The stolid man shook his head.

“Don’t know him from Adam,” he said.  “He came around to my place and told me his mother wanted her winder fixed.  You’re his mother, aren’t you?”

And the woman shook her head also.—­Ray Trum Nathan.

See also Egotism; Employers and employees; Office boys.

BREAKFAST FOODS

Pharaoh had just dreamed of the seven full and the seven blasted ears of corn.

“You are going to invent a new kind of breakfast food,” interpreted Joseph.—­Judge.

BREATH

One day a teacher was having a first-grade class in physiology.  She asked them if they knew that there was a burning fire in the body all of the time.  One little girl spoke up and said: 

“Yes’m, when it is a cold day I can see the smoke.”

Said the bibulous gentleman who had been reading birth and death statistics:  “Do you know, James, every time I breathe a man dies?”

“Then,” said James, “why don’t you chew cloves?”

BREVITY

An after-dinner speaker was called on to speak on “The Antiquity of the Microbe.”  He arose and said, “Adam had ’em,” and then sat down.

A negro servant, on being ordered to announce visitors to a dinner party, was directed to call out in a loud, distinct voice their names.  The first to arrive was the Fitzgerald family, numbering eight persons.  The negro announced Major Fitzgerald, Miss Fitzgerald, Master Fitzgerald, and so on.

This so annoyed the master that he went to the negro and said, “Don’t announce each person like that; say something shorter.”

The next to arrive were Mr. and Mrs. Penny and their daughter.  The negro solemnly opened the door and called out, “Thrupence!”

Dr. Abernethy, the famous Scotch surgeon, was a man of few words, but he once met his match—­in a woman.  She called at his office in Edinburgh, one day, with a hand badly inflamed and swollen.  The following dialogue, opened by the doctor, took place.

“Burn?”

“Bruise.”

“Poultice.”

The next day the woman called, and the dialogue was as follows: 

“Better?”

“Worse.”

“More poultice.”

Two days later the woman made another call.

“Better?”

“Well.  Fee?”

“Nothing.  Most sensible woman I ever saw.”

BRIBERY

A judge, disgusted with a jury that seemed unable to reach an agreement in a perfectly evident case, rose and said, “I discharge this jury.”

One sensitive talesman, indignant at what he considered a rebuke, obstinately faced the judge.

“You can’t discharge me,” he said in tones of one standing upon his rights.