“You are quite right, wife,” said Snobs; “just give me the key of the cellar.”
Snobs was for some time Justice of the Peace at Bommerskonten, and is now Mayor of that village. The first time he celebrated a marriage there, he asked the bride—
“Do you take Kobe Kullemans, who is standing beside you, for your husband?”
“Prisoner at the bar,” continued Snobs, “what have you to say in your defence?”
_Snobs_—“What clever answers that fellow Snugger can give, to be sure, when one asks him anything!”
_Madame Snobs_—“Why—I have never noticed that.”
_Snobs_—“Indeed it is so. Yesterday I asked him if he would lend me twenty francs. He did not say either yes or no, but he asked me if I thought he was mad.”
“John,” said the lady of the house to the new man-servant, who had several times startled her by falling into the room like a bombshell, “when you come in, you must knock first, and wait till you hear some one say, ‘Come in.’”
When the lady and her husband are seated at dinner, John comes up to the door, opens it just wide enough to put his head through, draws back, shuts the door, and knocks.
“Come in!” cries the mistress, in amazement. “Didn’t you understand me? You were to knock, and then wait till I said, ‘Come in,’—instead of that, you peep round the door first. What do you mean by it?”
“Why, I had to see if there was any one in the room to tell me to come in!”
_Rachel_—“But, Moses lad, you say you are so fond of me—would you really go through the fire for me?”
_Moses_—“Of course, Rachel, darling—that is to say, if I was well insured.”
_Mother Spons_—“What do I see, Mother Snaps!—you look quite well to-day, and yet I was told you could not get out of your bed.”
_Mother Snaps_—“Well—and no more I can,—for as soon as ever I get up, that husband of mine will carry it straight to the pawnbroker’s!”
“Who wrote the Psalms?” asked Pater Dodd, somewhat sharply, of his class. All were silent, and the good priest repeated the question.
“It was not I, sir,” responded Janneke Snobs, beginning to cry.
“I ask you who wrote them!” repeated the priest.
“Yes, sir,” said Janneke, heroically, at last, “I did it, but I’ll never do it again, as long as I live!”
The master is explaining the arithmetical operation of subtraction:—