If I knew a box that was large enough
    To hold all the frowns I meet,
  I would like to gather them, every one,
    From nursery, school and street. 
  Then, folding and holding, I’d pack them in,
    And, turning the monster key,
  I’d hire a giant to drop the box
    To the depths of the deep, deep sea.

“Can you tell me what a smile is?” asked a gentleman of a little girl.

“Yes, sir; it’s the whisper of a laugh.”

SMOKING

“Have a cigar?”

“No—­don’t smoke now.”

“Sworn off?”

“Nope; stopped entirely.”

“Your wife doesn’t kick about your smoking up the curtains.”

“Nope, she can’t have both curtains and coupons.”

It was on a passenger train.  The conductor in passing through observed a man with a cigar in his mouth.  “Hey, you can’t smoke in here,” he bawled out.

“I’m not smoking,” quietly replied the passenger.

“Well, you’ve got a cigar in your face,” shot back the conductor.

“Suppose I have,” continued the other good naturedly.  “I’ve got feet in my shoes and I’m not walking.”

Mark Twain:  A Pipe Dream

Well I recall how first I met
Mark Twain—­an infant barely three
Rolling a tiny cigarette
While cooing on his nurse’s knee.

Since then in every sort of place
I’ve met with Mark and heard him joke,
Yet how can I describe his face? 
I never saw it for the smoke.

  At school he won a smokership,
    At Harvard College (Cambridge, Mass.)
  His name was soon on every lip,
    They made him “smoker” of his class.

  Who will forget his smoking bout
    With Mount Vesuvius—­our cheers—­
  When Mount Vesuvius went out
    And didn’t smoke again for years?

  The news was flashed to England’s King,
    Who begged Mark Twain to come and stay,
  Offered his dukedoms—­anything
    To smoke the London fog away.

  But Mark was firm.  “I bow,” said he,
    “To no imperial command,
  No ducal coronet for me,
    My smoke is for my native land!”

  For Mark there waits a brighter crown! 
    When Peter comes his card to read—­
  He’ll take the sign “No smoking” down,
    Then Heaven will be Heaven indeed.

  —­Oliver Herford.

SNOBBERY

A well-known society performer volunteered to entertain a roomful of patients of the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum, and made up a very successful little monologue show, entirely humorous.  The audience in the main gave symptoms of being slightly bored, but one highly intelligent maniac saw the whole thing in the proper light, and, clapping the talented actor on the shoulder, said:  “Glad you’ve come old fellow.  You and I will get along fine.  The other dippies here are so dashed dignified.  What I say is if a man is mad, he needn’t put on airs about it.”