Frances retired and after a few moments re-entered the parlor.

“Did you hear me come downstairs this time, mamma?”

“No dear; I am glad you came down quietly.  Now, don’t ever let me have to tell you again not to come down noisily.  Now tell these ladies how you managed to come down like a lady the second time, when the first time you made so much noise.”

“The last time I slid down the banisters,” explained Frances.

  Hearts, like doors, can ope with ease
    To very, very little keys,
  And don’t forget that they are these
  “I thank you, Sir”; and, “If you please.”

Unseen, Unheard

TEACHER—­“What does a well-bred child do when a visitor calls to see her mother?”

CHILD—­“Me—­I go play in the street.”

HOSTESS (at party)—­“Does your mother allow you to have two pieces of pie when you are at home, Willie?”

WILLIE (who has asked for a second piece)—­“No, ma’am.”

“Well, do you think she’d like you to have two pieces here?”

“Oh,” confidentially, “she wouldn’t care.  This isn’t her pie!”

“I can’t understand this code of ethics.”

“What code is that?”

“The one which makes it all right to take a man’s last dollar, but a breach of etiquette to take his last cigaret.”

Tom Johnson claims that the oldest joke is the one about the Irish soldier who saw a shell coming and made a low bow.  The shell missed him and took off the head of the man behind him.  “Sure,” said Pat, “ye never knew a man to lose anything by being polite.”

EUROPEAN WAR

War is evidently a losing game when it takes a country forty-two years to pay for what she destroyed in a little more than four.

A dusky doughboy, burdened under tons of medals and miles and miles of ribbons, service and wound chevrons, stars et al., encountered a 27th Division scrapper in Le Mans a few days prior to the division’s departure for the States.

“Whar yo’ all ben scrappin’ in dis yar war, boss?” meekly inquired the colored soldier.

“Why, we’ve been fighting up in Belgium and Flanders with the British,” replied the New Yorker, proudly.

“Well, we ben down in dem woods—­watcha call ’em woods ’way down south.”

“The Argonne?” suggested young Knickerbocker.

“Yas, yas, dem’s de woods—­d’Argonne.”

“You know our division was the first to break the Hindenburg line, colored boy,” explained the 27th man.

“Was it you wot did dat trick?  Y’ know boss, we felt dat ol’ line sag ’way down in d’Argonne.”

WILLIS—­“Did the war do anything for you?”

GILLIS—­“Sure did.  It taught me to save peach-stones, tin-foil, newspapers and all kinds of junk.  In fact, I can now save anything except money.”

Just before the St. Mihiel show the Germans blew up an ammunition dump near a company of Yanks.  It was reported that there was a large quantity of gas shells in the dump, and as soon as the explosions began the Americans immediately made themselves scarce with great rapidity.