"S-c, S-c--er--er--er--- Tell him I"ll meet him in Albany."
Stenographers can nod sometimes, even with the accuracy of the dictating machine. Recently a merchant dictating into one of these machines said:
"The gentleman in question has sold our products in Hayti for a period of over two years, and we have always found him satisfactory in every detail."
All came out all right in the transcription except one word, and that word was the change from Hayti to Hades! And the letter, being "dictated but not read," went!
"I seem to remember that girl. Who is she?"
"She was my typewriter last year."
"She"s charming! Why did she leave you?"
"She was too conscientious for me. One day I proposed marriage to her, and what do you think she did? She took all that I said down in shorthand and brought it, nicely type-written, for me to sign!"
STOCK EXCHANGE
AUNT JANE (at the Stock Exchange)--"With seats selling at $60,000, no wonder they are all standing up."
FOOTLIGHT--"I see another seat at the Stock Exchange has been sold for $55,000."
Miss SUE BEETTE--"Wouldn"t it be awful if the man who paid for it found it was right behind a post!"
STRATEGY
WILLIE WILLIS--"Pa, what"s strategy?"
PAPA WILLIS--"Usually darn poor judgment that happens to work out all right."
A young lady took down the receiver and discovered that the telephone was in use. "I just put on a pan of beans for dinner," she heard one woman complacently informing another.
She hung up the receiver, and waited. Three times she waited, and then, exasperated, she broke into the conversation.
"Madam, I smell your beans burning," she announced crisply. A horrified scream greeted the remark, and the young lady was able to put in her call.
A lady entered a railroad-car and took a seat in front of a newly married couple. She was hardly seated before they began making remarks about her.
Her last year"s bonnet and coat were fully criticised with more or less giggling on the bride"s part, and there is no telling what might have come next if the lady had not put a sudden stop to the conversation by a bit of strategy.
She turned her head, noticed that the bride was considerably older than the groom, and, in the smoothest of tones, said:
"Madam, will you please ask your son to close the window?"
The "son" closed his mouth, and the bride no longer giggled.
"Fore!" shouted the golfer, ready to play.
But the woman on the course paid no attention.
"Fore!" he repeated, with not a bit more effect than the first time.
"Try her with "Three ninety-eight,"" suggested his partner. "She may be one of those bargain-counter fiends."
Hans and Fritz, two small boys, had gone to the rink to skate. Hans"s overcoat hampered him and he wanted to get rid of it. The German coat-room person does not check your coat unless you pay your fee.
The fee was only a penny, but Hans did not have the penny. He was at a loss.
"Huh! it"s dead easy," spoke up Fritz. "Give me your overcoat. I"ll take it to the man at the checking place and say I found it. He"ll put it away. When you are ready to go home you go to him and ask if anybody has turned a lost overcoat in to him. Then, of course, you"ll get yours."
STREET-CARS
A very pretty but extremely slender girl entered a street car and managed to seat herself in a narrow s.p.a.ce between two men. Presently a portly colored mammy entered the car, and the pretty miss, thinking to humiliate the men for lack of gallantry, arose.
"Aunty," she said, with a wave of her hand toward the place she had just vacated, "take my seat."
"Thank you, missy," replied the colored woman, smiling broadly, "but which gen"man"s lap was you sittin" on?"
"Madam," said the man in the street-car, "I know I ought to get up and give you my seat, but unfortunately I"ve recently joined the Sit Still Club."
"That"s all right, sir," replied the woman. "And you must excuse me for staring at you so hard: I am a member of the Stand and Stare Club."
She proved herself so active and conscientious a member that the man began to feel uncomfortable under her gaze. Finally he rose and said: "Take my seat, madam; I guess I"ll resign from my club and join yours."
STRIKES
TEACHER--"Now, if I paid one man two dollars a day for seven days, another three dollars and fifty cents for ten days, and another four dollars and seventy-five cents for six days--"