Part 29 (1/2)

The following bit from a letter of thanks is cherished by its recipient: ”The beautiful clock you sent us came in perfect condition, and is now in the parlor on top of the book-shelves, where we hope to see you soon, and your husband, also, if he can make it convenient.”

Tourist (in French restaurant)--”This is awful! I've ordered three dishes from this menu and they are all potatoes!”

”Mistah Brown,” said the old colored woman, coming into the cross-roads store, ”you ain't got no spool-cotton number thirty, is you?”

”Why, aunt Sally, I didn't say I didn't have it, did I?”

”You go long, Mistah Brown. I didn't ax you 'aint you got it?' I axed you 'is you'?--ain't you?”

An old ”befo-de-wah” darky was called upon to make a few remarks over the grave of a friend. He removed his hat and stepped reverently and sadly toward the open grave and in solemn funereal tones said: ”Friday Vizer, you is gone. We hope you is gone whar we spects you ain't!”

A New Yorker who does his bit of ”globe trotting” tells of two odd entries that he saw in the visitors' book of a fas.h.i.+onable resort on the Rhine.

A few years ago one of the Paris members of the Rothschild family had registered as follows:

”R. de Paris.”

It chanced that the next visitor to inscribe his name in the book was Baron Oppenheim, the banker of Cologne, and he wrote beneath Rothschild's:

”O. de Cologne.”

The Stranger--”And who are the Murphys' ancestors?”

Mr. M.--”Ancestors? What's that?”

The Stranger--”I mean who do the Murphys spring from?”

Mr. M.--”The Murphys spring from no one. They spring _at_ thim!”

At a wedding-feast recently the bridegroom was called upon, as usual, to respond to the given toast, in spite of the fact that he had previously pleaded to be excused. Blus.h.i.+ng to the roots of his hair, he rose to his feet. He intended to imply that he was unprepared for speechmaking, but he unfortunately placed his hand upon his bride's shoulder, and looked down at her as he stammered out his opening and concluding words:

”This--er--thing has been forced upon me.”

Very much excited and out of breath, a young man who could not have been married very long rushed up to an attendant at one of the city hospitals and inquired after Mrs. Brown, explaining between breaths that it was his wife whom he felt anxious about.

The attendant looked at the register and replied that there was no Mrs. Brown in the hospital.

”My G.o.d! Don't keep me waiting in this manner,” said the excited young man. ”I must know how she is.”