The student, with an air of resignation, replied, “It will be long enough before I get another.”
The professor enjoyed the joke heartily, and going to a meeting of the college faculty just afterwards, he entered the room in great glee and said, “Young Sharp got off such a good joke just now. He called on me a little while ago, and as he was leaving I noticed his new coat, and told him it was too short, and he said, ‘It will be a long time before I get another.’”
No one laughed, and the professor, sobering down, remarked, “It don’t seem as funny as when he said it.”
Sam Ward was once seated opposite a well-known Senator at a dinner in Washington. This Senator was very bald, and the light shining on the breadth of scalp attracted Ward’s attention.
“Can you tell me,” he asked his neighbor, “why the Senator’s head is like Alaska?”
“I’m sure I don’t know.”
“Because it’s a great white bear place.”
The neighbor was immensely tickled, and he hailed the Senator across the table:
“Say, Senator, Ward’s just got off a very smart thing about you.”
“What is it?”