One of the two girls in the subway was glancing at a newspaper.
"I see," she remarked presently to her companion, "that Mr. So and so, the octogenarian, is dead. Now, what on earth is an octogenarian anyhow?"
"I'm sure I haven't the faintest idea," the other girl replied. "But they're an awful sickly lot. You never hear of one but he's dying."
* * *
A story is told of an office-seeker in Washington who asserted to an inquirer that he had never heard of Mark Twain.
"What? Never heard of Tom Sawyer?"
"Nope, never heard of him."
"Nor Huck Finn?"
"Nope, never heard of him neither."
"Nor Puddin'head Wilson?"