“I thought you said room 46.  I wint to that room and noticed wan of thim in a bunk.  ‘Are ye dead?’ says I.  ‘No,’ says he, ’but I’m pretty near dead.’

“So I buried him.”

Telephone girls sometimes glory in their mistakes if there is a joke in consequence.  The story is told by a telephone operator in one of the Boston exchanges about a man who asked her for the number of a local theater.

He got the wrong number and, without asking to whom he was talking, he said, “Can I get a box for two to-night?”

A startled voice answered him at the other end of the line, “We don’t have boxes for two.”

“Isn’t this the ——­ Theater?” he called crossly.

“Why, no,” was the answer, “this is an undertaking shop.”

He canceled his order for a “box for two.”

A good Samaritan, passing an apartment house in the small hours of the morning, noticed a man leaning limply against the doorway.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, “Drunk?”

“Yep.”

“Do you live in this house?”

“Yep.”

“Do you want me to help you upstairs?”

“Yep.”

With much difficulty he half dragged, half carried the drooping figure up the stairway to the second floor.

“What floor do you live on?” he asked.  “Is this it?”

“Yep.”

Rather than face an irate wife who might, perhaps, take him for a companion more at fault than her spouse, he opened the first door he came to and pushed the limp figure in.

The good Samaritan groped his way downstairs again.  As he was passing through the vestibule he was able to make out the dim outlines of another man, apparently in worse condition than the first one.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.  “Are you drunk, too?”

“Yep,” was the feeble reply.

“Do you live in this house, too?”

“Yep.”

“Shall I help you upstairs?”

“Yep.”

The good Samaritan pushed, pulled, and carried him to the second floor, where this man also said he lived.  He opened the same door and pushed him in.

As he reached the front door he discerned the shadow of a third man, evidently worse off than either of the other two.  He was about to approach him when the object of his solicitude lurched out into the street and threw himself into the arms of a passing policeman.

“For Heaven’s sake, off’cer,” he gasped, “protect me from that man.  He’s done nothin’ all night long but carry me upstairs ‘n throw me down th’ elevator shaf.”

  There was a young man from the city,
  Who met what he thought was a kitty;
    He gave it a pat,
    And said, “Nice little cat!”
  And they buried his clothes out of pity.

BOASTING

Maybe the man who boasts that he doesn’t owe a dollar in the world couldn’t if he tried.