pretty words that make no sense,
  And kissing full sense into empty words;
  Which things are corals to cut life upon,
  Although such trifles.

  —­E.  B. Browning

MOTHERS-IN-LAW

Justice David J. Brewer was asked not long ago by a man.

“Will you please tell me, sir, what is the extreme penalty for bigamy?”

Justice Brewer smiled and answered: 

“Two mothers-in-law.”

SHE—­“And so you are going to be my son-in-law?”

HE—­“By Jove!  I hadn’t thought of that.”

WAITER—­“Have another glass, sir?”

HUSBAND (to his wife)—­“Shall I have another glass, Henrietta?”

WIFE (to her mother)—­“Shall he have another, mother?”

A blackmailer wrote the following to a wealthy business man:  “Send me $5,000 or I will abduct your mother-in-law.”

To which the business man replied:  “Sorry I am short of funds, but your proposition interests me.”

An undertaker telegraphed to a man that his mother-in-law had died and asked whether he should bury, embalm or cremate her.  The man replied, “All three, take no chances.”

MOTORCYCLES

The automobile was a thing unheard of to a mountaineer in one community, and he was very much astonished one day when he saw one go by without any visible means of locomotion.  His eyes bulged, however, when a motorcycle followed closely in its wake and disappeared like a flash around a bend in the road.

“Gee whiz!” he said, turning to his son, “who’d ‘a’ s’posed that thing had a colt?”

MOUNTAINS

Some real-estate dealers in British Columbia were accused of having victimized English and Scotch settlers by selling to them (at long range) fruit ranches which were situated on the tops of mountains.  It is said that the captain of a steamboat on Kootenay Lake once heard a great splash in the water.  Looking over the rail, he spied the head of a man who was swimming toward his boat.  He hailed him.  “Do you know,” said the swimmer, “this is the third time to-day that I’ve fallen off that bally old ranch of mine?”