WEST—­“Well, mine is quite a trial, but I can’t say I believe in it especially.”

A young fellow took his elderly father to a football match.

“Father,” he said as they took their seats, “you’ll see more excitement for your five dollars than you ever saw before.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” grunted the old man; “five dollars was all I paid for my marriage license.”

George Washington Jones, colored, was trying to enlist in Uncle Sam’s army, and the following conversation ensued with the recruiting officer: 

“Name?”

“George Washington Jones, sah.”

“Age?”

“I’se twenty-seven years old, sah.”

“Married?”

“No, sah.  Dat scar on mah haid is whar a mule done kicked me.”

  If marriage is a lottery,
    As saw smiths often say,
  The lucky gambler is, of course,
    The one who doesn’t play.

  —­Tennyson J. Daft.

At the wedding reception the young man remarked:  “Wasn’t it annoying the way that baby cried during the whole ceremony?”

“It was simply dreadful,” replied the prim little maid of honor; “and when I get married I’m going to have engraved right in the corner of the invitations:  ‘No babies expected.’”

“The man who gives in when he is wrong,” said the street orator, “is a wise man; but he who gives in when he is right is—­”

“Married!” said a meek voice in the crowd.

Mrs. Killifer desired that the picture be hung to the right of the door; Mr. Killifer wanted it hung to the left.  For once the husband proved to be the more insistent of the two, and Henry, the colored man, was summoned to hang the picture according to Mr. Killifer’s order.

Henry drove in a nail on the left.  This done, he also drove one in the wall on the right.

“Why are you driving that second nail?” asked Mr. Killifer.

“Why, boss, dat’s to save me de trouble of bringin’ de ladder tomorrow when you come round to de missus’s way of thinkin’,” said Henry.

Mr. Brown met Mr. Jones on the street.

“Any news, Brown?” asked Jones.

“Nothing special.  I’ve just been reading the Sunday paper.  And I find one peculiar thing in it that may be news to you.”

“What is it?”

“The Sunday paper says that women in ancient Egypt used to act as they pleased, live as they pleased, and dress as they pleased, without regard to what the men thought.  Lucky we don’t live in those times, what?”

“Mr. Brown, are you married?”

“What has that got to do with it?  As a matter of fact, I’m not.”

“I thought not.”

“She calls her dog and her husband by the same pet name.  It must cause frequent confusion.”

“Not at all.  She always speaks gently to the dog.”

“Pa, a man’s wife is his better half, isn’t she?”

“We are told so, my son.”