“Thank you, sir,” she said as she got down.
“Don’t mention it, Mary. Don’t mention it,” he told her politely.
“No, I won’t,” Mary obligingly assured him.
A little girl was shown her newly-arrived baby brother. Looking at him lovingly she said, “When will he talk, mother?” “Oh not for a long time yet,” said the mother. “Yes, but when?” persisted the child. “Well, not for a year or so.” After thinking for minute the child exclaimed, “How funny. Miss Clark read out of the Bible this morning that Job cursed the hour he was born.”
W. A. Sponsler, when in the Pennsylvania State Legislature, was given to the making of very elaborate and florid speeches, and one day brought an address to a close with “_Vox populi, vox Dei_.”
“I’ll bet you don’t know the meaning of what Sponsler just said,” said Al Crawford to Hugh E. Mackin.
“I don’t know!” replied Mackin, indignantly. “Of course, I know!”
“You don’t know for ten dollars!” suggested Crawford.
Mackin, still indignant, posted his part of the wager with another member of the Legislature, and Crawford said tauntingly:
“_Vox populi, vox Dei_,” quoted Mackin, solemnly, “as everybody knows, is French for ‘My God! why hast thou forsaken me?’”
“Give him the money,” said Crawford. “Darned if he don’t know after all!”
There is an old lady living in a small town in southern Pennsylvania who makes great efforts to keep abreast of the times. Her opportunities, however, are circumscribed, and she is sometimes compelled to resort to her imagination. She went to a church sociable lately, and as she entered the room one of the attendants said:
“Good evening, auntie. I am glad you came. We are going to have tableaux this evening.”
“Yes, I know,” replied the old lady; “I smelt ’em when I first came in.”
Fifer was a dog of friendly and social habits, but when he wandered into the lecture-tent at a well-known New Thought summer school and went to sleep between the chairs, he did a very foolish thing. A woman coming in poked him in the ribs with her parasol, startling him from his peaceful dreams, and he sprang upon her with a savage bite. A man grabbed him and he grabbed the man. The excitement was intense when an earnest little woman standing on a chair cried, “Some one hold the Thought!” “Hang the Thought!” shouted a man in the rear. “Some one hold the dog!”