“Well, Mose, one is a thinning scheme and the other is a skinning theme.”

CONVERSATION

“My dog understands every word I say.”

“Um.”

“Do you doubt it?”

“No, I do not doubt the brute’s intelligence.  The scant attention he bestows upon your conversation would indicate that he understands it perfectly.”

THE TALL AND AGGRESSIVE ONE—­“Excuse me, but I’m in a hurry!  You’ve had that phone twenty minutes and not said a word!”

THE SHORT AND MEEK ONE—­“Sir, I’m talking to my wife.”—­Puck.

HUS (during a quarrel)—­“You talk like an idiot.”

WIFE—­“I’ve got to talk so you can understand me.”

Irving Bacheller, it appears, was on a tramping tour through New England.  He discovered a chin-bearded patriarch on a roadside rock.

“Fine corn,” said Mr. Bacheller, tentatively, using a hillside filled with straggling stalks as a means of breaking the conversational ice.

“Best in Massachusetts,” said the sitter.

“How do you plow that field?” asked Mr. Bacheller.  “It is so very steep.”

“Don’t plow it,” said the sitter.  “When the spring thaws come, the rocks rolling down hill tear it up so that we can plant corn.”

“And how do you plant it?” asked Mr. Bacheller.  The sitter said that he didn’t plant it, really.  He stood in his back door and shot the seed in with a shotgun.

“Is that the truth?” asked Bacheller.

“H—­ll no,” said the sitter, disgusted.  “That’s conversation.”

Conversation is the laboratory and workshop of the student.—­Emerson.

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years’ study of books.—­Longfellow.

COOKERY

“John, John,” whispered an alarmed wife, poking her sleeping husband in the ribs.  “Wake up, John; there are burglars in the pantry and they’re eating all my pies.”

“Well, what do we care,” mumbled John, rolling over, “so long as they don’t die in the house?”

“This is certainly a modern cook-book in every way.”

“How so?”

“It says:  ’After mixing your bread, you can watch two reels at the movies before putting it in the oven.’”—­Puck.

There was recently presented to a newly-married young woman in Baltimore such a unique domestic proposition that she felt called upon to seek expert advice from another woman, whom she knew to possess considerable experience in the cooking line.

“Mrs. Jones,” said the first mentioned young woman, as she breathlessly entered the apartment of the latter, “I’m sorry to trouble you, but I must have your advice.”

“What is the trouble, my dear?”

“Why, I’ve just had a ’phone message from Harry, saying that he is going out this afternoon to shoot clay pigeons.  Now, he’s bound to bring a lot home, and I haven’t the remotest idea how to cook them.  Won’t you please tell me?”—­Taylor Edwards.