Witty Pieces by Witty People Read online

has my certificate of ill-health, and the chiefhas my certificate of good health.

  --_Boston Beacon._

  The Johnstown sufferer is the latest variety of tramp in Kansas. Hebears a close resemblance to all the rest in the particular that helooks as if he had never seen water.

  --_Kansas City Star._

  A ballet-girl syndicate is the latest development of the Trust business.But in the nature of things it will not be much of a clothescorporation.

  --_Richmond Dispatch._

  His Complexion Was Against Him.

  Hadji Hassein Ghooly Khan, envoy extraordinary and ministerplenipotentiary from Persia, was one of the favorites in Washingtonsociety while there. He was very fond of going out and calling on theladies, and was always most hospitably received wherever he went. Thatis, almost always, for an experience he had one Sunday afternoon provedthat he was not as cordially received at one house as had been his wont.Ghooly Khan started out with the purpose of making a round of calls. Itis his custom to pay his respects to the ladies of the fashionable worldon Sunday the same as on the week days. The day being an extremelypleasant one, his landau was not brought into use. He walked from hisresidence on M street, to Massachusetts avenue, in the neighborhood ofFourteenth street, where the subjects of his first call resided. Walkingup the stone steps in an indolent fashion, he reached the door andrather timidly touched the electric bell. After lingering some momentsthe servant appeared, and before Ghooly Khan could utter a word sheshouted out: "The ladies are all busy and cannot be bothered with younow."

  "Well," said the minister, completely nonplussed, "there must be amistake; take in my card."

  "Oh! don't worry them now," answered the servant, not allowing him tofinish his sentence. "They are all about going to dinner and don't carefor any one to see them at this time--you'd better come again in themorning; and the side door is always the handiest place for such as yezto call."

  The minister waited for no more. The rebuff he had received at the handsof the unruly servant completely paralyzed him. He concluded that he hada sufficient dose of American society.

  The ladies of the house soon learned of the "horrible" manner in whichtheir distinguished caller had been received, and they at once madeheroic and happily successful efforts to have the affair settled on abasis satisfactory not only to themselves but to the distinguished envoyfrom Teheran.

  --_New York Tribune._

  "I want the library," said Mr. Gaswell to the architect, "to be thelargest and airiest room in the house." "I don't see what you want witha library," interposed Mrs. Gaswell, "you know very well you don'tsmoke."

  --_Boston Transcript._

  The Difference.

  The following anecdote, which we have received as authentic from thelips of a clergyman, sets forth in a very pleasant way the folly ofreproaching preachers as hirelings, merely because they receive temporalsupport from their congregations.

  At the meeting of a presbytery in an eastern state, it fell to the lotof one of the ministers to be quartered with a man belonging to adenomination which does not allow of salaried preachers. He was accostedby his host as follows:

  "What is thy name, friend? I mean the name thy parents gave thee."

  "John."

  "Has thee any objections that I should call thee by that name?"

  "Certainly not; my mother always calls me John."

  "Well, John, I understand thee belongs to the class of hirelingpreachers."

  "You are greatly mistaken, sir; I do not belong to that class."

  "I mean thee is one of those preachers who receive pay for preaching."

  "No, sir; I receive nothing for preaching to my people."

  "How then," said the interrogator, evidently surprised and disconcerted,"does thee manage to live?"

  "Why, I work for my people six days, and then I preach for them onSundays for nothing."

  --_Yankee Blade._

  Sir Wilfred Lawson's Story.

  Sir Wilfred Lawson told the following story the other evening: A studentat college was sent for by the Don, who said--"Sir, I am told you have abarrel of beer in your room, which is contrary to all orders." And theyoung man said: "Well, sir, that is true; but the fact is the doctorstold me that if I drank this beer I should get stronger." The Don said:"Are you stronger?" "Yes, sir, indeed I am," was the reply, "for whenthe barrel came in I could scarcely move it, and now I can roll it roundthe room."

  --_Glasgow Weekly Mail._

  Expected It.

  "I'm in a pickle," remarked a young employe at the store.

  "I've been expecting for some time that you'd get into a pickle," wasthe rather forbidding reply.

  "Why, sir?"

  "Because you are so confoundedly fresh."

  --_Albany Argus._

  ANCIENT MARINER--Holy smoke, where's that young feller gone to? Didn't'pear quite natral like anyhow.

  Truth in Absence.

  "Charlotte, my dear, how is it I find you weeping? Have you bad newsfrom your husband?"

  "Oh! worse than that! Arthur writes me from Carlsbad that he would diewith grief at being absent from me, were it not that he gazes at mypicture and covers it with a thousand kisses every day."

  "That is very nice of him; but surely you are not crying about that?Most woman would give anything to have such a poetic and devotedhusband."

  "Oh, yes, Arthur is very poetical; but you don't know. Just to try him,I put mother's photo into his traveling bag instead of my own, and thewretch has never found it out. Boo-hoo-hoo!"

  --_Pick-Me Up._

  Another Kind of Habit.

  Old Grinder (to seedy applicant for job)--I hope that no bad habits havebrought you to this poverty?

  Borrowit--One, sir.

  "Ah, I am glad you are frank about it. What was it?"

  "This played-out old suit of mine. It has ruined my chances everywhere."

  --_Texas Siftings._

  Family Loyalty.

  A Stevens avenue young lady was much pained and shocked as she walkeddown the street yesterday to see her young brother sitting astride theprostrate body of another boy and raining down blows upon his strugglingvictim.

  "Johnny!" she almost screamed, "what are you doing? Come here thisminute. Aren't you ashamed of yourself, fighting this way in thestreet?"

  The boy reluctantly arose from his vanquished antagonist and faced hisindignant sister. Then he explained:

  "Well, I don't care. He said you wasn't good looking. I don't think youare either; but it ain't none o' his funeral. So I licked him."

  --_Minneapolis Journal._

  Not Related.

  Magistrate--O'Rally, you are charged with assaulting and brutallybeating Michael McDooly at the reunion of the O'Rally family yesterday.Have you anything to say?

  O'Rally--Yes, yer Honor. The bloke's an imposthor, sorr, and hasn't wandhrop of the O'Rally blood in his skin, begorra, an' he dhrank oop allav the beer.

  Magistrate--How is this, McDooly? Are you a kinsman of the prisoner?

  McDooly--Faix, an' sure it is that I am, yer Honor; his grandfather worPathrick O'Rally av Belfast, an'----

  O'Rally--An' bedad, phwat do that prove, yer Worship?

  McDooly--An' Pathrick O'Rally's dochter marrit me own----

  O'Rally--He's lyin', yer Honor; he's lyin'. Me grandfather never had anycheeldren at all, at all, sorr.

  --_Life._

  One of Chauncey's Latest.

  Chauncey M. Depew tells the fol
lowing story of another of the manyinteresting characters he encountered last Fall while addressing hisfellow citizens on the vital issues of the campaign. It doesn't sound somuch like a true story as some that are extant, but it is getting prettylate in the day to doubt his word:

  One night, after the meeting was over and while the hall was clearing, aweather-beaten man buttonholed me and said:

  "I'm postmaster out here at Shingle Corners. Blaze away and elect yourman if you want to."

  "You don't care for the office, then?" I said.

  "No, that ain't it," he replied. "It don't pay but $14 a year, or mebbegood years, when I boom 'er a little, $15, but it's powerful