HONOR
In the smoking compartment of a Pullman, there were six men smoking and reading. All of a sudden a door banged and the conductor"s voice cried:
"All tickets, please!"
Then one of the men in the compartment leaped to his feet, scanned the faces of the others and said, slowly and impressively:
"Gentlemen, I trust to your honor."
And he dived under the seat and remained there in a small, silent knot till the conductor was safely gone.
t.i.tles of honour add not to his worth, Who is himself an honour to his t.i.tles.
--_John Ford_.
HOPE
FRED--"My dear Dora, let this thought console you for your lover"s death. Remember that other and better men than he have gone the same way."
BEREAVED ONE--"They haven"t all gone, have they?"--_Puck_.
HORSES
A city man, visiting a small country town, boarded a stage with two dilapidated horses, and found that he had no other currency than a five-dollar bill. This he proffered to the driver. The latter took it, looked it over for a moment or so, and then asked:
"Which horse do you want?"
A traveler in Indiana noticed that a farmer was having trouble with his horse. It would start, go slowly for a short distance, and then stop again. Thereupon the farmer would have great difficulty in getting it started. Finally the traveler approached and asked, solicitously:
"Is your horse sick?"
"Not as I knows of."
"Is he balky?"
"No. But he is so danged "fraid I"ll say whoa and he won"t hear me, that he stops every once in a while to listen."
A German farmer was in search of a horse.
"I"ve got just the horse for you," said the liveryman. "He"s five years old, sound as a dollar and goes ten miles without stopping."
The German threw his hands skyward.
"Not for me," he said, "not for me. I live eight miles from town, und mit dot horse I haf to valk back two miles."
There"s a grocer who is notorious for his wretched horse flesh.
The grocer"s boy is rather a reckless driver. He drove one of his master"s worst nags a little too hard one day, and the animal fell ill and died.
"You"ve killed my horse, curse you!" the grocer said to the boy the next morning.
"I"m sorry, boss," the lad faltered.
"Sorry be durned!" shouted the grocer. "Who"s going to pay me for my horse?"
"I"ll make it all right, boss," said the boy soothingly. "You can take it out of my next Sat.u.r.day"s wages."
Before Abraham Lincoln became President he was called out of town on important law business. As he had a long distance to travel he hired a horse from a livery stable. When a few days later he returned he took the horse back to the stable and asked the man who had given it to him: "Keep this horse for funerals?"
"No, indeed," answered the man indignantly.
"Glad to hear it," said Lincoln; "because if you did the corpse wouldn"t get there in time for the resurrection."
HOSPITALITY
Night was approaching and it was raining hard. The traveler dismounted from his horse and rapped at the door of the one farmhouse he had struck in a five-mile stretch of traveling. No one came to the door.
As he stood on the doorstep the water from the eaves trickled down his collar. He rapped again. Still no answer. He could feel the stream of water coursing down his back. Another spell of pounding, and finally the red head of a lad of twelve was stuck out of the second story window.
"Watcher want?" it asked.
"I want to know if I can stay here over night," the traveler answered testily.
The red-headed lad watched the man for a minute or two before answering.
"Ye kin fer all of me," he finally answered, and then closed the window.
The old friends had had three days together.