A belated voyager in search of hilarity stumbled home after one o’clock and found his wife waiting for him.  The curtain lecture that followed was of unusual virulence, and in the midst of it he fell asleep.  Awakening a few hours later he found his wife still pouring forth a regular cascade of denunciation.  Eyeing her sleepily he said curiously,

“Say, are you talking yet or again?”

“You must not talk all the time, Ethel,” said the mother who had been interrupted.

“When will I be old enough to, Mama?” asked the little girl.

While the late Justice Brewer was judge in a minor court he was presiding at the trial of a wife’s suit for separation and alimony.  The defendant acknowledged that he hadn’t spoken to his wife in five years, and Judge Brewer put in a question.

“What explanation have you,” he asked severely, “for not speaking to your wife in five years?”

“Your Honor,” replied the husband, “I didn’t like to interrupt the lady.”

She was in an imaginative mood.

“Henry, dear,” she said after talking two hours without a recess, “I sometimes wish I were a mermaid.”

“It would be fatal,” snapped her weary hubby.

“Fatal!  In what way?”

“Why, you couldn’t keep your mouth closed long enough to keep from drowning.”

And after that, Henry did not get any supper.

“Here comes Blinkers.  He’s got a new baby, and he’ll talk us to death.”

“Well, here comes a neighbor of mine who has a new setter dog.  Let’s introduce them and leave them to their fate.”—­Life.

A street-car was getting under way when two women, rushing from opposite sides of the street to greet each other, met right in the middle of the car-track and in front of the car.  There the two stopped and began to talk.  The car stopped, too, but the women did not appear to realize that it was there.  Certain of the passengers, whose heads were immediately thrust out of the windows to ascertain what the trouble was, began to make sarcastic remarks, but the two women heeded them not.

Finally the motorman showed that he had a saving sense of humor.  Leaning over the dash-board, he inquired, in the gentlest of tones: 

“Pardon me, ladies, but shall I get you a couple of chairs?”

A—­“I used a word in speaking to my wife which offended her sorely a week ago.  She has not spoken a syllable to me since.”

B—­“Would you mind telling me what it was?”

In general those who have nothing to say Contrive to spend the longest time in doing it.—­Lowell.

See also Wives.

TARDINESS

“You’ll be late for supper, sonny,” said the merchant, in passing a small boy who was carrying a package.

“No, I won’t,” was the reply.  “I’ve dot de meat.”—­Mabel Long.

“How does it happen that you are five minutes late at school this morning?” the teacher asked severely.