A scrupulous priest of Kildare,
  Used to pay a rude peasant to swear,
    Who would paint the air blue,
    For an hour or two,
  While his reverence wrestled in prayer.

Donald and Jeanie were putting down a carpet.  Donald slammed the end of his thumb with the hammer and began to pour forth his soul in language befitting the occasion.

“Donald, Donald!” shrieked Jeanie, horrified.  “Dinna swear that way!”

“Wummun!” vociferated Donald; “gin ye know ony better way, now is the time to let me know it!”

“It is not always necessary to make a direct accusation,” said the lawyer who was asking damages because insinuations had been made against his client’s good name.  “You may have heard of the woman who called to the hired girl, ’Mary, Mary. come here and take the parrot downstairs—­the master has dropped his collar button!’”

Little Bartholomew’s mother overheard him swearing like a mule-driver.  He displayed a fluency that overwhelmed her.  She took him to task, explaining the wickedness of profanity as well as its vulgarity.  She asked where he had learned all those dreadful words.  Bartholomew announced that Cavert, one of his playmates, had taught him.

Cavert’s mother was straightway informed and Cavert was brought to book.  He vigorously denied having instructed Bartholomew, and neither threats nor tears could make him confess.  At last he burst out: 

“I didn’t tell Bartholomew any cuss words.  Why should I know how to cuss any better than he does?  Hasn’t his father got an automobile, too?”

They were in Italy together.

“If you would let me curse them black and blue,” said the groom, “we shouldn’t have to wait so long for the trunks.”

“But, darling, please don’t.  It would distress me so,” murmured the bride.

The groom went off, but quickly returned with the porters before him trundling the trunks at a double quick.

“Oh, dearest, how did you do it?  You didn’t—?”

“Not at all.  I thought of something that did quite as well.  I said, ‘S-s-s-susquehanna, R-r-r-rappahannock!’”—­Cornelia C. Ward.

A school girl was required to write an essay of two hundred and fifty words about a motorcar.  She submitted the following: 

“My uncle bought a motorcar.  He was riding in the country when it busted up a hill.  I guess this is about fifty words.  The other two hundred are what my uncle said when he was walking back to town, but they are not fit for publication.”

The ashman was raising a can of ashes above his head to dump the contents into his cart, when the bottom of the can came out.  Ethel saw it and ran in and told her mother.

“I hope you didn’t listen to what he said,” the mother remarked.

“He didn’t say a word to me,” replied the little girl; “he just walked right off by the side of his cart, talking to God.”