LEGISLATION
"Have you made any resolutions or turned over a new leaf or anything like that?"
"No," replied the man with the serene smile. "No need of them. If I have any lingering vices I feel that I need only wait for somebody to introduce legislation that will make them impossible."
LEGISLATORS
"Do you think we are happier for the conveniences of telegraph and telephone?"
"Not always," replied Senator Sorghum. "It would be a great comfort to be able to make a speech that exactly agrees with your audience without its being placed immediately before people all over the country who may not feel the same way about it."
"Senator, you promised me a job."
"But there are no jobs."
"I need a job, Senator."
"Well, I"ll ask for a commission to investigate as to why there are no jobs and you can get a job on that."
LEISURE
THE CHILD--"Mother, what is "leisure"?"
THE MOTHER--"It"s the spare time a woman has in which she can do some other kind of work, dearie."
LIARS
The teacher was telling her cla.s.s a long, highly embellished story of Santa Claus, and the mirth of Willie Jones eventually got entirely beyond his control.
"Willie," said the teacher sternly, "what did I whip you for yesterday?"
"Fer lyin"," promptly answered Willie; "an" I was jest wonderin" who was goin" to whip you."
He who tells a lie is not sensible how great a task he undertakes, for he must be forced to invent twenty more to maintain one.--_Pope_.
A Boston minister once noticed a crowd of urchins cl.u.s.tered around a dog of doubtful pedigree.
"What are you doing, my little men?" he asked, with fatherly interest.
"Swappin" lies," volunteered one of the boys. "The feller that tells the biggest one gets the purp."
"Shocking!" exclaimed the minister. "Why, when I was your age I never thought of telling an untruth."
"Youse win," chorused the urchins. "The dog"s yours, mister."
A man may tell the same lie about the same thing to the same man seven times seven, and be accounted truthful. Let him vary in but the merest detail and he is a liar. Such is the patent gullibility of a too conscientious world.
An evangelist who was conducting services announced that on the following evening he would speak on the subject of "Liars." He advised his hearers to read in advance the seventeenth chapter of Mark.
The next night he arose and said: "I am going to preach on "Liars"
tonight and I would like to know how many read the chapter I suggested." A hundred hands were upraised.
"Now," he said, "you are the very persons I want to talk to--there isn"t any seventeenth chapter of Mark."
A Sunday school teacher asked a small girl the other day why Ananias was so severely punished. The little one thought a minute, then answered: "Please, teacher, they weren"t so used to lying in those days."
"Does your husband ever lie to you?"
"Never."
"How do you know?"
"He tells me that I do not look a day older than I did when he married me, and if he doesn"t lie about that, I don"t think he would about less important matters."
"Do you really mean to call me a liar?" asked one rival railroad man of another railroad man, during a dispute on business they had on Austin Avenue yesterday.
"No, Colonel, I don"t mean to call you a liar. On the contrary, I say you are the only man in town who tells the truth all the time, but I"m offering a reward of $25 and a chromo to any other man who will say he believes me when I say you never lie," was the response.
"Well, I"m glad you took it back," replied the other party, as they shook.--_A. E. Sweet_.
_See also_ Husband; Real estate agents; Regrets.