“Tell him you’self,” said Amanda.  “He’s a puffect stranger to me.”

“Jack and I have parted forever.”

“Good gracious!  What does that mean?”

“Means that I’ll get a five-pound box of candy in about an hour.”

  Here’s to solitaire with a partner,
  The only game in which one pair beats three of a kind.

See also Love; Proposals.

COWARDS

Mrs. Hicks was telling some ladies about the burglar scare in her house the night before.

“Yes,” she said, “I heard a noise and got up, and there, from under the bed, I saw a man’s legs sticking out.”

“Mercy!” exclaimed a woman.  “The burglar’s legs?”

“No, my dear; my husband’s legs.  He heard the noise, too.”

MRS. PECK—­“Henry, what would you do if burglars broke into our house some night?”

MR. PECK (valiantly)—­“Humph!  I should keep perfectly cool, my dear.”

And when, a few nights later, burglars did break in, Henry kept his promise:  he hid in the ice-box.

Johnny hasn’t been to school long, but he already holds some peculiar views regarding the administration of his particular room.

The other day he came home with a singularly morose look on his usually smiling face.

“Why, Johnny,” said his mother, “what’s the matter?”

“I ain’t going to that old school no more,” he fiercely announced.

“Why, Johnny,” said his mother reproachfully, “you mustn’t talk like that.  What’s wrong with the school?”

“I ain’t goin’ there no more,” Johnny replied; “an” it’s because all th’ boys in my room is blamed old cowards!”

“Why, Johnny, Johnny!”

“Yes, they are.  There was a boy whisperin’ this mornin’, an’ teacher saw him an’ bumped his head on th’ desk ever an’ ever so many times.  An’ those big cowards sat there an’ didn’t say quit nor nothin’.  They let that old teacher bang th’ head off th’ poor little boy, an’ they just sat there an’ seen her do it!”

“And what did you do, Johnny?”

“I didn’t do nothin’—­I was the boy!”—­Cleveland Plain Dealer.

A negro came running down the lane as though the Old Boy were after him.

“What are you running for, Mose?” called the colonel from the barn.

“I ain’t a-runnin’ fo’,” shouted back Mose.  “I’se a-runnin’ from!”

COWS

Little Willie, being a city boy, had never seen a cow.  While on a visit to his grandmother he walked out across the fields with his cousin John.  A cow was grazing there, and Willie’s curiosity was greatly excited.

“Oh, Cousin John, what is that?” he asked.

“Why, that is only a cow,” John replied.

“And what are those things on her head?”

“Horns,” answered John.

Before they had gone far the cow mooed long and loud.