“I’se would if I’se could, parson,” answered the little negro, “but yo’ see I’se de crape.”

See also Chicken stealing.

NEIGHBORS

THE MAN AT THE DOOR—­“Madame, I’m the piano-tuner.”

THE WOMAN—­“I didn’t send for a piano-tuner.”

THE MAN—­“I know it, lady; the neighbors did.”

NEW JERSEY

“You must have had a terrible experience with no food, and mosquitoes swarming around you,” I said to the shipwrecked mariner who had been cast upon the Jersey sands.

“You just bet I had a terrible experience,” he acknowledged.  “My experience was worse than that of the man who wrote ’Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.’  With me it was bites, bites everywhere, but not a bite to eat.”

NEW YORK CITY

At a convention of Methodist Bishops held in Washington, the Bishop of New York made a stirring address extolling the powers and possibilities of his state.  Bishop Hamilton, of California, like all good Californians, is imbued with the conviction that it would be hard to equal a place he knows of on the Pacific, and following the Bishop of New York he gave a glowing picture of California, concluding: 

“Not only is it the best place on earth to live in, but it has superior advantages, too, as a place to die in; for there we have at our threshold the beautiful Golden Gate, while in New York they only have—­well, you know which gate it is over at New York!” One night Dave Warfield was playing at David Belasco’s new theatre, supported by one of Mr. Belasco’s new companies.  The performance ran with a smoothness of a Standard Oil lawyer explaining rebates to a Federal court.  A worthy person of the farming classes, sitting in G 14, was plainly impressed.  In an interval between the acts he turned to the metropolitan who had the seat next him.

“Where do all them troopers come from?” he inquired.

“I don’t think I understand,” said the city-dweller.

“I mean them actors up yonder on the stage,” explained the man from afar.  “Was they brought on specially for this show, or do they live here?”

“I believe most of them live here in town,” said the New Yorker.

“Well, they do purty blamed well for home talent,” said the stranger.

A traveler in Tennessee came across an aged negro seated in front of his cabin door basking in the sunshine.

“He could have walked right on the stage for an Uncle Tom part without a line of makeup,” says the traveler.  “He must have been eighty years of age.”

“Good morning, uncle,” says the stranger.

“Mornin’, sah!  Mornin’,” said the aged one.  Then he added, “Be you the gentleman over yonder from New York?”

Being told that such was the case the old darky said; “Do you mind telling me something that has been botherin’ my old haid?  I have got a grandson—­he runs on the Pullman cyars—­and he done tell me that up thar in New York you-all burn up youah folks when they die.  He is a poherful liar, and I don’t believe him.”