“Yes,” replied the other, “that is the truth in some cases.  We call it cremation.”

“Well, you suttenly surprise me,” said the negro and then he paused as if in deep reflection.  Finally he said:  “You-all know I am a Baptist.  I believe in the resurrection and the life everlastin’ and the coming of the Angel Gabriel and the blowin’ of that great horn, and Lawdy me, how am they evah goin’ to find them folks on that great mawnin’?”

It was too great a task for an offhand answer, and the suggestion was made that the aged one consult his minister.  Again the negro fell into a brown study, and then he raised his head and his eyes twinkled merrily, and he said in a soft voice: 

“Meanin’ no offense, sah, but from what Ah have heard about New York I kinder calcerlate they is a lot of them New York people that doan’ wanter be found on that mornin’.”

NEWS

Soon after the installation of the telegraph in Fredericksburg, Virginia, a little darky, the son of my father’s mammy, saw a piece of newspaper that had blown up on the telegraph wires and caught there.  Running to my grandmother in a great state of excitement, he cried, “Miss Liza, come quick!  Dem wires done buss and done let all the news out!”—­Sue M.M.  Halsey.

“Our whole neighborhood has been stirred up,” said the regular reader.

The editor of the country weekly seized his pen.  “Tell me about it,” he said.  “What we want is news.  What stirred it up?”

“Plowing,” said the farmer.

There is nothing new except what is forgotten.—­Mademoiselle Berlin.

NEWSPAPERS

A kind old gentleman seeing a small boy who was carrying a lot of newspapers under his arm said:  “Don’t all those papers make you tired, my boy?”

“Naw, I don’t read ’em,” replied the lad.

VOX POPULI—­“Do you think you’ve boosted your circulation by giving a year’s subscription for the biggest potato raised in the county?”

THE EDITOR—­“Mebbe not; but I got four barrels of samples.”

COLONEL HIGHFLYER—­“What are your rates per column?”

EDITOR OF “SWELL SOCIETY”—­“For insertion or suppression?”—­Life.

EDITOR—­“You wish a position as a proofreader?”

APPLICANT—­“Yes, sir.”

“Do you understand the requirements of that responsible position?”

“Perfectly, sir.  Whenever you make any mistakes in the paper, just blame ’em on me, and I’ll never say a word.”

A prominent Montana newspaper man was making the round of the insane asylum of that state in an official capacity as an inspector.  One of the inmates mistook him for a recent arrival.

“What made you go crazy?”

“I was trying to make money out of the newspaper business,” replied the editor, to humor the demented one.