“That is the most realistic music I ever heard,” remarked Cleveland.
“What are they trying to play?” asked Secretary Olney, who accompanied him.
“‘Hail to the Chief’!” replied the President, with a cheerful smile.
The chaplain of one of his Majesty’s ships was giving a magic-lantern lecture, the subject of which was “Scenes from the Bible.” He arranged with a sailor who possessed a gramophone to discourse appropriate music between the slides. The first picture shown was Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The sailor cudgeled his brain but could think of nothing suitable. “Play up,” whispered the chaplain. Suddenly a large idea struck the jolly tar and to the great consternation of the chaplain and the delight of the audience the gramophone burst forth with the strains of “There’s only one girl in the world for me.”
The craze for giving and accepting coupons for purchases of merchandise, to be redeemed by prizes, was given a more or less merited rebuke by Nat C. Goodwin. He bought a bill of goods, and the salesman offered him the coupons that the amount of the purchase called for. Mr. Goodwin shook his head. “I don’t want ’em,” he said.
“You had better take them, sir,” persisted the clerk; “we redeem them with very handsome prizes. If you can save up a thousand coupons we give a grand piano.”
“Say, look here,” replied Mr. Goodwin, “if I ever drank enough of your whisky or smoked enough of your cigars to get a thousand of those coupons I wouldn’t want a piano. I’d want a harp.”