“It is hardly correct, sir.”
“And I’m off on Por-to Ri-co?”
“Just a little off.”
“That settles it, sir—that settles it!” said the short man as he folded up the map and tossed it away on the street. “I had a grandfather in the Revolutionary War, a father in the war with Mexico, and two brothers in the late Civil War, and I was going to offer my services to Uncle Sam in this emergency; but it’s off, sir—all off.”
“But what difference does the pronunciation make?” protested the man on the right.
“All the difference in the world, sir. My wife is tongue-tied and my only child has got a hare-lip, and if I should get killed neither one of them would be able to ever make any one understand whether I poured out my blood in a battle in Cuba or was run over by an ice-wagon in front of my own house!”
BRIDGET O’FLANNAGAN ON CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND COCKROACHES.
Och, Mollie Moriarty, I’ve been havin’ the quare iksparyincis since yiz hurrud from me, an’ if I’d known how it wud be whin I lift ould Oireland, I’d nivir have sit fut intil this coonthry befoor landin’. Me prisint misthriss that I had befoor the lasht wan is a discoiple av a new koind av relijun called Christian Soience. She’s been afthur takin’ a sooccission av coorsis av coolchur (I belave that’s fwhat they call it), an’ she knows all aboot this Christian Soience.