BUTLER—­“Well, I saw him buying an enlarging device for his camera.”

A returned vacationist tells us that he was fishing in a pond one day when a country boy who had been watching him from a distance approached him and asked.  “How many fish yer got, mister?”

“None yet,” he was told.

“Well, yer ain’t doin’ so bad,” said the youngster.  “I know a feller what fished here for two weeks an’ he didn’t get any more than you got in half an hour.”

Jock MacTavish and two English friends went out on the loch on a fishing-trip, and it was agreed that the first man to catch a fish should later stand treat at the inn.  As MacTavish was known to be the best fisherman thereabouts, his friends took considerable delight in assuring him that he had as good as lost already.

“An’, d’ye ken,” said Jock, in speaking of it afterward, “baith o’ them had a guid bite, an’ wis sae mean they wadna’ pu in.”

“Then you lost?” asked the listener.

“Oh, no.  I didna’ pit ony bait on my hook.”

FISHING

UNLUCKY FISHERMAN—­“Boy, will you sell that big string of fish you are carrying?”

BOY—­“No, but I’ll take yer pitcher holdin’ it fer fifty cents.”—­Judge.

Two small boys went fishing and while one of them was having good luck, the other didn’t even get a bite.  The unlucky lad silently began to make preparation for departure.  “Aw, wait a while,” urged the other.  “You might be lucky if you keep at it.”

“There ain’t no use,” was the disgusted reply, “my darned worm ain’t tryin’.”

“Some men,” said Uncle Eben, “goes fishin’ not so much foh de sake of de fish as foh de chance to loaf without bein’ noticed.”

FLATTERY

The man who is not injured by flattery is as hard to find as the one who is improved by criticism.

Flattery is a sort of moral peroxide—­it turns many a woman’s head.

“Oi hate flattery,” said O’Brien the other day.  “Flattery makes ye think ye are betther than ye are, an’ no man livin’ can iver be that.”

THE CONVERSATIONALIST (to well-known author)—­“I’m so delighted to meet you!  It was only the other day I saw something of yours, about something or other, in some magazine.”

WILBUR (indicating a couple in the background)—­“Funny that such a stunning-looking woman should marry such a dub as that.”

FLATTE—­“Well, I don’t know.  No accounting for those things.  Now, you take your wife—­she’s a ripper.”—­Life.

The admiration which Bob felt for his Aunt Margaret included all her attributes.

“I don’t care much for plain teeth like mine, Aunt Margaret,” said Bob, one day, after a long silence, during which he had watched her in laughing conversation with his mother.  “I wish I had some copper-toed ones like yours.”