I am what the after-dinner speaker says he feels because he came unprepared, and what the listeners show they feel without saying it.

I come to you when youth leaves you.

I am yours when that sarcastic person drops a remark which you cannot fittingly answer, and I am doubled when you are later alone and think of just the brilliant retort you should have given.

I am what overwhelms you when you suffer an overwhelming financial loss.

I am the vainest of the vain.

I am regret!

MRS. EXE—­“Here’s an invitation from Mrs. Boreleigh to one of her tiresome dinners.  I hate them.”

EXE—­“Why not plead that you have a previous engagement?”

MRS. EXE—­“That would be a lie.  Edith dear, write Mrs. Boreleigh that we accept with pleasure.”

RELATIVES

“Have you any relatives living in the country?”

“No; whenever we take a vacation we have to pay our own board.”

“Old Millyuns says that since he made his pile of money he feels like a neutral nation.”

“Why is that?”

“Because he has so many diplomatic relations.”—­Judge.

RELIGIONS

Rowland Hill, when some persons entered his chapel to avoid the rain that was falling, quietly observed, “Many persons are to be blamed for making their religion a cloak, but I do not think those are much better who make it an umbrella.”

A man in the threadbare coat and a week’s beard came out of a downtown mission where he had signed the pledge and joined the church, only to be nabbed for theft a half hour later.

“Why did you make off with the pocketbook you saw this lady drop in the street?” demanded the Judge in court.

“It’s all the minister’s fault,” declared the thief in deprecation.  “I went to him discouraged and out of money, and he told me I must learn to take things as I found them.”

Dr. Lyman P. Powell gives some examples of the lengths to which petty bitterness between sects will sometimes carry men.  “A visitor in a certain town which had four churches and adequately supported none, asked a pillar of one poor dying church, ’How’s your church getting on?’ ‘Not very well,’ was the reply, ’but, thank the Lord, the others are not doing any better.’”

REMEDIES

A Chinaman was asked if there were good doctors in China.

“Good doctors!” he exclaimed, “China have best doctors in world.  Hang Chang one good doctor; he great; save life, to me.”

“You don’t say so!  How was that?”

“Me velly bad,” he said.  “Me callee Doctor Han Kon.  Give some medicine.  Get velly, velly ill.  Me callee Doctor San Sing.  Give more medicine.  Me glow worse—­go die.  Blimebly callee Doctor Hang Chang.  He got no time; no come.  Save life.”