[WISDOM]
A country clergyman, meeting a neighbour, who never came to church, although an old fellow above sixty, reproved him on that account, and asked if he ever read at home? "No," replied the man, "I can't read." "I dare say," said the clergyman, "you don't know who made you." "Not I, in troth," said the countryman. A little boy coming by at the time, "Who made you, child?" said the parson. "God, sir," answered the boy. "Why, look you there," quoth the honest parson. "Are you not ashamed to hear a child of five or six years old tell me who made him, when you, that are so old a man, cannot?" "Ah!" said the countryman. "It is no wonder that he should remember; he was made but t'other day, it is a great while, master, sin' I was made."
[WHY NOT?]
Jimmy giggled when the teacher read the story of the man who swam across the Tiber three times before breakfast.
"You do not doubt that a trained swimmer could do that, do you?"
"No, sir," answered Jimmy, "but I wonder why he did not make it four and get back to the side where his clothes were."
[THE OLD FARMER]
An old farmer lay so dangerously ill that the doctor gave no hope of recovery.
Whilst lying in an apparently semi-conscious state, he suddenly opened his eyes, and said to his wife, who was watching by his bedside: "Mary, that's a nice smell, it's just like a ham cooking. I almost think I could eat a little, if it is cooked."
The reply was, "Thee get on with the dying, that ham is for the funeral."