“Well, old man, how did you get along after I left you at midnight.  Get home all right?”

“No; a confounded nosey policeman haled me to the station, where I spent the rest of the night.”

“Lucky dog!  I reached home.”

STRANGER—­“What’s the fight about?”

NATIVE—­“The feller on top is Hank Hill wot married the widder Strong, an’ th’ other’s Joel Jenks, wot interdooced him to her.”—­Life.

A colored man had been arrested on a charge of beating and cruelly misusing his wife.  After hearing the charge against the prisoner, the justice turned to the first witness.

“Madam,” he said, “if this man were your husband and had given you a beating, would you call in the police?”

The woman addressed, a veritable Amazon in size and aggressiveness, turned a smiling countenance towards the justice and answered:  “No, jedge.  If he was mah husban’, and he treated me lak he did ’is wife, Ah wouldn’t call no p’liceman.  No, sah, Ah’d call de undertaker.”

We admire the strict impartiality of the judge who recently fined his wife twenty-five dollars for contempt of court, but we would hate to have been in the judge’s shoes when he got home that night.

“How many children have you?” asked the census-taker.

The man addressed removed the pipe from his mouth, scratched his head, thought it over a moment, and then replied: 

“Five—­four living and one married.”

SHE—­“How did they ever come to marry?”

HE—­“Oh, it’s the same old story.  Started out to be good friends, you know, and later on changed their minds.”—­Puck.

Nat Goodwin and a friend were walking along Fifth Avenue one afternoon when they stopped to look into a florist’s window, in which there was an artistic arrangement of exquisite roses.

“What wonderful American Beauties those are, Nat!” said the friend delightedly.

“They are, indeed,” replied Nat.

“You see, I am very fond of that flower,” continued the friend.  “In fact, I might say it is my favorite.  You know, Nat, I married an American beauty.”

“Well,” said Nat dryly, “you haven’t got anything on me.  I married a cluster.”

“Are you quite sure that was a marriage license you gave me last month?”

“Of course!  What’s the matter?”

“Well, I thought there might be some mistake, seeing that I’ve lived a dog’s life ever since.”

Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in.—­Emerson.

HOUSEHOLDER—­“Here, drop that coat and clear out!”

BURGLAR—­“You be quiet, or I’ll wake your wife and give her this letter
I found in your pocket.”

The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.—­Swift.