A distinguished theologian was invited to make an address before a Sunday-school.  The divine spoke for over an hour and his remarks were of too deep a character for the average juvenile mind to comprehend.  At the conclusion, the superintendent, according to custom, requested some one in the school to name an appropriate hymn to be sung.

“Sing ‘Revive Us Again,’” shouted a boy in the rear of the room.

A clergyman was once sent for in the middle of the night by one of his woman parishioners.

“Well, my good woman,” said he, “so you are ill and require the consolations of religion?  What can I do for you?”

“No,” replied the old lady, “I am only nervous and can’t sleep!”

“But how can I help that?” said the parson.

“Oh, sir, you always put me to sleep so nicely when I go to church that I thought if you would only preach a little for me!”

  I never see my rector’s eyes;
  He hides their light divine;
  For when he prays, he shuts his own,
  And when he preaches, mine.

A stranger entered the church in the middle of the sermon and seated himself in the back pew.  After a while he began to fidget.  Leaning over to the white-haired man at his side, evidently an old member of the congregation, he whispered: 

“How long has he been preaching?”

“Thirty or forty years, I think,” the old man answered.

“I’ll stay then,” decided the stranger.  “He must be nearly done.”

Once upon a time there was an Indian named Big Smoke, employed as a missionary to his fellow Smokes.

A white man encountering Big Smoke, asked him what he did for a living.

“Umph!” said Big Smoke, “me preach.”

“That so?  What do you get for preaching?”

“Me get ten dollars a year.”

“Well,” said the white man, “that’s damn poor pay.”

“Umph!” said Big Smoke, “me damn poor preacher.”

See also Clergy.

PRESCRIPTIONS

After a month’s work in intensely warm weather a gardener in the suburbs became ill, and the anxious little wife sent for a doctor, who wrote a prescription after examining the patient.  The doctor, upon departing, said:  “Just let your husband take that and you’ll find he will be all right in a short time.”

Next day the doctor called again, and the wife opened the door, her face beaming with smiles.  “Sure, that was a wonderful wee bit of paper you left yesterday,” she exclaimed.  “William is better to-day.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” said the much-pleased medical man.

“Not but what I hadn’t a big job to get him to swallow it.” she continued, “but, sure, I just wrapped up the wee bit of paper quite small and put it in a spoonful of jam and William swallowed it unbeknownst.  By night he was entirely better.”

PRESENCE OF MIND