Deaf But Sensible.
Traveler (in buggy)—This is a hot day.
Old Farmer (in a potato patch)—Speakin' to me?
Traveler—This is a hot day.
Old Farmer (coming to the fence)—What did you say, mister?
Traveler—I said this is a hot day!
Old Farmer (climbing the fence and approaching the buggy)—Beg pardon, I'm a little hard o' hearin'. What is it?
Traveler—I merely said that this is a hot day.
Old Farmer—Oh, go to thunder!
—Owl.
[JOURNAL OF SOLOMON SIDESPLITTER.]
"Martha, does thee love me?" asked a Quaker youth of one at whose shrine his heart's fondest feelings had been offered up. "Why, Seth," answered she, "we are commanded to love one another, are we not?" "Ah, Martha! but doest not thee regard me with that feeling that the world calls love?" "I hardly know what to tell thee, Seth; I have greatly feared that my heart was an erring one; I have tried to bestow my love on all; but I may have sometimes thought, perhaps, that thee was getting rather more than thy share."
"Martha, my dear," said a loving husband to his spouse, who was several years his junior, "what do you say to moving to the far West?" "Oh, I'm delighted with the idea! You recollect when Mr. Morgan moved out there he was as poor as we are; and he died in three years, leaving his widow worth a hundred thousand dollars."
"Ma," said a juvenile grammarian, when she returned from school; "ma, mayn't I take some of the currant-jelly on the sideboard?" "No," said the mother, sternly. "Well, then, ma, mayn't I take some of the ice-cream?" "No," again replied "ma." It was not long, however, before the young miss was found "diggin'" into both. "Did I not tell you," said the maternal parent, in a somewhat angry tone, "not to touch them?" "You said no twice, ma," said the precocious girl, "and the schoolmistress says that two negatives are equal to an affirmative; so I thought you meant that I should eat them."
"Mat, I want another porter." "What ales the one you have, Dick?" "He's dead." "Gone to his bier, eh?" "Hang you, Dick, your wit's always a broad-cider."
"Jack, Jack!" cried a sailor, on board a ship at sea, lately, to one of his companions.—"Hello!" replied Jack; "what is it?"—"Your brother's overboard."—"Overboard?"—"Yes."—"Blow the lubber! he has got my sea-boots and monkey-jacket on!"
Judge Rooke, in going the western circuit, had a great stone thrown at his head; but, from the circumstance of his stooping very much, it passed over him. "You see," said he to his friends, "that had I been an upright judge, I might have been killed."
"Kitty, where's the frying-pan?"—"Johnny's got it, carting mud and oyster shells up the alley, with the cat for a horse."—"The dear little fellow! what a genius he'll yet make; but go and get it. We're going to have company, and must fry some fish for dinner."
Lighting an editor's fire with rejected contributions—Burns' Justice.
Lady F—— had arrived to so extreme a degree of sensibility, that, seeing a man go by with a mutilated wheelbarrow, she cried out to her companion, "Do turn aside, it distresses me above measure to see that poor unfortunate wheelbarrow with one leg."
"La, me!" sighed Mrs. Muggins, "here have I been sufferin' the begamies of death for three mortal weeks. Fust, I was seized with a painful phrenology in the left hampshire of the brain, which was exceeded by a stoppage of the left ventilator of the heart. This gave me an inflammation in the borax, and now I'm sick with the chloroform morbus. There is no blessin' like that of health, particularly when you're sick."
"Jack," said a commercial traveller to a country joskin, "which is the way to Harlingford?" "How did you know my name was Jack?" inquired the countryman. "Why, I guessed it," replied the bagman. "Then guess your way to Harlingford," says Jack, "for I shan't tell you."
"John, what is the past of see?" "Seen, sir." "No, it is saw—recollect that." "Yes, sir. Then if a sea-fish swims by me, it becomes a saw-fish when it is past, and can't be seen." "You may go home, John."
Judge Peters, a Philadelphian and a punster, having observed to another judge on the bench that one of the witnesses had a vegetable head, "How so?" was the inquiry. "He has carroty hair, reddish cheeks, a turnup nose, and a sage look."
"John," screamed a country girl, seated by the side of her dull lover, "leave me alone!" John, astonished, cried, "Why, I ain't a-touching yer!" "No," replied she, "but you might have done—if you liked."
"Jim, why is it that a musician's strains are always heard so much less distinctly when he plays alone, than when in a band?"—"Why, I didn't know it was so—suppose it must be because he plays so-lo."
"Jack," said a gentleman to an old negro, who was rather lazily engaged in clearing the snow from his premises, "Jack, my old boy, you don't get along with this job very fast."—"Why, master," replied Jack, scratching his wool, "pretty considerable for an old man, I guess; and I conceit myself, that I can clear more snow away in dese here short days, than the spryest nigga in the city could do in the longest summer day as ever was."
Mr. Russell once asked a nigger to call him early in the morning, because he wanted to go by the first boat. "At wat time, massa?" "At half-past three o'clock." "Half-pass tree o'clock?" "Yes, sir." The nigger, after grinning, departed; but immediately reappeared, saying: "Please, massa, don't forget to ring for me at tree o'clock in the morning, and I can be sure to wake you."
"Mr. Smith, you said you once officiated in a pulpit—do you mean by that that you preached?" "No, sir; I held the light for a man what did." "Ah; the court understood you differently. They supposed that the discourse came from you." "No, sir; I only throwed a light on it." "No levity, Mr. Smith. Crier, wipe your nose, and call on the next witness."
