In another instant the point of a cotton umbrella was thrust from the window, followed by the wrathful injunction: “Scat, you gray-headed wretch!”
There is a young physician who has never been able to smoke a cigar. “Just one poisons me,” says the youthful doctor.
Recently the doctor was invited to a large dinner-party. When the women had left the table cigars were accepted by all the men except the physician. Seeing his friend refuse the cigar the host in astonishment exclaimed:
“What, not smoking? Why, my dear fellow, you lose half your dinner!”
“Yes, I know I do,” meekly replied the doctor, “but if I smoked one I should lose the whole of it!”
Once, when Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes was at a charitable fair, he was asked to furnish a letter for the “post-office.” So he placed a one-dollar note inside a sheet of paper and wrote on the first page:
“Dear lady, whosoe’er thou art,
Turn this poor page with trembling care;