“Oh! just as you wish,” was the reply; “as a matter of fact, some people call me an old idiot.”

“Indeed,” she said, sweetly, “but then, they are people that know you.”

The hostess had trouble in getting Mr. Harper to sing.  After the song had been given, she came up with a smiling face to her guest, and made the ambiguous remark: 

“Now, Mr. Harper, you must never tell me again that you can not sing—­I know now!”

THE HOST—­“It’s beginning to rain; you’d better stay to dinner.”

THE GUEST—­“Oh, thanks very much; but it’s not bad enough for that.”

TALKERS

  Words are like leaves, and where they most abound,
  Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.

  —­Pope.

“I have just heard of a woman who went to a hotel unaccompanied and discovered that the acoustic properties of her room were such that every time she spoke aloud there was an echo.  She then made a bold attempt to get in a last word, and in so doing talked herself to death.”

“A whole lot o’ de talk dat goes ‘round,” said Uncle Eben, “ain’ no mo’ real help in movin’ forward dan de squeak in an axle.”

The school-teacher had punished Tommy so often for talking during school hours, and the punishment had been apparently without effect, that, as a last resort, she decided to notify Tommy’s father of his son’s fault.  So, following the deportment word in his next report were these words, “Tommy talks a great deal.”

In due time the report was returned with these words after the father’s signature, “You ought to hear his mother.”

Just Suppose

If all that we say
In a single day,
With never a word left out,
Were printed each night
In clear black and white,
’Twould prove queer reading, no doubt.

And then just suppose
Ere one’s eyes he could close. 
He must read the day’s record through,
Then wouldn’t one sigh,
And wouldn’t he try
A great deal less talking to do?

        And I more than half think
        That many a kink
  Would be smoother in life’s tangled thread,
        If one-half that we say
        In a single day
  Were left forever unsaid.

Mrs. Jenkins, a regular visitor in the doctor’s consulting room, started on the long story of her troubles.  The doctor endured it patiently and gave her another bottle.  At last she started out, and the doctor was congratulating himself, when she stopped and exclaimed:  “Why, doctor, you didn’t look to see if my tongue was coated.”

“I know it isn’t,” wearily replied the medical man.  “You don’t find grass on a race track.”

Another one of our patrons finds her husband a trifle too studious.  She called for a volume of Blackstone he had ordered and when she saw the ominous size of the volume sighed deeply, “That means I’ll have to go out nights.  He says I talk too much!”