She repeated her command, as she thought, “Give me the cheese,” This time the grandee of a man-servant perceptibly laughed, but was immovable. In indignation, supposing him to be impertinent, or worse still, crazy, she rushed to the front door to call assistance, when she met the belated missionary, her husband, and promptly explained the situation.
“What did you say, my dear,” was his smiling query.
“‘Give me the cheese,’ was what I said.”
“Yes, but the word,” he insisted. ·
“I said beso,” replied the wife, still puzzled.
Then the unfeeling missionary fairly roared with laughter. His wife had begun to think that he, too, had gone mad, when he managed to keep calm long enough to explain. It was only a mistake in the sound of one letter that she had made, but it was a funnily fatal one that time. She should have said “queso” instead of “beso.” And instead of asking the man-servant for the “cheese” she had asked him without any qualification for a “kiss.”
MISSING THE POINT OF THE JOKES
A gentleman in conversation with his wife at dinner, said, “Mary, I heard a good conundrum down town to-day. If the devil should lose his tail, where would he go to get it repaired?” The answer was, “In the place where they re-tail bad spirits.” In the course of the evening a lady visitor dropped in, and Mary remarked, “Oh, I must tell you a good thing my husband got off at dinner. If the devil should lose his tail, where would he get it repaired?” The lady confessed her inability to answer, whereupon Mary said, “Why it’s where they sell liquor by the glass.”
“I’ve been digging over my garden,” said Brown, “and I’m all worn out.” “Ah!” remarked Fogg; “a new variety of earthenware, eh?” Fenderson, who was present, thought it was a good joke, and seeing Smith a short time afterward, of course he had to tell it. “I say, Smith,” said he, “Fogg just got off a neat thing. Brown was saying that he was all worn out digging in his garden, and Fogg asked him if that wasn’t a new kind of crockery-ware. What do you think of that?” “I don’t see the point.” “Darned if I do, either, now; but I thought I did when Fogg told it.”
A college professor, on parting with a student who had called on him, noticed that he had a new coat, and remarked that it was too short.