And then from the brakeman at the other end of the car:
"You really are! You really are!"
MOTHER--"Oh, Bobby, I"m ashamed of you. I never told stories when I was a little girl."
BOBBY--"When did you begin, then, Mamma?"--_Horace Zimmerman_.
The sages of the general store were discussing the veracity of old Si Perkins when Uncle Bill Abbott ambled in.
"What do you think about it, Uncle Bill?" they asked him. "Would you call Si Perkins a liar?"
"Well," answered Uncle Bill slowly, as he thoughtfully studied the ceiling, "I don"t know as I"d go so far as to call him a liar exactly, but I do know this much: when feedin" time comes, in order to get any response from his hogs, he has to get somebody else to call "em for him."
A lie is an abomination unto the Lord and an ever present help in time of trouble.
An Idaho guide whose services were retained by some wealthy young easterners desirous of hunting in the Northwest evidently took them to be the greenest of tenderfoots, since he undertook to chaff them with a recital something as follows:
"It was my first grizzly, so I was mighty proud to kill him in a hand-to-hand struggle. We started to fight about sunrise. When he finally gave up the ghost, the sun was going down."
At this point the guide paused to note the effect of his story. Not a word was said by the easterners, so the guide added very slowly, "_for the second time_."
"I gather, then," said one young gentleman, a dapper little Bostonian, "that it required a period of two days to enable you to dispose of that grizzly."
"Two days and a night," said the guide, with a grin. "That grizzly died mighty hard."
"Choked to death?" asked the Bostonian.
"Yes, _sir_," said the guide.
"Pardon me," continued the Hubbite, "but what did you try to get him to swallow?"
When by night the frogs are croaking, Kindle but a torch"s fire; Ha! how soon they all are silent; Thus Truth silences the liar.
--_Friedrich von Logan_.
_See also_ Epitaphs; Husbands; Politicians; Real estate agents; Regrets.
LIBERTY
Liberty is being free from the things we don"t like in order to be slaves of the things we do like.
A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.
--_Addison_.
Where liberty dwells, there is my country.--_Benjamin Franklin_.
LIBRARIANS
A country newspaper printed the following announcement: "The Public Library will close for two weeks, beginning August 3, for the annual cleaning and vacation of the librarians."
The modern librarian is a genius. All the proof needed is the statement that the requests for books with queer t.i.tles are filled with ones really wanted. The following are instances:
AS ASKED FOR CORRECT t.i.tLE
_Indecent Orders In Deacon"s Orders She Combeth Not Her Head She Cometh Not, She Said Trial of a Servant Trail of the Serpent Essays of a Liar Essays of Elia Soap and Tables aesop"s Fables Pocketbook"s Hill Puck of Pook"s Hill Dentist"s Infirmary Dante"s Inferno Holy Smoke Divine Fire_
One librarian has the following entries in a card catalog:
Lead Poisoning Do, Kindly Light.
A distinguished librarian is a good follower of Chesterton. He says: "To my way of thinking, a great librarian must have a clear head, a strong hand and, above all, a great heart. Such shall be greatest among librarians; and when I look into the future, I am inclined to think that most of the men who will achieve this greatness will be women."
Many catalogers append notes to the main entries of their catalogs. Here are two:
_An Ideal Husband_: Essentially a work of fiction, and presumably written by a woman (unmarried).
_Aspects of Home Rule_: Political, not domestic.
In a branch library a reader asked for _The Girl He Married_ (by James Grant.) This happened to be out, and the a.s.sistant was requested to select a similar book. Presumably he was a benedict, for he returned triumphantly with _His Better Half_ (by George Griffith).
"Have you _A Joy Forever_?" inquired a lady borrower.
"No," replied the a.s.sistant librarian after referring to the stock. "Dear me, how tiresome," said the lady; "have you Praed?" "Yes, madam, but it isn"t any good," was the prompt reply.