“What’s that for, ma?” said the child, to which the mother replied, “The lady who lives in that house, my dear, has had a little baby girl sent her.” The child thought a moment, looked at the quantity of straw, and said: “Awfully well packed, wasn’t she, ma?”
A politician, upon his arrival at one of the small towns in North Dakota, where he was to make a speech the following day, found that the two so-called hotels were crowded to the doors.
Not having telegraphed for accommodations, the politician discovered that he would have to make shift as best he could.
He was compelled for that night to sleep on a wire cot which had only some blankets and a sheet on it. As the statesman is a fat man, he found his improvised bed anything but comfortable.
“Well,” asked a friend, when the politician appeared in the dining-room in the morning, “how did you sleep?”
“Oh, fairly well,” replied the statesman, nonchalantly, “but I looked like a waffle when I got up.”
William Waldorf Astor, before he set out for his English home, said, apropos of the Russo-Japanese War: “Nations engaged in war not only harm each other, but they lay themselves open to harm at the hands of all sorts of other nations. In fact, two nations at war are in the defenseless and gullible position of a certain English married couple.
“This couple will fall out and cease to speak to one another for a year or more at a time. They have a beautiful country house, and there is a certain elderly matron, a great bore, who visits them continually. Some one asked this matron which of the pair was always inviting her. She answered, frankly, ‘Neither invites me ever, but since they don’t speak to each other, each always thinks I am the other’s guest.’”