But on the fourth day Sam entered the village street, covered with mud and evidently worn with fatigue.
"Hi, dar, n.i.g.g.e.r!" one of the bystanders shouted. "Whar you-all been de las" foh days?"
And Sam answered simply: "Ah"s been comin" back."
G.o.d.
The little boy was found by his mother with pencil and paper, making a sketch. When asked what he was doing, he answered promptly, and with considerable pride: "I"m drawing a picture of G.o.d."
"But," gasped the shocked mother, "you cannot do that. No one has seen G.o.d. No one knows how G.o.d looks."
"Well," the little boy replied, complacently, "when I get through they will."
G.o.d"S WILL.
The clergyman was calling, when the youthful son and heir approached his mother proudly, and exhibited a dead rat. As she shrank in repugnance, he attempted to rea.s.sure her: "Oh, it"s dead all right, mama. We beat it and beat it and beat it, and it"s deader "n dead."
His eyes fell on the clergyman, and he felt that something more was due to that reverend presence.
So he continued in a tone of solemnity: "Yes, we beat it and beat it until-until G.o.d called it home!"
GOLF.
The eminent English Statesman Arbuthnot-Joyce plays golf so badly that he prefers a solitary round with only the caddy present. He had a new boy one day recently, and played as wretchedly as usual.
"I fancy I play the worst game in the world," he confessed to the caddy.
"Oh, I wouldn"t say that, sir," was the consoling response. "From what the boys were saying about another gentleman who plays here, he must be worse even than you are."
"What"s his name?" asked the statesman hopefully.
And the caddy replied: "Arbuthnot-Joyce."
GRACE.
The son and heir had just been confirmed. At the dinner table, following the church service, the father called on his son to say grace. The boy was greatly embarra.s.sed by the demand. Moreover, he was tired, not only from the excitement of the special service through which he had pa.s.sed, but also from walking to and from the church, four miles away, and, too, he was very hungry indeed and impatient to begin the meal. Despite his protest, however, the father insisted.
So, at last, the little man folded his hands with a pious air, closed his eyes tight, bent his head reverently, and spoke his prayer: "O Lord, have mercy on these victuals. Amen!"
The new clergyman in the country parish, during his visit to an old lady of his flock, inquired if she accepted the doctrine of Falling from Grace. The good woman nodded vigorously.
"Yes, sir," she declared with pious zeal, "I believe in it, and, praise the Lord! I practise it!"
GRAMMAR.
The pa.s.sing lady mistakenly supposed that the woman shouting from a window down the street was calling to the little girl minding baby brother close by on the curb.
"Your mother is calling you," she said kindly.
The little girl corrected the lady: "Her ain"t a-callin" we. Us don"t belong to she."
The teacher asked the little girl if she was going to the Maypole dance. "No, I ain"t going," was the reply.
The teacher corrected the child: "You must not say, "I ain"t going," you must say, "I am not going."" And she added to impress the point: "I am not going. He is not going. We are not going. You are not going. They are not going.
Now, dear, can you say all that?"
The little girl nodded and smiled brightly.
"Sure!" she replied. "They ain"t n.o.body going."
The witness, in answer to the lawyer"s question, said: "Them hain"t the boots what was stole."
The judge rebuked the witness sternly: "Speak grammatic, young man-speak grammatic! You shouldn"t ought to say, "them boots what was stole," you should ought to say, "them boots as was stealed.""
GRa.s.s.
The auctioneer, offering the pasture lot for sale, waved his hand enthusiastically, pointed toward the rich expanse of herbage, and shouted: "Now, then, how much am I offered for this field? Jest look at that gra.s.s, gentlemen. That"s exactly the sort of gra.s.s Nebuchadnezzar would have given two hundred dollars an acre for."
GREED.
An eminent doctor successfully attended a sick child. A few days later, the grateful mother called on the physician. After expressing her realization of the fact that his services had been of a sort that could not be fully paid for, she continued: "But I hope you will accept as a token from me this purse which I myself have embroidered."
The physician replied very coldly to the effect that the fees of the physician must be paid in money, not merely in grat.i.tude, and he added: "Presents maintain friendship: they do not maintain a family."
"What is your fee?" the woman inquired.
"Two hundred dollars," was the answer.
The woman opened the purse, and took from it five $100 bills. She put back three, handed two to the discomfited physician, then took her departure.
GRIEF.
At the wake, the bereaved husband displayed all the evidences of frantic grief. He cried aloud heart- rendingly, and tore his hair. The other mourners had to restrain him from leaping into the open coffin.
The next day, a friend who had been at the wake encountered the widower on the street and spoke sympathetically of the great woe displayed by the man.
"Did you go to the cemetery for the burying?" the stricken husband inquired anxiously, and when he was answered in the negative, continued proudly: "It"s a pity ye weren"t there. Ye ought to have seen the way I cut up."
The old woman in indigent circ.u.mstances was explaining to a visitor, who found her at breakfast, a long category of trials and tribulations.
"And," she concluded, "this very morning, I woke up at four o"clock, and cried and cried till breakfast time, and as soon as I finish my tea I"ll begin again, and probably keep it up all day."
HABIT.
It was the bridegroom"s third matrimonial undertaking, and the bride"s second. When the clergyman on whom they had called for the ceremony entered the parlor, he found the couple comfortably seated. They made no effort to rise, so, as he opened the book to begin the service, he directed them, "Please, stand up."
The bridegroom looked at the bride, and the bride stared back at him, and then both regarded the clergyman, while the man voiced their decision in a tone that was quite polite, but very firm: "We have ginerally sot."
It is a matter of common knowledge that there have been troublous times in Ireland before those of the present. In the days of the Land League, an Irish Judge told as true of an experience while he was holding court in one of the turbulent sections. When the jury entered the court-room at the beginning of the session, the bailiff directed them to take their accustomed places.... And every man of them walked forward into the dock.
HAIR.
The school girl from Avenue A, who had just learned that the notorious Gorgon sisters had snakes for hair, chewed her gum thoughtfully as she commented: "Tough luck to have to get out and grab a mess of snakes any time you want an extry puff."
HARD TO PLEASE.
The rather ferocious-appearing husband who had taken his wife to the beach for a holiday scowled heavily at an amateur photographer, and rumbled in a threatening ba.s.s voice: "What the blazes d"ye mean, photographin" my wife? I saw ye when ye done it."
The man addressed cringed, and replied placatingly: "You"re mistaken, really! I wouldn"t think of doing such a thing."
"Ye wouldn"t, eh?" the surly husband growled, still more savagely. "And why not? I"d like to know.
She"s the handsomest woman on the beach."
HASTE.
The colored man was condemned to be hanged, and was awaiting the time set for execution in a Mississippi jail. Since all other efforts had failed him, he addressed a letter to the governor, with a plea for executive clemency. The opening paragraph left no doubt as to his urgent need: "Dear Boss: The white folks is got me in dis jail fixin" to hang me on Friday mornin" and here it is Wednesday already."
HEARSAY.
The convicted feudist was working for a pardon. It was reported to him that the opposing clan was pulling wires against him, and spreading false reports concerning him. He thereupon wrote a brief missive to the governor: "Deer guvner, if youve heared wat ive heared youve heared youve heared a lie."
HEAVEN.
The clergyman in the following story probably did not mean exactly what he said, though, human nature being what it is, maybe it was true enough.
A parishioner meeting the parson in the street inquired: "When do you expect to see Deacon Jones again?"
"Never, never again!" the minister declared solemnly. "The deacon is in heaven!"