One of these roads had recently had an appalling list of accidents, and the death-toll was exceptionally high.  The cook from this road sauntered up to the back platform of the private car, and after an interchange of courtesies said: 

“Well, how am youh ole jerkwatah railroad these days?  Am you habbing prosper’s times?”

“Man,” said the other, “we-all am so prosperous that if we was any moah prosperous we just naturally couldn’t stand hit.”

“Hough!” said the other, “we-all am moah prosperous than you-all.”

“Man,” said the other, “we dun carry moah’n a million passengers last month.”

“Foah de Lord’s sake!” ejaculated the first negro.  “You-all carried moah’n a million passengers?  Go on with you, nigger; we dun kill moah passengers than you carry.”

It was on a little branch railway in a southern state that the New England woman ventured to refer to the high rates.

“It seems to me five cents a mile is extortion,” she said, with frankness, to her southern cousin.

“It’s a big lot of money to pay if you think of it by the mile,” said the southerner, in her soft drawl; “but you just think how cheap it is by the hour, Cousin Annie—­only about thirty-five cents.”—­Youth’s Companion.

RAPID TRANSIT

One cold, wintry morning a man of tall and angular build was walking down a steep hill at a quick pace.  A treacherous piece of ice under the snow caused him to lose control of his feet; he began to slide and was unable to stop.

At a cross-street half-way down the decline he encountered a large, heavy woman, with her arms full of bundles.  The meeting was sudden, and before either realized it a collision ensued and both were sliding down hill, a grand ensemble—­the thin man underneath, the fat woman and bundles on top.  When the bottom was reached and the woman was trying in vain to recover her breath and her feet, these faint words were borne to her ear: 

“Pardon me, madam, but you will have to get off here.  This is as far as I go.”

READING

See Books and Reading.

REAL ESTATE AGENTS

Little Nelly told little Anita what she termed a “little fib.”

ANITA—­“A fib is the same as a story, and a story is the same as a lie.”

NELLY—­“No, it is not.”

ANITA—­“Yes, it is, because my father said so, and my father is a professor at the university.”

NELLY—­“I don’t care if he is.  My father is a real estate man, and he knows more about lying than your father does.”

REALISM

The storekeeper at Yount, Idaho, tells the following tale of Ole Olson, who later became the little town’s mayor.

“One night, just before closin’ up time, Ole, hatless, coatless, and breathless, come rushin’ into the store, an’ droppin’ on his knees yelled, ‘Yon, Yon, hide me, hide me!  Ye sheriff’s after me!’