HIS BETTER HALF—­“But why wait?  I didn’t!”

O’Flanagan came home one night with a deep band of black crape around his hat.

“Why, Mike!” exclaimed his wife.  “What are ye wearin’ thot mournful thing for?”

“I’m wearin’ it for yer first husband,” replied Mike firmly.  “I’m sorry he’s dead.”

“What a strangely interesting face your friend the poet has,” gurgled the maiden of forty.  “It seems to possess all the elements of happiness and sorrow, each struggling for supremacy.”

“Yes, he looks to me like a man who was married and didn’t know it,” growled the Cynical Bachelor.

The not especially sweet-tempered young wife of a Kaslo B.C., man one day approached her lord concerning the matter of one hundred dollars or so.

“I’d like to let you have it, my dear,” began the husband, “but the fact is I haven’t that amount in the bank this morning—­that is to say, I haven’t that amount to spare, inasmuch as I must take up a note for two hundred dollars this afternoon.”

“Oh, very well, James!” said the wife, with an ominous calmness, “If you think the man who holds the note can make things any hotter for you than I can—­why, do as you say, James!”

A young lady entered a book store and inquired of the gentlemanly clerk—­a married man, by-the-way—­if he had a book suitable for an old gentleman who had been married fifty years.

Without the least hesitation the clerk reached for a copy of Parkman’s “A Half Century of Conflict.”

Smith and Jones were discussing the question of who should be head of the house—­the man or the woman.

“I am the head of my establishment,” said Jones.  “I am the bread-winner.  Why shouldn’t I be?”

“Well,” replied Smith, “before my wife and I were married we made an agreement that I should make the rulings in all major things, my wife in all the minor.”

“How has it worked?” queried Jones.

Smith smiled.  “So far,” he replied, “no major matters have come up.”

A poor lady the other day hastened to the nursery and said to her little daughter: 

“Minnie, what do you mean by shouting and screaming?  Play quietly, like Tommy.  See, he doesn’t make a sound.”

“Of course he doesn’t,” said the little girl.  “That is our game.  He is papa coming home late, and I am you.”

The stranger advanced toward the door.  Mrs. O’Toole stood in the doorway with a rough stick in her left hand and a frown on her brow.

“Good morning,” said the stranger politely.  “I’m looking for Mr. O’Toole.”

“So’m I,” said Mrs. O’Toole, shifting her club over to her other hand.

TIM—­“Sarer Smith (you know ’er—­Bill’s missus), she throwed herself horf the end uv the wharf larst night.”

TOM—­“Poor Sarer!”

TIM—­“An’ a cop fished ’er out again.”

TOM—­“Poor Bill!”

The cooing stops with the honeymoon, but the billing goes on forever.