“You did!  What did you say?”

“Oh, I just telegraphed him:  ‘Thanks for timely warning.’”

  Twinkle, twinkle, lovely star! 
  How I wonder if you are
  When at home the tender age
  You appear when on the stage.

  —­Mary A. Fairchild.

Recipe for an actor: 

  To one slice of ham add assortment of roles. 
    Steep the head in mash notes till it swells,
  Garnish with onions, tomatoes and beets,
    Or with eggs—­from afar—­in the shells.

  —­Life.

Recipe for an ingenue: 

  A pound and three-quarters of kitten,
    Three ounces of flounces and sighs;
  Add wiggles and giggles and gurgles,
    And ringlets and dimples and eyes.

  —­Life.

ADAPTATION

“I know a nature-faker,” said Mr. Bache, the author, “who claims that a hen of his last month hatched, from a setting of seventeen eggs, seventeen chicks that had, in lieu of feathers, fur.

“He claimed that these fur-coated chicks were a proof of nature’s adaptation of all animals to their environment, the seventeen eggs having been of the cold-storage variety.”

ADDRESSES

In a large store a child, pointing to a shopper exclaimed, “Oh, mother, that lady lives the same place we do.  I just heard her say, ’Send it up C.O.D.’  Isn’t that where we live?”

An Englishman went into his local library and asked for Frederic Harrison’s George Washington and other American Addresses.  In a little while he brought back the book to the librarian and said: 

“This book does not give me what I require; I want to find out the addresses of several American magnates; I know where George Washington has gone to, for he never told a lie.”

ADVERTISING

Not long ago a patron of a cafe in Chicago summoned his waiter and delivered himself as follows: 

“I want to know the meaning of this.  Look at this piece of beef.  See its size.  Last evening I was served with a portion more than twice the size of this.”

“Where did you sit?” asked the waiter.

“What has that to do with it?  I believe I sat by the window.”

“In that case,” smiled the waiter, “the explanation is simple.  We always serve customers by the window large portions.  It’s a good advertisement for the place.”

“Advertising costs me a lot of money.”

“Why I never saw your goods advertised.”

“They aren’t.  But my wife reads other people’s ads.”

When Mark Twain, in his early days, was editor of a Missouri paper, a superstitious subscriber wrote to him saying that he had found a spider in his paper, and asking him whether that was a sign of good luck or bad.  The humorist wrote him this answer and printed it: