“Now, I tell ye, Jedge, it didn’t amount to nuthn’.  The fust I knowed about it was when Bill Saunder called Tom Smith a liar, en Tom knocked him down with a stick o’ wood.  One o’ Bill’s friends then cut Tom with a knife, slicin’ a big chunk out o’ him.  Then Sam Jones, who was a friend of Tom’s, shot the other feller and two more shot him, en three or four others got cut right smart by somebody.  That nachly caused some excitement, Jedge, en then they commenced fightin’.”

The Wrong Kind of a Baby

In a certain home where the stork recently visited there is a six-year-old son of inquiring mind.  When he was first taken in to see the new arrival he exclaimed: 

“Oh, mamma, it hasn’t any teeth!  And no hair!” Then, clasping his hands in despair, he cried:  “Somebody has done us!  It’s an old baby.”

A Poser for the Salesman

“It’s not so much a durable article that I require, sir,” said Miss Simpkins.  “I want something dainty, you know; something coy, and at the same time just a wee bit saucy—­that might look well for evening wear.”

Not in the Army, After All

A Methodist negro exhorter shouted:  “Come up en jine de army ob de Lohd.”

“Ise done jined,” replied one of the congregation.

“Whar’d yoh jine?” asked the exhorter.

“In de Baptis’ Chu’ch.”

“Why, chile,” said the exhorter, “yoh ain’t in the army; yoh’s in de navy.”

[Transcriber’s Note:  The copy of this book I was working from was missing pages 71-74 inclusive.]

Her Literary Loves

A talented young professor who was dining one evening at the home of a college president became very much interested in the very pretty girl seated at his left.  Conversation was somewhat fitful.  Finally he decided to guide it into literary channels, where he was more at home, and, turning to his companion, asked;

“Are you fond of literature?”

“Passionately,” she replied.  “I love books dearly.”

“Then you must admire Sir Walter Scott,” he exclaimed with sudden animation.  “Is not his ‘Lady of the Lake’ exquisite in its flowing grace and poetic imagery?  Is it not——­”

“It is perfectly lovely,” she assented, clasping her hands in ecstasy.  “I suppose I have read it a dozen times.”

“And Scott’s ’Marmion/” he continued, “with its rugged simplicity and marvelous description—­one can almost smell the heather on the heath while perusing its splendid pages.”

“It is perfectly grand,” she murmured.

“And Scott’s ‘Peveril of the Peak’ and his noble ’Bride of Lammermoor’—­where in the English language will you find anything more heroic than his grand auld Scottish characters and his graphic, forceful pictures of feudal times and customs?  You like them, I am sure.”

“I just dote upon them,” she replied.

“And Scott’s Emulsion,” he continued hastily, for a faint suspicion was beginning to dawn upon him.