SEASICKNESS
"My dear old fellow! What"s the matter? The sea"s like a duck-pond!"
"I know, old boy--but I"ve taken six--different--remedies."--_Punch_.
The Chief Justice while presiding over the Supreme Court at Washington took the several Justices of the Court for a run down Chesapeake Bay.
A stiff wind sprang up, and Justice Gray was getting decidedly the worst of it. As he leaned over the rail in great distress the Chief Justice touched him on the shoulder and said in a tone of deepest sympathy:
"Is there anything I can do for you, Gray?"
"No, thank you," returned the sick Justice, "unless your Honor can overrule this motion."
An amateur sailor was making his first trip across the Atlantic, and was in the throes of the _mal de mer_ when the ship"s surgeon came across him.
"What"s the matter?" was the doctor"s callous query.
"O-o-oh!" was the only response as the young man rolled over in agony.
"Come, get up," derided the surgeon, grinning unfeelingly. "The ship"s been torpedoed and will sink in ten minutes."
"Ten minutes?" the sick man protested feebly. "Can"t you make it any sooner?"
"How was the trip over?" I asked one of our returning soldiers.
"Rough as thunder," was the reply.
"Did they feed you well?" I asked.
"Six meals a day," he said.
"Six?" I echoed.
"Yes," was the laughing reply; "three down and three up."
A New York man was crossing the Atlantic with an army officer who suffered greatly from sea-sickness.
On entering the stateroom one particularly rough day, he found the officer tossing in his berth, muttering in what at first appeared to be a sort of delirium.
Stooping over to catch his words, the friend heard him say: "Sergeant ... major ... sergeant ... major ... brigadier-general ... ugh, _lieutenant_-general ... a-a-ah!"
"What are you saying?" asked the friend in some alarm, as the sufferer looked piteously up at him after his last gasping "a-a-ah!"
"a.s.signing the waves their rank," said the military man, rolling toward the wall again. "There have been eight lieutenant-generals within the last twenty minutes."
CHRISTIAN SCIENTIST--"Nothing is ever lost! Everything in the universe is in its right place at the right time!"
MAN FROM MISSOURI--"Have you never been seasick?"
The ocean liner was rolling like a chip, but as usual in such instances one pa.s.senger was aggressively, disgustingly healthy.
"Sick, eh?" he remarked to a pale-green person who was leaning on the rail.
The pale-green person regarded the healthy one with all the scorn he could muster. "Sick nothing!" he snorted weakly. "I"m just hanging over the front of the boat to see how the captain cranks it!"
SECRETS
"Can you keep a secret, Peggy?"
"I can; but it"s just my luck to tell things to other girls who can"t."
ALICE--"I thought you could keep a secret."
MABEL--"Well, I kept it for a week. Do you think I"m a cold-storage plant?"
JACK--"Did you tell her that what you said was in strict confidence?"
ETHEL--"No; I don"t want her to think it was important enough to repeat."
CRAWFORD--"I see that the Ku Klux are going to admit women members."
CRABSHAW--"Why, I thought it was a secret society."
It is said that an ancient Chinese sage who lived in the second century was offered a bribe. His silence being accepted as hesitation, he was a.s.sured that he was perfectly safe, as no one knew it. He replied:
"Heaven knows, it. Earth knows it. You know it. I know it. How can you say that no one knows it?"
SELF-MADE MEN