“Sure,” the commander told him.  “We’ll be glad to have you.  Come aboard whenever you like and bring your luggage.”

“Thanks,” said Poe warmly.  “I’ll sure do that.  I only have fifty-four pieces.”

“What!” exclaimed the commander.  “What do you think I’m running?  A freighter?”

“Oh, well, you needn’t get excited about it,” purred Poe.  “My fifty-four pieces consist of one pair of socks and a pack of playing cards.”

BALDNESS

One mother who still considers Marcel waves as the most fashionable way of dressing the hair was at work on the job.

Her little eight-year-old girl was crouched on her father’s lap, watching her mother.  Every once in a while the baby fingers would slide over the smooth and glossy pate which is Father’s.

“No waves for you, Father,” remarked the little one.  “You’re all beach.”

“Were any of your boyish ambitions ever realized?” asked the sentimentalist.

“Yes,” replied the practical person.  “When my mother used to cut my hair I often wished I might be bald-headed.”

Congressman Longworth is not gifted with much hair, his head being about as shiny as a billiard ball.

One day ex-president Taft, then Secretary of War, and Congressman Longworth sallied into a barbershop.

“Hair cut?” asked the barber of Longworth.

“Yes,” answered the Congressman.

“Oh, no, Nick,” commented the Secretary of War from the next chair, “you don’t want a hair cut; you want a shine.”

“O, Mother, why are the men in the front baldheaded?”

“They bought their tickets from scalpers, my child.”

The costumer came forward to attend to the nervous old beau who was mopping his bald and shining poll with a big silk handkerchief.

“And what can I do for you?” he asked.

“I want a little help in the way of a suggestion,” said the old fellow.  “I intend going to the French Students’ masquerade ball to-night, and I want a distinctly original costume—­something I may be sure no one else will wear.  What would you suggest?”

The costumer looked him over attentively, bestowing special notice on the gleaming knob.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” he said then, thoughtfully:  “why don’t you sugar your head and go as a pill?”—­Frank X. Finnegan.

United States Senator Ollie James, of Kentucky, is bald.

“Does being bald bother you much?” a candid friend asked him once.

“Yes, a little,” answered the truthful James.

“I suppose you feel the cold severely in winter,” went on the friend.

“No; it’s not that so much,” said the Senator.  “The main bother is when I’m washing myself—­unless I keep my hat on I don’t know where my face stops.”

A near-sighted old lady at a dinner-party, one evening, had for her companion on the left a very bald-headed old gentleman.  While talking to the gentleman at her right she dropped her napkin unconsciously.  The bald-headed gentleman, in stooping to pick it up, touched her arm.  The old lady turned around, shook her head, and very politely said:  “No melon, thank you.”