The foregoing quotation has been introduced chiefly to illustrate the first and simplest form of anecdote—­the single sentence embodying a pungent saying.

Another simple form is that which conveys its meaning without need of “application,” as the old preachers used to say.  George Ade has quoted this one as the best joke he ever heard: 

Two solemn-looking gentlemen were riding together in a railway carriage.  One gentleman said to the other:  “Is your wife entertaining this summer?” Whereupon the other gentleman replied:  “Not very.”

Other anecdotes need harnessing to the particular truth the speaker wishes to carry along in his talk.  Sometimes the application is made before the story is told and the audience is prepared to make the comparison, point by point, as the illustration is told.  Henry W. Grady used this method in one of the anecdotes he told while delivering his great extemporaneous address, “The New South.”

Age does not endow all things with strength and virtue, nor are all new things to be despised.  The shoemaker who put over his door, “John Smith’s shop, founded 1760,” was more than matched by his young rival across the street who hung out this sign:  “Bill Jones.  Established 1886.  No old stock kept in this shop.”

In two anecdotes, told also in “The New South,” Mr. Grady illustrated another way of enforcing the application:  in both instances he split the idea he wished to drive home, bringing in part before and part after the recital of the story.  The fact that the speaker misquoted the words of Genesis in which the Ark is described did not seem to detract from the burlesque humor of the story.

I bespeak the utmost stretch of your courtesy tonight.  I am not troubled about those from whom I come.  You remember the man whose wife sent him to a neighbor with a pitcher of milk, who, tripping on the top step, fell, with such casual interruptions as the landings afforded, into the basement, and, while picking himself up, had the pleasure of hearing his wife call out: 

    “John, did you break the pitcher?

    “No, I didn’t,” said John, “but I be dinged if I don’t.”

So, while those who call to me from behind may inspire me with energy, if not with courage, I ask an indulgent hearing from you.  I beg that you will bring your full faith in American fairness and frankness to judgment upon what I shall say.  There was an old preacher once who told some boys of the Bible lesson he was going to read in the morning.  The boys, finding the place, glued together the connecting pages.  The next morning he read on the bottom of one page:  “When Noah was one hundred and twenty years old he took unto himself a wife, who was”—­then turning the page—­“one hundred and forty cubits long, forty cubits wide, built of gopher wood, and covered with pitch inside and out.”  He was naturally puzzled at this.