“What line do you think you are on, anyhow?”

“Well,” said the man, “I am not sure, but, judging from what I have heard, I should say I was on a clothesline.”

When Grover Cleveland’s little girl was quite young her father once telephoned to the White House from Chicago and asked Mrs. Cleveland to bring the child to the ’phone.  Lifting the little one up to the instrument, Mrs. Cleveland watched her expression change from bewilderment to wonder and then to fear.  It was surely her father’s voice—­yet she looked at the telephone incredulously.  After examining the tiny opening in the receiver the little girl burst into tears.  “Oh, Mamma!” she sobbed.  “How can we ever get Papa out of that little hole?”

New York Elks are having a lot of fun with a member of their lodge, a Fifteenth Street jeweler.  The other day his wife was in the jewelry store when the ’phone rang.  She answered it.

“I want to speak to Mr. H——­,” said a woman’s voice.

“Who is this?’ demanded the jeweler’s wife.

“Elizabeth.”

“Well, Elizabeth, this is his wife.  Now, madam, what do you want?”

“I want to talk to Mr. H——.”

“You’ll talk to me.”

“Please let me speak to Mr. H——.”

The jeweler’s wife grew angry.  “Look here, young lady,” she said, “who are you that calls my husband and insists on talking to him?”

“I’m the telephone operator at Elizabeth, N.J.,” came the reply.

And now the Elks take turns calling the jeweler up and telling him it’s Elizabeth.

OPERATOR—­“Number, please.”

SUBSCRIBER—­“I vas talking mit my husband und now I don’t hear him any more.  You must of pushed him off de vire.”

A German woman called up Central and instructed her as follows: 

“Ist dis de mittle?  Veil dis is Lena.  Hang my hustband on dis line.  I vant to speak mit him.”

In China when the subscriber rings up exchange the operator may be expected to ask: 

“What number does the honorable son of the moon and stars desire?”

“Hohi, two-three.”

Silence.  Then the exchange resumes.

“Will the honorable person graciously forgive the inadequacy of the insignificant service and permit this humbled slave of the wire to inform him that the never-to-be-sufficiently censured line is busy?”

Recipe for a telephone operator: 

  To fearful and wonderful rolling of “r’s,”
    And a voice cold as thirty below,
  Add a dash of red pepper, some ginger and sass
    If you leave out the “o” in “hello”!

TEMPER

Hearing the crash of china Dinah’s mistress arrived in time to see her favorite coffee-set in pieces.  The sight was too much for her mercurial temper.  “Dinah,” she said, “I cannot stand it any longer.  I want you to go.  I want you to go soon, I want you to go right now.”