“Ethel,” he said, “I—­er—­am going to ask you an important question.”

“Oh, George,” she exclaimed, “this is so sudden!  Why, I—­”

“No, excuse me,” he interrupted; “what I want to ask is this:  What date have you and your mother decided upon for our wedding?”

A Scotch beadle led the maiden of his choice to a churchyard and, pointing to the various headstones, said: 

“My folks are all buried there, Jennie.  Wad ye like to be buried there too?”

IMPECUNIOUS LOVER—­“Be mine, Amanda, and you will be treated like an angel.”

WEALTHY MAIDEN—­“Yes, I suppose so.  Nothing to eat, and less to wear.  No, thank you.”

The surest way to hit a woman’s heart is to take aim kneeling.—­Douglas Jerrold.

PROPRIETY

  There was a young lady of Wilts,
  Who walked up to Scotland on stilts;
    When they said it was shocking
    To show so much stocking,
  She answered:  “Then what about kilts?”

  —­Gilbert K. Chesterton.

PROSPERITY

  May bad fortune follow you all your days
  And never catch up with you.

PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH

One of our popular New England lecturers tells this amusing story.

A street boy of diminutive stature was trying to sell some very young kittens to passers-by.  One day he accosted the late Reverend Phillips Brooks, asking him to purchase, and recommending them as good Episcopal kittens.  Dr. Brooks laughingly refused, thinking them too small to be taken from their mother.  A few days later a Presbyterian minister who had witnessed this episode was asked by the same boy to buy the same kittens.  This time the lad announced that they were faithful Presbyterians.

“Didn’t you tell Dr. Brooks last week that they were Episcopal kittens?” the minister asked sternly.

“Yes sir,” replied the boy quickly, “but they’s had their eyes opened since then, sir.”

An Episcopal clergyman who was passing his vacation in a remote country district met an old farmer who declared that he was a “’Piscopal.”

“To what parish do you belong?” asked the clergyman.

“Don’t know nawthin’ ’bout enny parish,” was the answer.

“Who confirmed you, then?” was the next question.

“Nobody,” answered the farmer.

“Then how are you an Episcopalian?” asked the clergyman.

“Well,” was the reply, “you see it’s this way:  Last winter I went to church, an’ it was called ‘Piscopal, an’ I heerd them say that they left undone the things what they’d oughter done and they’d done some things what they oughtenter done, and I says to myself says I:  ‘That’s my fix exac’ly,’ and ever sence then I’ve been a ’Piscopalian.”

PROTESTANTS