“I said to her, ’I am very glad to have you like my hair, but I am sorry to hear you use the word “ain’t"!’”—­E.  R. Bickford.

NAN—­“That young man from Boston is an interesting talker, so far as you can understand what he says; but what a queer dialect he uses.”

FAN—­“That isn’t dialect; it’s vocabulary.  Can’t you tell the difference?”

A Bostonian died, and when he arrived at St. Peter’s gate he was asked the usual questions: 

“What is your name, and where are you from?”

The answer was, “Mr. So-and-So, from Boston.”

“You may come in,” said Peter, “but I know you won’t like it.”

  There was a young lady from Boston,
  A two-horned dilemma was tossed on,
    As to which was the best,
    To be rich in the west
  Or poor and peculiar in Boston.

BOXING

John L. Sullivan was asked why he had never taken to giving boxing lessons.

“Well, son, I tried it once,” replied Mr. Sullivan.  “A husky young man took one lesson from me and went home a little the worse for wear.  When he came around for his second lesson he said:  ’Mr Sullivan, it was my idea to learn enough about boxing from you to be able to lick a certain young gentleman what I’ve got it in for.  But I’ve changed my mind,’ says he.  ’If it’s all the same to you, Mr. Sullivan, I’ll send this young gentleman down here to take the rest of my lessons for me.’”

BOYS

A certain island in the West Indies is liable to the periodical advent of earthquakes.  One year before the season of these terrestrial disturbances, Mr. X., who lived in the danger zone, sent his two sons to the home of a brother in England, to secure them from the impending havoc.

Evidently the quiet of the staid English household was disturbed by the irruption of the two West Indians, for the returning mail steamer carried a message to Mr. X., brief but emphatic: 

“Take back your boys; send me the earthquake.”

Aunt Eliza came up the walk and said to her small nephew:  “Good morning, Willie.  Is your mother in?”

“Sure she’s in,” replied Willie truculently.  “D’you s’pose I’d be workin’ in the garden on Saturday morning if she wasn’t?”

An iron hoop bounded through the area railings of a suburban house and played havoc with the kitchen window.  The woman waited, anger in her eyes, for the appearance of the hoop’s owner.  Presently he came.

“Please, I’ve broken your window,” he said, “and here’s Father to mend it.”

And, sure enough, he was followed by a stolid-looking workman, who at once started to work, while the small boy took his hoop and ran off.

“That’ll be four bits, ma’am,” announced the glazier when the window was whole once more.

“Four bits!” gasped the woman.  “But your little boy broke it—­the little fellow with the hoop, you know.  You’re his father, aren’t you?”