“Oh, my dear,” replied her husband, “they make slippers!”

The usual large crowd was gathered at the New York end of the Brooklyn Bridge waiting for trolley-cars.  An elderly lady, red in the face, flustered and fussy, dug her elbows into convenient ribs irrespective of owners.

A fat man on her left was the recipient of a particularly vicious jab. 
She yelled at him, “Say!”

He winced slightly and moved to one side.

She, too, sidestepped and thumped him vigorously on the back.

“Say!” she persisted, “does it make any difference which of these cars I take to Greenwood Cemetery?”

“Not to me, madam,” he answered, slipping through an opening in the crowd.

AUSTRALIAN SOLDIER (to American)—­“You Yanks think you’ve done a lot, but you forget we Australians have been at the game for four years.”

“Well, what have you done, anyway?”

“Done?  We’ve been at Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, the plains of Bethlehem, and—­”

“The plains of Bethlehem?”

“Yes; I slept a week there myself.”

“Well, I guess that was a busy week for the shepherds watching their flocks!”

Once in a while the choirs do get back at the minister, as, for example, in a Connecticut church the other Sunday morning.  The minister announced, just after the choir had sung its anthem, as his text, “Now when the uproar had ceased.”  But the singers bided their time patiently, and when the sermon was over, rose and rendered in most melodious fashion another anthem beginning, “Now it is high time to awake after sleep.”

REPORTING

A noted artist was recently visited by an interviewer, who fired at him from a question-sheet questions such as these: 

“Were your parents artistic?  Which of your paintings do you consider your best work?  When, where, and why did you paint it?  How much did it bring you in?  Who is your favorite dead master?  Favorite living master?  What is your income from art?  How much—­”

But at this point the artist seized the interviewer by the arm and began in his turn: 

“Just a moment, please.  What is your name, age, and salary?  Is journalism with you a life-work or merely a means to a higher literary end?  How do you like your editor?  State his faults and salary.  What was the best interview you ever wrote?  Give a brief summary of same.  Have you ever been fired?  How does it feel?  Where—­”

But here the interviewer, jerking his arm from the painter’s grasp, fled from the studio, and the artist cheerfully resumed his work.

A “cub” reporter on a New York newspaper was sent to Paterson to write the story of the murder by thieves, of a rich manufacturer.  He spread himself on the details and naively concluded his account with this sentence: 

“Fortunately for the deceased, he had deposited all of his money in the bank the day before, so he lost practically nothing but his life.”—­Harper’s.