Plantagenet de Vere.—­Would you believe a person named JONES on his oath?

Answer.—­We would not.

Smike.  We read of houses being “gutted” by the Prussian soldiers; have houses entrails, then?

Answer.—­All occupied houses have livers, and most houses have lights.

M.  T. Head.—­We cannot pay strangers in advance for contributions that have not been sent in by them.

Icarus.—­What do the balloon scouts of Paris use for ballast?

Answer.—­Bundles of newspapers, chiefly.  Immense bales of the unsold copies of the New York Free Press are now exported for the purpose.  They are preferred to any other papers because, when placed anywhere in the balloon, they Lie so, and, having already fallen from grace, falling from a balloon is nothing to them.

Taxidermist.—­What is the best material for stuffing ballot-boxes with?

Answer.—­Greenbacks.

Leatherhead.—­Is it true that most of the prominent men of England—­“TOM BROWN” HUGHES, for instance—­are proficient pugilists?

Answer.—­We have never seen “TOM BROWN” spar, but we have often seen JOHN STUART Mill.

Abby Gansevoort.—­No, my dear, your name does not occur in any of SHAKESPEARE’S plays.

Figdrum.—­Born to the drudgery of commerce, I aspire to literature:  what am I to do to see my name in print?

Answer.—­Put it in the City Directory.

Voice-in-the-Fog.—­Why is it that all the queer isms of the day, such as socialism, are more cultivated by Red Republicans than by any other political sect?

Answer.—­Red, as artists well know, is the complementary or opposite color to green.  The social phenomenon to which you refer, then, may be accounted for on the principle that extremes meet.

Clericus.—­Is it proper for me, as a clergyman, to wear moustaches?

Answer.—­Quite so, unless they are red, in which case they might interfere with your published sermons.

Astrolabe.—­What is the exact distance between the Dog Star and Roxbury, Mass.?

Answer.—­We do not know.  PUNCHINELLO is not a Sirius journal.

Juniper Byles.—­My rent has just been raised, and I have had a curtain-lecture from my wife for swearing about it.  Would not you swear if your rent was raised?

Answer.—­Certainly not—­at least not if it was raised by benevolent subscription.

* * * * *

AN ACQUAINTANCE.

Tom.—­“I say, JACK, what a beautiful complexion Miss SMITH has.  Do you know her?”

Jack.—­“No, but I know a girl who buys her complexion at the same store at which Miss SMITH buys hers.”

* * * * *

“CUM GRANO SALIS.”—­Musk-melon.