HOW GUSSIE GOT LOADED
When I was a young man I taught several terms of school in Maine, where, in the small country districts, the teacher is expected to be a walking encyclopedia of information.
One day there came a loud knock upon the door of the schoolhouse. On going out to see what was the cause of the imperative summons, I found standing there the wife of one of the neighbors, white as a sheet with agitation and alarm. She excitedly told me that her little boy, Gussie, had just swallowed a bullet, and she asked me what she should do for him.
“Why,” said I pleasantly, “Give him a good charge of gunpowder. But be careful not to point him toward anybody.”
She went home and gave him a dose of gunpowder, without ever seeing the joke.