Mrs. Hopkins told me, that she heard Green's wife say, that John Glucks told her, that Fanny Hopkins heard the Widow Busham say, that Captain Weed's wife thought Colonel Hodgkins' sisters believed, that old Miss Quint reckoned that Mrs. Samuel Dunham had told Spoldin's wife that she heard John Fink's daughter say, that her mother told her, that old Miss Jenks heard Grandmother Cook declare, that it was an undoubted fact.
"Misther! Misther! what have you done?" said a little fellow with protruding eyes, to a greenhorn, who had just tied his horse to a spruce pole, as he thought, on the street. "Done!" said the fellow, "what do you mean? I haint been doin' nothin' as I knows on!" "Why, yeth you have, thir; you've hitched your hoth to the magnetic telegraph, and you'll be in Bothton in leth than two minutes, if you don't look out!" The man untied his horse with nervous anxiety, and, jumping into his wagon, drove hastily down the street.
"I'm not afraid of a barrel of cider!" said a toper to a temperance man. "I presume not, from your appearance; I should think a barrel of cider would run at your approach," was the reply.
"I tell you, Susan, that I will commit suicide, if you won't have me."—"Well, John, as soon as you have given me that proof of your affection, I will believe that you love me."
If the speculator misses his aim, everybody cries out, "He's a fool," and sometimes "He's a rogue." If he succeeds, they besiege his door and demand his daughter in marriage.
"I'm sitting on the style, Mary," as the lover said when he seated himself on a bonnet of the latest Paris fashion.
"If you say another crooked word I'll knock your brains out," said a blacksmith to his termagant wife. "Ram's horns, you dog!" exclaimed his hopeful helpmate, "ram's horns, if I die for it!"
It is said there is a man in Connecticut who walks so fast, that it puts his shadow out of breath to keep up with him.
In the course of the Irish state trial, Mr. Whiteside quoted an extraordinary figure once used by an advocate: "I smell a rat—I see it brewing in the storm—and I will crush it in the bud!"
"I say, Pat, what are you writing there in such a large hand?" "Array, honey, an' isn't it to my poor mother, who is very deaf, that I'm writing a loud letther?"
I think it is a very foolish thing for any man to become a sleeping partner, because he may awake and find himself in the Gazette.
"Dad," said an incipient legislator to his indulgent parent, who had gratified him with a visit to the galleries of the capital, "say do you see any row going on? I don't." "No," said the astonished father, "of course not. Why did you ask?" "Cause the man in the big desk says—'the eyes have it!'—and just now he said the nose had it—so I thought there was some fun down there some'ers!"
During a learned lecture by a German adventurer, one Baron Vondullbrains, he illustrated the glory of mechanics, as a science, thus:—"De t'ing dat is made is more superior dan de maker, I shall show you how in some t'ings. Suppose I make de round wheel of de coach? Ver' well; dat wheel roll round five hundred mile!—and I cannot roll one myself! Suppose I am a cooper, what you call, and I make de big tub to hold wine? He hold tons and gallons; and I cannot hold more dan five bottle! So you see dat what is made is more superior dan de maker."
"Doctor, that ere ratsbane of yourn is fust rate," said a Yankee to a village apothecary.—"Know'd it," said the pleased vendor of drugs. "Don't keep nothing but first-rate doctor's stuff."—"And, doctor," said the joker, coolly, "I want to buy another pound of ye."—"Another pound?"—"Yes, sir; I gin that pound I bought the other day to a nibbling mouse, and it made him dreadful sick, and I am sure another pound would kill him!"
Drunken Davy, after spending his day's earnings at a grocery, set out for home. "Well," says he, "if I find my wife up, I'll kick her—what business has she to sit up, wasting fire and light, eh? And if I find her in bed, I'll kick her—what business has she to go to bed before I get home?"
[Transcriber's Notes:]
Page 5, added missing period.
Page 7, changed single to double quote after "you'll have a good time."
Page 13, changed "Blatter" to "Blätter" for consistency; corrected "eat their meals" to "ate their meals."
Page 17, removed stray quote after "winnowing."
Page 28, added missing open quote to first sentence of "Certainly." Changed "Doodle" to "Doddle."
Page 33, added missing quote after "Well, what ails your town this year?"
Page 35, changed "mawrnin,'" to "mawrnin',"
Page 38, changed double quote to single quote after "Do you have to wear that when you are seeking religion?" and changed question mark to exclamation point in "Yes, Marse Thompson!"
Page 46, added missing comma after "Tennessee."
Page 66, changed comma to period after "recoiling."
Page 67, added missing period to first sentence.
Page 69, changed "its mighty risky" to "it's mighty risky."
Page 80, changed "hay mow" to "haymow" for consistency.
Page 93, changed "fonnd" to "found."
Page 94, changed "explaimed" to "explained."
Page 109, added missing quote after "dat mule."
Page 110, due to a flaw in the original book, the Chief's name in the photo caption is partially illegible. The name presented here is a best guess (there was a General Superintendant George W. Hubbard in Chicago from 1888 to 1890).
Page 114, added missing period after "sez he."
Page 122, added missing "this" to "that this is a hot day" and changed "someting" to "something."
Page 123, added missing italics around "bier."
Page 126, changed ! to ? in "do you mean by that that you preached?"
The last six pages of this book come from "The Journal of Solomon Sidesplitter," which is a whole book in its own right. It is unclear whether this is an intentional excerpt or a printer's error.