* * *
The negro, after obtaining a marriage license, returned a week later to the bureau, and asked to have another name substituted for that of the lady.
"I done changed mah mind," he announced. The clerk remarked that the change would cost him another dollar and a half for a new license.
"Is that the law?" the colored man demanded in distress. The clerk nodded, and the applicant thought hard for a full minute:
"Gee!" he said at last. "Never mind, boss, this ole one will do. There ain't a dollar and a half difference in them niggers no how."
* * *
The New England widower was speaking to a friend confidentially a week after the burial of his deceased helpmate.
"I'm feelin' right pert," he admitted; "pearter'n I've felt afore in years. You see, she was a good wife. She was a good-lookin' woman, an' smart as they make 'em, an' a fine housekeeper, an' she always done her duty by me an' the children, an' she warn't sickly, an' I never hearn a cross word out o' her in all the thutty year we lived together. But dang it all! Somehow, I never did like Maria.... Yes, I'm feelin' pretty peart."
* * *
There were elaborate preparations in colored society for a certain wedding. The prospective bride had been maid to a lady who met the girl on the street a week after the time set for the ceremony and inquired concerning it: