A poor lady the other day hastened to the nursery and said to her little daughter:
"Minnie, what do you mean by shouting and screaming? Play quietly, like Tommy. See, he doesn't make a sound."
"Of course he doesn't," said the little girl. "That is our game. He is papa coming home late, and I am you."
The stranger advanced toward the door. Mrs. O'Toole stood in the doorway with a rough stick in her left hand and a frown on her brow.
"Good morning," said the stranger politely. "I'm looking for Mr. O'Toole."
"So'm I," said Mrs. O'Toole, shifting her club over to her other hand.
TIM--"Sarer Smith (you know 'er--Bill's missus), she throwed herself horf the end uv the wharf larst night."
The cooing stops with the honeymoon, but the billing goes on forever.
"Well, old man, how did you get along after I left you at midnight. Get home all right?"
"No; a confounded nosey policeman haled me to the station, where I spent the rest of the night."
NATIVE--"The feller on top is Hank Hill wot married the widder Strong, an' th' other's Joel Jenks, wot interdooced him to her."--_Life_.
A colored man had been arrested on a charge of beating and cruelly misusing his wife. After hearing the charge against the prisoner, the justice turned to the first witness.
"Madam," he said, "if this man were your husband and had given you a beating, would you call in the police?"
The woman addressed, a veritable Amazon in size and aggressiveness, turned a smiling countenance towards the justice and answered: "No, jedge. If he was mah husban', and he treated me lak he did 'is wife, Ah wouldn't call no p'liceman. No, sah, Ah'd call de undertaker."
We admire the strict impartiality of the judge who recently fined his wife twenty-five dollars for contempt of court, but we would hate to have been in the judge's shoes when he got home that night.
"How many children have you?" asked the census-taker.
The man addressed removed the pipe from his mouth, scratched his head, thought it over a moment, and then replied:
HE--"Oh, it's the same old story. Started out to be good friends, you know, and later on changed their minds."--_Puck_.
Nat Goodwin and a friend were walking along Fifth Avenue one afternoon when they stopped to look into a florist's window, in which there was an artistic arrangement of exquisite roses.