There was an old man with a beard,
  Who said, “It is just as I feared!—­
    Two owls and a hen,
    Four larks and a wren,
  Have all built their nests in my beard.”

BEAUTY

  If eyes were made for seeing,
  Then beauty is its own excuse for being.

  —­Emerson.

  A thing of beauty is a joy forever;
  Its loveliness increases; it will never
  Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
  A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
  Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

BEAUTY, PERSONAL

  In good looks I am not a star. 
  There are others more lovely by far. 
    But my face—­I don’t mind it,
    Because I’m behind it—­
  It’s the people in front that I jar.

“Shine yer boots, sir?”

“No,” snapped the man.

“Shine ’em so’s yer can see yer face in ’em?” urged the bootblack.

“No, I tell you!”

“Coward,” hissed the bootblack.

A farmer returning home late at night, found a man standing beside the house with a lighted lantern in his hand.  “What are you doing here?” he asked, savagely, suspecting he had caught a criminal.  For answer came a chuckle, and—­“It’s only mee, zur.”

The farmer recognized John, his shepherd.

“It’s you, John, is it?  What on earth are you doing here this time o’ night?”

Another chuckle.  “I’m a-coortin’ Ann, zur.”

“And so you’ve come courting with a lantern, you fool.  Why I never took a lantern when I courted your mistress.”

“No, zur, you didn’t, zur,” John chuckled.  “We can all zee you didn’t, zur.”

The senator and the major were walking up the avenue.  The senator was more than middle-aged and considerably more than fat, and, dearly as the major loved him, he also loved his joke.

The senator turned with a pleased expression on his benign countenance and said, “Major, did you see that pretty girl smile at me?”

“Oh, that’s nothing,” replied his friend.  “The first time I saw you I laughed out loud!”—­Harper’s Magazine.

Pat, thinking to enliven the party, stated, with watch in hand:  “I’ll presint a box of candy to the loidy that makes the homeliest face within the next three minutes.”

The time expired, Pat announced:  “Ah, Mrs. McGuire, you get the prize.”

“But,” protested Mrs. McGuire, “go way wid ye!  I wasn’t playin’ at all.”

ARTHUR—­“They say dear, that people who live together get to look alike.”

KATE—­“Then you must consider my refusal as final.”

In the negro car of a railway train in one of the gulf states a bridal couple were riding—­a very light, rather good looking colored girl and a typical full blooded negro of possibly a reverted type, with receding forehead, protruding eyes, broad, flat nose very thick lips and almost no chin.  He was positively and aggressively ugly.