"Jennie," said her mistress, "your husband treats you outrageously. Why don't you leave him?"
"Well, I don' 'zactly wants to leave him."
"Hasn't he dragged you the length of the room by your hair?" demanded her mistress.
"Hasn't he choked you into insensibility?"
"And now doesn't he threaten to split your head with an ax?"
"Yas'm he has done all dat," agreed Jennie, "but he ain' done nothin' yet so bad I couldn't live wid him."
_See also_ Carelessness; Domestic finance.
Hypocrisy will serve as well To propagate a church, as zeal; As persecution and promotion Do equally advance devotion: So round white stones will serve, they say, As well as eggs to make hens lay.
There is no vice so simple, but assumes Some mark of virtue on his outward parts.
Thus 'tis with all--their chief and constant care Is to seem everything but what they are.
Dare to be true. Nothing can need a lie; A fault which needs it most grows two thereby.
Father, teaching his six-year-old son arithmetic by giving a problem to his wife, begs his son to listen:
FATHER--"Mother, if you had a dollar and I gave you five more, what would you have?"
A professor noted among his students for the caustic wit had in one of his classes, one year, a young man who was both ignorant and conceited. One morning he made a specially self-satisfied display of both these characteristics, and the professor said he would like to see him at the end of the hour.
When he came up after the lecture, the professor asked: "You are Mr. Junkins?"
"I--I--yes, sir," stammered the puzzled student.
"Then, Mr. Junkins," the professor said dryly, "write down on your visiting card all that you know, and bring it to me tomorrow."
Returning home from a scientific meeting one night, a college professor, who was noted for his concentration of thought, was still pondering deeply on the subject that had been under discussion. Upon entering his room he heard a noise that appeared to come from under the bed.
"Is there any one there?" he asked, absently.
"No, professor," answered the intruder, knowing his peculiarities.
"That's strange," murmured the professor. "I was almost sure I heard some one under the bed."
Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.--_Colton_.
When in Canada last, Mr. Kipling was so dissatisfied with the hotel accommodations that he gave the landlord a severe call-down. Said he: "Of all the hotels under the shining sun, I have never been in one that for unmitigated, all-round, unendurable discomfort could equal yours."