""How do you know ours will be the winning side?" asked a prospective recruit.
""Well, my lad," said the sergeant, "you know the Germans have been trying for more than a year and a half to win and have failed, don"t you?"
""Yes," replied the questioner.
""Well, then, we"ve been trying to lose during the same period and we couldn"t.""
United States Senator Howard Sutherland, of West Virginia, tells a story about a mountain youth who visited a recruiting-office in the Senator"s State for the purpose of enlisting in the regular Army. The examining physician found the young man as sound as a dollar, but that he had flat feet.
"I"m sorry," said the physician, "but I"ll have to turn you down.
You"ve got flat feet."
The mountaineer looked sorrowful. "No way for me to git in it, then?"
he inquired.
"I guess not. With those flat feet of yours you wouldn"t be able to march even five miles."
The youth from the mountains studied a moment. Finally he said: "I"ll tell you why I hate this so darned bad. You see, I walked nigh on to one hundred and fifteen miles over the mountains to git here, and gosh, how I hate to walk back!"
RECRUITING OFFICER--"What"s the good of coming here and saying you"re only seventeen years old! Go and walk around that yard and come back and see if you"re not nineteen."--_Punch_.
_See also_ Conscription.
RED TAPE
America consumes more red dye than any other color. This, as you are aware, is the color chosen for government tape in Washington.
REGRETS
_Who Am I?_
I am frequently most potent in the morning, but I am willing to abide with you at any time.
I am what you feel if you get married or if you do not get married.
I am what the after-dinner speaker says he feels because he came unprepared, and what the listeners show they feel without saying it.
I come to you when youth leaves you.
I am yours when that sarcastic person drops a remark which you cannot fittingly answer, and I am doubled when you are later alone and think of just the brilliant retort you should have given.
I am what overwhelms you when you suffer an overwhelming financial loss.
I am the vainest of the vain.
I am regret!
MRS. EXE--"Here"s an invitation from Mrs. Boreleigh to one of her tiresome dinners. I hate them."
EXE--"Why not plead that you have a previous engagement?"
MRS. EXE--"That would be a lie. Edith dear, write Mrs. Boreleigh that we accept with pleasure."
RELATIVES
"Have you any relatives living in the country?"
"No; whenever we take a vacation we have to pay our own board."
"Old Millyuns says that since he made his pile of money he feels like a neutral nation."
"Why is that?"
"Because he has so many diplomatic relations."--_Judge_.
RELIGIONS
Rowland Hill, when some persons entered his chapel to avoid the rain that was falling, quietly observed, "Many persons are to be blamed for making their religion a cloak, but I do not think those are much better who make it an umbrella."
A man in the threadbare coat and a week"s beard came out of a downtown mission where he had signed the pledge and joined the church, only to be nabbed for theft a half hour later.
"Why did you make off with the pocketbook you saw this lady drop in the street?" demanded the Judge in court.
"It"s all the minister"s fault," declared the thief in deprecation. "I went to him discouraged and out of money, and he told me I must learn to take things as I found them."