BLUFFING
VISITOR (at private hospital)—"Can I see Lieutenant Barker, please?"
MATRON—"We do not allow ordinary visiting. May I ask if you're a relative?"
VISITOR (boldly)—"Oh, yes! I'm his sister."
MATRON—"Dear me! I'm very glad to meet you. I'm his mother."—Punch.
Yes, life's like poker sure enough. It pays to know just when to bluff.
Half-way up the steep hill the stage-coach stopped. For the seventh time the driver climbed down from his seat and opened and slammed the rear door.
"What do you do that for?" asked a passenger, whose curiosity had got the better of him.
"Sh-h; spake aisy. Don't let th' mare 'ear yer," cautioned the driver. "Every toime she 'ears th' door shut she thinks some one has got down, and it starrts 'er up quicker loike."
Ollie James is a big man personally and politically. He is a United States senator from Kentucky, and he weighs a trifle more than three hundred and fifty pounds.
On one occasion, in traveling from New York to Washington, he barely caught the midnight train, and discovered that the only berth left was an upper. Having learned from experience that the process of coiling up his three hundred and fifty pounds and his six feet three inches in an upper berth was tough stuff, he was indignant. He was particularly enraged when he noticed that the lower directly under his berth was occupied by a small man who tipped the scales at not more than a hundred and twenty.
Ollie grasped the curtains of the berth, shook them vigorously, growled once or twice, and remarked vindictively to the porter:
"So I've got to sleep in an upper, have I? The last time I did that it was on a trip from Frankfort to Washington, and the blamed thing broke down and mashed the man under me. Throw that grip up there, and I hope to Heaven the berth will hold me."
Then he went back to the smoker and had a cigar.
When he returned, the little man was in the upper.
As it is
Weep and you are called a baby,
Laugh and you are called a fool,
Yield and you're called a coward,
Stand and you're called a mule,
Smile and they'll call you silly,
Frown and they'll call you gruff,
Put on a front like a millionaire,
And somebody calls you a bluff.
A successful old lawyer tells the following story anent the beginning of his professional life: "I had just installed myself in my office," he said, "had put in a phone and had preened myself for my first client who might come along when, through the glass of my door I saw a shadow. Yes, it was doubtless some one to see me. Picture me, then, grabbing the nice, shiny receiver of my new phone and plunging into an imaginary conversation. It ran something like this: 'Yes, Mr. S.,' I was saying as the stranger entered the office, 'I'll attend to that corporation matter for you. Mr. J. had me on the phone this morning and wanted me to settle a damage suit, but I had to put him off, as I was too busy with other cases. But I'll manage to sandwich your case in between the others somehow. Yes. Yes. All right. Goodby.' Being sure, then, that I had duly impressed my prospective client, I hung up the receiver and turned to him. 'Excuse me, sir,' the man said, 'but I'm from the telephone company. I've come to connect your instrument.'"