BROKER (with a shrug)—­“Yes, he’s gone at last.”

MERCHANT (not appreciating the shrug)—­“Well, sir, he was a good man.”

BROKER (with shrug more pronounced)—­“I don’t know about that.”

MERCHANT (energetically)—­“He was a good man, sir.  If any man has gone to heaven, General Jackson has gone to heaven.”

BROKER (doggedly)—­“I don’t know about that.”

MERCHANT—­“Well, sir, I tell you that if Andrew Jackson had made up his mind to go to heaven, you may depend upon it he’s there.”

DIAGNOSIS

An epileptic dropped in a fit on the streets of Boston not long ago, and was taken to a hospital.  Upon removing his coat there was found pinned to his waistcoat a slip of paper on which was written: 

“This is to inform the house-surgeon that this is just a case of plain fit:  not appendicitis.  My appendix has already been removed twice.”

DIET

Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow ye diet.—­William Gilmore Beymer.

  There was a young lady named Perkins,
  Who had a great fondness for gherkins;
    She went to a tea
    And ate twenty-three,
  Which pickled her internal workin’s.

“Mother,” asked the little one, on the occasion of a number of guests being present at dinner, “will the dessert hurt me, or is there enough to go round?”

The doctor told him he needed carbohydrates, proteids, and above all, something nitrogenous.  The doctor mentioned a long list of foods for him to eat.  He staggered out and wabbled into a Penn avenue restaurant.

“How about beefsteak?” he asked the waiter.  “Is that nitrogenous?”

The waiter didn’t know.

“Are fried potatoes rich in carbohydrates or not?”

The waiter couldn’t say.

“Well, I’ll fix it,” declared the poor man in despair.  “Bring me a large plate of hash.”

   A Colonel, who used to assert
   That naught his digestion could hurt,
     Was forced to admit
     That his weak point was hit
   When they gave him hot shot for dessert.

To abstain that we may enjoy is the epicurianism of reason.—­Rousseau.

They are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing.—­Shakespeare.

DILEMMAS

A story that has done service in political campaigns to illustrate supposed dilemmas of the opposition will likely be revived in every political “heated term.”

Away back, when herds of buffalo grazed along the foothills of the western mountains, two hardy prospectors fell in with a bull bison that seemed to have been separated from his kind and run amuck.  One of the prospectors took to the branches of a tree and the other dived into a cave.  The buffalo bellowed at the entrance to the cavern and then turned toward the tree.  Out came the man from the cave, and the buffalo took after him again.  The man made another dive for the hole.  After this had been repeated several times, the man in the tree called to his comrade, who was trembling at the mouth of the cavern: