Best Short Stories

by Unknown

FRENCH POLITENESS

As a truly polite nation the French undoubtedly lead the world, thinks a contributor to a British weekly. The other day a Paris dentist's servant opened the door to a woebegone patient.

"And who, monsieur," he queried in a tender tone, "shall I have the misery of announcing?"

SIMPLE FAITH

The Methodist minister in a small country town was noted for his begging propensities and for his ability to extract generous offerings from the close-fisted congregation, which was made up mostly of farmers. One day the young son of one of the members accidentally swallowed a ten-cent piece, much to the excitement of the rest of the family. Every means of dislodging the coin had failed and the frightened parents were about to give up in despair when a bright thought struck the little daughter, who exclaimed: "Oh, mamma, I know how you can get it! Send for our minister; he'll get it out of him!"

LIMITED DISSIPATION

A small, hen-pecked, worried-looking man was about to take an examination for life insurance.

"You don't dissipate, do you?" asked the physician, as he made ready for tests. "Not a fast liver, or anything of that sort?"

The little man hesitated a moment, looked a bit frightened, then replied, in a small, piping voice: "I sometimes chew a little gum."

THE LIMIT

The manager of a factory recently engaged a new man and gave instructions to the foreman to instruct him in his duties. A few days afterward the manager inquired whether the new man was progressing with his work.

The foreman, who had not agreed very well with the man in question, exclaimed angrily:

"Progressing! There's been a lot of progress. I have taught him everything I know and he is still an ignorant fool."

A PERFECT PROGRAM

This story has the merit of being true, anyhow: The official pessimist of a small Western city, a gentleman who had wrestled with chronic dyspepsia for years, stood in front of the post office as the noon whistles sounded.

"Twelve o'clock, eh?" he said, half to himself and half to an acquaintance. "Well, I'm going home to dinner. If dinner ain't ready I'm going to raise hell; and if it is ready I ain't going to eat a bite."

"TIPPERARY" IN CHINESE

The Chinese have put "Tipperary" into their own language, and native newspapers print the chorus as follows:

Shih ko yuan lu tao Ti-po-lieh-li,
Pi yao ti jih hsing tsou.
Shih ko yuan lu tao Ti-po-lieh-li,
Yao chien we ngai tzu nu,
Tsai hui Pi-ko-ti-li,
Tsai chien Lei-ssu Kwei-rh,
Shih ko yuan lu tao Ti-po-lieh-li,
Tan wo hsin tsai na-rh.

This is the literal translation:

This road is far from Ti-po-lieh-li,
We must walk for many days,
This road is far from Ti-po-lieh-li,
I want to see my lovely girl,
To meet again Pi-ko-ti-li,
To see again Lei-ssu Kwei-rh,
This road is far from Ti-po-lieh-li,
But my heart is already in that place.

NON FIT

She was a very stout, jolly-looking woman, and she was standing at the corset counter, holding in her hand an article she was returning. Evidently her attention had been suddenly drawn to the legend printed on the label, for she was overheard to murmur, "'Made expressly for John Wanamaker.' Well, there! No wonder they didn't fit me!"

HIS BY RIGHT

An Irish chauffeur in San Francisco, who had been having trouble with numerous small boys in the neighborhood of his stand, discovered one day on examining his car that there was a dead cat on one of the seats. In his anger he was about to throw the carcass into the street, when he espied a policeman.

Holding up the carcass, he exclaimed: "This is how I am insulted. What am I to do with it?"

"Well, don't you know? Take it straight to headquarters, and if it is not claimed within a month it becomes your property."

BEST OF REASONS

A teacher was giving a lesson on the circulation of the blood. Trying to make the matter clearer, he said: "Now, boys, if I stood on my head the blood, as you know, would run into it, and I should turn red in the face."

"Yes, sir," said the boys.

"Now," continued the teacher, "what I want to know is this: How is it that while I am standing upright in the ordinary position the blood doesn't rush into my feet?"

