“‘Can you direct me to the bank?’

“He looked at me blankly for a second, then swinging the register around, he glanced down swiftly, caught the ‘Louisville’ after my name, and an expression of complete understanding lighting up his countenance, he said: 

“’Certainly, sir.  You will find the bar right through that door at the left.’”

See also Drunkards; Good fellowship; Temperance; Wine.

DROUGHTS

Governor Glasscock of West Virginia, while traveling through Arizona, noticed the dry, dusty appearance of the country.

“Doesn’t it ever rain around here?” he asked one of the natives.

“Rain?” The native spat.  “Rain?  Why say pardner, there’s bullfrogs in this yere town over five years old that hain’t learned to swim yet!”

DRUNKARDS

  Sing a song of sick gents,
  Pockets full of rye,
  Four and twenty highballs,
  We wish that we might die.

Two booze-fiends were ambling homeward at an early hour, after being out nearly all night.

“Don’t your wife miss you on these occasions?” asked one.

“Not often,” replied the other; “she throws pretty straight.”

“Where’s old Four-Fingered Pete?” asked Alkali Ike.  “I ain’t seen him around here since I got back.”

“Pete?” said the bartender.  “Oh, he went up to Hyena Tongue and got jagged.  Went up to a hotel winder, stuck his head in and hollered ‘Fire!’ and everybody did.”

The Irish talent for repartee has an amusing illustration in Lord Rossmore’s recent book “Things I Can Tell.”  While acting as magistrate at an Irish village, Lord Rossmore said to an old offender brought before him:  “You here again?” “Yes, your honor.”  “What’s brought you here?” “Two policemen, your honor.”  “Come, come, I know that—­drunk again, I suppose?” “Yes, your honor, both of them.”

The colonel came down to breakfast New Year’s morning with a bandaged hand.

“Why, colonel, what’s the matter?” they asked.

“Confound it all!” the colonel answered, “we had a little party last night, and one of the younger men got intoxicated and stepped on my hand.”

MAGISTRATE—­“And what was the prisoner doing?”

CONSTABLE—­“E were ‘avin’ a very ’eated argument with a cab driver, yer worship.”

MAGISTRATE—­“But that doesn’t prove he was drunk.”

CONSTABLE—­“Ah, but there worn’t no cab driver there, yer worship.”

A Scotch minister and his servant, who were coming home from a wedding, began to consider the state into which their potations at the wedding feast had left them.

“Sandy,” said the minister, “just stop a minute here till I go ahead.  Maybe I don’t walk very steady and the good wife might remark something not just right.”

He walked ahead of the servant for a short distance and then asked: