And Depew made haste to shake hands with the editor and call it square.
Mr. Depew’s humorous speeches read so well that nobody misses one of them if he can help it; but it is impossible for cold type to suggest the inimitable manner with which they are given. A mature maiden woman once called upon him at an hour when his time was worth about a dollar a second and asked his advice about buying a certain bit of real estate. He evasively answered that there were two things of which he knew absolutely nothing: they were women and real estate.
This amused her so greatly that she lingered instead of going away, and to prolong her stay she asked about a mutual acquaintance: “Where is Mr. Blank, Mr. Depew?”
“He is still in the city.”
“Does he stammer as much as he did?”
“Oh, yes; worse, I believe.”
“Strange he never married.”
“No, it was not strange, my dear madam. Blank courted a lovely girl—he told me of it years afterward—and this is the way he proposed.” Then Mr. Depew looked soulfully at his visitor and stammered: “‘D-d-d-dear a-a-angel, I l-l-l-love y-y-you!’ And the woman replied: ‘You need not proceed further, Mr. Blank. I do not care to be wooed on the instalment plan.’” But the visitor had fled too rapidly to get the benefit of the joke.
Bandmaster Sousa is one of the “lucky” story-tellers, for he can always cap an improbable story with a bigger one. After listening to an extraordinary yarn about some man’s appetite, and another about unquestioning confidence in another man’s directions, he “covered” both with the following, which he attributed to a Southern negro:
“Down on our fahm we’ze got a man by de name o’ Jim. Now, Jim’s de champion ham-eater of all de country roun. Unc’ Henry hed cha’ge o’ de fahm, an’ ev’ybody ’spected Unc’ Henry, an’ when Unc’ Henry tol’ any of us to do anythin’ we jus’ done it, ’ithout stoppin’ to ask any questions, ’cause we had conf’dence in him. We knowed he wouldn’t ever tell us to do anythin’ dat we hadn’t orter.