“Those boys must have tickets if you take them in,” said the clerk.

“Oh, no, mister,” she said.  “I never pay for them.  I never can spare more than a quarter, and I just love a show.  We won’t cheat you any, mister, for they both go sound asleep just as soon as they get into a seat, and don’t see a single bit of it.”

The argument convinced the ticket man, and he allowed the two children to pass in.

Toward the end of the second act an usher came out of the auditorium and handed a twenty-five-cent piece to the ticket-seller.

“What’s this?” demanded the latter.

“I don’t know,” said the usher.  “A little chunk of a woman beckoned me clear across the house, and said one of her kids had waked up and was looking at the show, and that I should bring you that quarter.”

HONOR

In the smoking compartment of a Pullman, there were six men smoking and reading.  All of a sudden a door banged and the conductor’s voice cried: 

“All tickets, please!”

Then one of the men in the compartment leaped to his feet, scanned the faces of the others and said, slowly and impressively: 

“Gentlemen, I trust to your honor.”

And he dived under the seat and remained there in a small, silent knot till the conductor was safely gone.

  Titles of honour add not to his worth,
  Who is himself an honour to his titles.

  —­John Ford.

HOPE

FRED—­“My dear Dora, let this thought console you for your lover’s death.  Remember that other and better men than he have gone the same way.”

BEREAVED ONE—­“They haven’t all gone, have they?”—­Puck.

HORSES

A city man, visiting a small country town, boarded a stage with two dilapidated horses, and found that he had no other currency than a five-dollar bill.  This he proffered to the driver.  The latter took it, looked it over for a moment or so, and then asked: 

“Which horse do you want?”

A traveler in Indiana noticed that a farmer was having trouble with his horse.  It would start, go slowly for a short distance, and then stop again.  Thereupon the farmer would have great difficulty in getting it started.  Finally the traveler approached and asked, solicitously: 

“Is your horse sick?”

“Not as I knows of.”

“Is he balky?”

“No.  But he is so danged ’fraid I’ll say whoa and he won’t hear me, that he stops every once in a while to listen.”

A German farmer was in search of a horse.

“I’ve got just the horse for you,” said the liveryman.  “He’s five years old, sound as a dollar and goes ten miles without stopping.”

The German threw his hands skyward.

“Not for me,” he said, “not for me.  I live eight miles from town, und mit dot horse I haf to valk back two miles.”