“Bill,” said the superintendent—­and the words quivered with energy—­“I want this job rushed.  Every hour’s delay costs the company money.  Have you got the engineer’s plans for the new bridge?”

“I don’t know,” said the bridge-builder, “whether the engineer has the picture drawed yet or not, but the bridge is up and the trains is passin’ over it.”—­Harper’s.

“Better consider my course in efficiency training.  I can show you how to earn more money than you are getting.”

“I do that now.”

The boy was very small and the load he was pushing in the wheelbarrow was very, very big.

A benevolent old gentleman, putting down his bundles, lent him a helping hand.

“Really, my boy,” he puffed, “I don’t see how you manage to get that barrow up the gutters alone.”

“I don’t,” replied the appreciative kid.  “Dere’s always some jay a-standin’ round as takes it up for me.”—­Puck.

MRS. CASEY—­“Me sister writes me that every bottle in that box we sent her was broken.  Are you sure yez printed ‘This side up, with care’ on it!”

CASEY—­“Oi am.  An’ for fear they shouldn’t see it on the top, Oi printed it on the bottom, as well.”

COW—­“Can you beat it?  There’s so much system around here now that they file me in the barn under the letter C.”

HEN—­“Yes, I have my troubles with efficiency too.  They’ve put a rubber stamp in my nest so I can date my eggs two weeks ahead.”

EGOTISM

SMITH—­“You seldom see such beautiful golf as that man plays.  His drives were corking, his approaches superb and he never missed a putt.”

JONES—­“How much were you beaten by?”

SMITH—­“Why, I won!”

"I” and “Myself” and “Me"

When on myself I sometimes turn
My gaze, with introspection stern,
Three persons there I seem to see,
“I” and “Myself,” they are, and “Me.”

“I” stands alone with confidence,
Pugnacious, quick to take offense,
Assertive, masterful and strong,
Forever right and never wrong,
As Lewis Carroll once avowed,
“I” is extremely “stiff and proud.”

  “Myself” is rather different,
  A chap who is less confident,
  Yet full conceited—­selfish, too,
  And steeped in ego, through and through. 
  Though others oft “Myself” decry,
  He’s very, very dear to “I.”

  Unlike the other two is “Me”;
  A timid little fellow, he;
  Self-conscious, given oft to erring,
  My scorn and pity both incurring. 
  Still, though he’s shy as he can be,
  While few like “I,” a lot like “Me.”

—­Eliot Harlow Robinson.

Many a man thinks he is anxious to please others, when the truth is that he is only anxious that others be pleased with what he does.

I And Me