MOTHER (after visitor had gone)—­“Bobby, what on earth made you stick out your tongue at our pastor?  Oh, dear!...”

BOBBY—­“Why, muvver, I just showed it to him.  He said, ’Littul man, how do you feel?’—­and I thort he was a doctor!”

An Irishman coming out of ether in the ward after an operation, exclaimed audibly:  “Thank God!  That’s over!” “Don’t be too sure,” said the man in the next bed, “they left a sponge in me and had to cut me open again.”  And the patient on the other side said, “Why they had to open me, too, to find one of their instruments.”  Just then the surgeon who had operated on the Irishman, stuck his head in the door and yelled, “Has anybody seen my hat!” Pat fainted.

Dr. A., physician at Newcastle, being summoned to a vestry, in order to reprimand the sexton for drunkenness, dwelt so long on the sexton’s misconduct as to draw from him this expression:  “Sir, I thought you would have been the last man alive to appear against me, as I have covered so many blunders of yours!”

DOCTOR (to patient)—­“You’ve had a pretty close call.  It’s only your strong constitution that pulled you through.”

PATIENT—­“Well, doctor, remember that when you make out your bill.”

A quack doctor was holding forth about his “medicines” to a rural audience.

“Yes, gentlemen,” he said, “I have sold these pills for over twenty-five years and never heard a word of complaint.  Now, what does that prove?”

From a voice in the crowd came:  “That dead men tell no tales.”

See also Bills; Remedies.

DOGS

My Dog

He wastes no time in idle talk. 
His vows of friendship are unspoken. 
As in familiar ways we walk,
Our musings by no word are broken. 
Or if, perchance, I voice some phrase
(More light and garrulous am I),
He answers with a speaking gaze,
Half-sister to a song or sigh.

  Sweet is the silence of a friend
    Whose mood so merges with my own,
  And sad would be the journey’s end
    Were I to pass this way alone. 
  Perhaps the shadows and the dust
    Some faint reply would frame for me
  Should I demand if Time were just
    To merge all waters with the sea.

  Thus pondering, a sigh I heave
    That thoughts my naked soul should flay. 
  Yet dreams of death he bids me leave,
    And glory in the living day. 
  Before me in the path he leaps. 
    He reads my mood, and bids me, “Come! 
  Sweet Summer’s in the wooded deeps!”
    And yet men say that he is dumb.

  —­Jack Burroughs.

Frederick was sitting on the curb, crying, when Billy came along and asked him what was the matter.

“Oh, I feel so bad ’cause Major’s dead—­my nice old collie!” sobbed Frederick.

“Shucks!” said Billy.  “My grandmother’s been dead a week, and you don’t catch me crying.”