"Together we hurried down the narrow street. As we panted along, the dark smoke whirled in our faces, and a dangerous shower of red-hot cinders sizzled about us. Do you know, I don't believe I was ever so homesick in all my life!"
"Homesick?" gasped the listener. "Homesick at a time like that?"
The mother heard a great commotion, as of cyclones mixed up with battering-rams, and she hurried upstairs to discover what was the matter. There she found Tommie sitting in the middle of the floor with a broad smile on his face.
"Oh, Mama," said he delightedly, "I've locked Grandpa and Uncle George in the cupboard, and when they get a little angrier I am going to play Daniel in the lion's den."
BILLY--"Huh! I bet you didn't have a good time at your birthday party yesterday."
Winnie had been very naughty, and her mamma said: "Don't you know you will never go to Heaven if you are so naughty?"
After thinking a moment she said: "Oh, well, I have been to the circus once and 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' twice. I can't expect to go everywhere."
In Concord, New Hampshire, they tell of an old chap who made his wife keep a cash account. Each week he would go over it, growling and grumbling. On one such occasion he delivered himself of the following:
"Look here, Sarah, mustard-plasters, fifty cents; three teeth extracted, two dollars! There's two dollars and a half in one week spent for your own private pleasure. Do you think I am made of money?"
Here's to beauty, wit and wine and to a full stomach, a full purse and a light heart.
A dinner, coffee and cigars, Of friends, a half a score. Each favorite vintage in its turn,-- What man could wish for more?
The roses of pleasure seldom last long enough to adorn the brow of him who plucks them; for they are the only roses which do not retain their sweetness after they have lost their beauty.--_Hannah More_.
Poetry is a gift we are told, but most editors won't take it even at that.
EDITOR--"Have you submitted this poem anywhere else?"
EDITOR--"Then where did you get that black eye?"--_Satire_.
"Why is it," asked the persistent poetess, "that you always insist that we write on one side of the paper only? Why not on both?"
In that moment the editor experienced an access of courage--courage to protest against the accumulated wrongs of his kind.