LANDLADY—­“Just when are you going to pay your arrears of room rent?”

HARD-UP AUTHOR—­“As soon as I receive the check which the publisher will send me if he accepts the novel I am about to commence when I have found a suitable subject and the necessary inspiration.”

An optimist is anybody who thinks he can write a new humorous definition of an optimist or a pessimist.  A pessimist is the same person after he has made a serious attempt to do so.

An optimist looks at an oyster and expects a pearl.  A pessimist looks at an oyster and expects ptomaine poisoning.

THE OPTIMIST (who has just been struck by a passing motor-car)—­“Glory be!  If this isn’t a piece o’ luck!  Sure, ’tis the docther himself that’s in ut.”—­Punch.

“What’s an optimist?”

“An optimist is a person who’ll go into a restaurant without a cent in his pocket and figure on paying for the meal with the pearl he hopes to find in the oyster.”

“An optimist is a man who cherishes vain hopes, and a pessimist a man who nurses vain regrets.”

“And what is a man who does both?”

“Oh, he’s just a plain ordinary human.”

ORIGINALITY

A certain little girl was discovered by her mother engaged in a spirited encounter with a small friend who had got considerably worsted in the engagement.

“Don’t you know, dear,” said the mother, “that it is very wicked to behave so?  It was Satan that put it into your head to pull Elsie’s hair.”

“Well, perhaps it was,” the child admitted, “but kicking her shins was entirely my own idea.”

OSTRICH

  The ostrich is a foolish bird,
    With scarcely any mind,
  He often runs away so fast,
    He leaves himself behind.

  And when he gets there, has to stand
    And wait around till night,
  Without a single thing to do,
    Until he comes in sight.

  —­Mary Wilkins Freeman.

OUIJA BOARD

“Do you think Mrs. Spinnix cheated at the ouija board?”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say she cheated,” replied Miss Cayenne, “But I couldn’t help noticing that it mispelled some of its words the same way she does.”

Harry came home about five o’clock and his face and hands were very clean and his hair stood on end.  His mother took one look and exclaimed:  “Harry, I told you not to go swimmin’ with Bob Ross.”

“How do you know that I have been swimmin’?” asked Harry.

“Never mind who told me, but I know that you have been swimmin’,” replied his mother.

After a while Harry said:  “I’ll just bet you anything that Mrs. Ross was over here this afternoon, and you and Mrs. Ross had that ouija board out.”—­Judge.

Breathlessly the spiritualistically inclined lady bent over the ouija spelling out the communications from her departed spouse.