And a little fellow shouted: "Why, sir, because yer feet ain't empty."

A STORY FROM THE FRONT

One day an ammunition dump blew up. Cordite was blazing, shells and bombs bursting, and splinters and whole shells flying everywhere in the vicinity. The atmosphere was full of smoke and resounding with metallic whines. Out of a shack hard by came a darky, loaded to the waterline with kit, blankets, rifle, etc., and up the road he dangled.

"Here! Where are you going?" shouted an officer.

"I ain't goin', suh," panted the darky. "I's gone."

EQUATORIAL MICHIGAN

Representative Billy Wilson, who dwells in Chicago, found himself in the upper peninsula of Michigan doing some fishing and hunting. While there he conversed with the guide that he had hired in order to have somebody around to talk to.

"Must get mighty all-fired cold up here in winter," remarked Wilson one morning.

"Yes, it often gets away down to forty-five below zero," replied the native.

"Don't see how you stand it," said the Congressman.

"Oh, I always spend my winters in the South," explained the guide.

"Go South, eh? Well, well! That's enterprising. And where do you go?"

"Grand Rapids," said the guide.

SCRIPTURAL

The college boys played a mean trick on "Prexy" by pasting some of the leaves of his Bible together. He rose to read the morning lesson, which might have been as follows:

"Now Johial took unto himself a wife of the daughters of Belial." (He turned a leaf.) "She was eighteen cubits in height and ten cubits in breadth." (A pause, and careful scrutiny of the former page.)

He resumed: "Now Johial took unto himself a wife," etc. (Leaf turned.) "She was eighteen cubits in height and ten cubits in breadth, and was pitched within and without—" (Painful pause and sounds of subdued mirth.) "Prexy" turns back again in perplexity.

"Young gentlemen, I can only add that 'Man is fearfully and wonderfully made'—and woman also."

THE FACT WAS

Saying is one thing and doing is another. In Montana a railway bridge had been destroyed by fire, and it was necessary to replace it. The bridge engineer and his staff were ordered in haste to the place. Two days later came the superintendent of the division. Alighting from his private car, he encountered the old master bridge-builder.

"Bill," said the superintendent—and the words quivered with energy—"I want this job rushed. Every hour's delay costs the company money. Have you got the engineer's plans for the new bridge?"

"I don't know," said the bridge-builder, "whether the engineer has the picture drawed yet or not, but the bridge is up and the trains is passin' over it."

THE LAST WORD, AS USUAL

The ways of a woman are supposed to be past finding out, but after all there are times when her logic is irresistible as in the case of a certain wife who had spent her husband's money, had compromised him more than once, had neglected her children and her household duties, and had done everything that woman can do to make his life a failure.

And then, as they were both confronted by the miserable end of it all, and realized that there was no way out of it, he said:

"Perhaps I ought not to appear to be too trivially curious, but I confess to a desire to know why you have done all this. You must have known, if you kept on, just what the end would be. Of course, nobody expects a woman to use her reason. But didn't you have, even in a dim way, some idea of what you were doing?"

She gazed at him with her usual defiance, a habit not to be broken even by the inevitable.

"Certainly I did. It was your fault."

"My fault! How do you make that out?"

"Because I have never had the slightest respect for you."

"Why not?"

She actually laughed.

"How could you expect me to have any respect for a man who could not succeed in preventing me from doing the things I did?"

FRUGAL TO THE END

Not long ago a certain publication had an idea. Its editor made up a list of thirty men and women distinguished in art, religion, literature, commerce, politics, and other lines, and to each he sent a letter or a telegram containing this question: "If you had but forty-eight hours more to live, how would you spend them?" his purpose being to embody the replies in a symposium in a subsequent issue of his periodical.

Among those who received copies of the inquiry was a New York writer. He thought the proposition over for a spell, and then sent back the truthful answer by wire, collect:

"One at a time."