He accordingly invited his company, and instructed a servant to let fall a roast of beef as he was bringing it to the table.
When the “accident” occurred, he exclaimed: “That’s a lapsus linguæ.”
Nobody laughed, and he said again, “I say that’s a lapsus linguæ,” and still no one laughed.
A screw was loose somewhere; so he told about the tongue falling, and they did laugh.
A red-haired lady, who was ambitious of literary distinction, found but a poor sale for her book. A gentleman, in speaking of her disappointment, said: “Her hair is red [read] if her book is not.” An auditor, in attempting to relate the joke elsewhere, said, “She has red hair, if her book hasn’t.”
“Why is this,” said the waiter, holding up a common kitchen utensil, “more remarkable than Napoleon Bonaparte? Because Napoleon was a great man, but this is a grater.” When the funny man reproduced it in his circle, he asked the question right, but answered it, “Because Napoleon was a great man, but this is a nutmeg grater.”
A man who owns a book store facetiously remarked that he couldn’t leave Chicago this summer because he kept stationery. Smarty heard him, and he went away to spring a joke. This is the way he sprung it: “Mitchell can’t go out of town this summer. Why?” “Don’t know.” “Because he sells books and papers.” And he never can understand why the other fellow didn’t laugh.
In a certain court in Maine the proceedings were delayed by the failure of a witness named Sarah Mony to arrive. After waiting a long time for Sarah the court concluded to wait no longer, and wishing to crack his little joke, remarked, “This court will adjourn without Sarah-mony.” Everybody laughed except one man, who sat in solemn meditation for five minutes, and then burst into a hearty guffaw, exclaiming, “I see it! I see it!” When he went home he tried to tell the joke to his wife. “There was a witness named Mary Mony who didn’t come,” said he, “and so the court said, ‘We’ll adjourn without Mary-mony,’” “I don’t see any point to that,” said his wife. “I know it,” said he, “I didn’t at first; but you will in about five minutes.”
It is interesting to observe how the old stories turn up, in brand-new clothes, but the same old stories. A Boston paper said that Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and the venerable Dr. Peabody, of Cambridge, once had an appointment to see a statue of Eurydice. Dr. Holmes arrived first, and when a few moments later his friend drove up in a cab he greeted him with the very obvious pun: “Ah, you rid, I see.” Dr. Peabody was wonderfully pleased with this sally, and on his return attempted to repeat it to his family. “Dr. Holmes was extremely witty this afternoon,” he said. “We went to see the Eurydice, and when I drove up he said just as quick as a flash, ‘Ah, Doctor, I see you came in a buggy.’” The same week that this appeared in print the following appeared in a New York weekly journal: Speaking of how some people always misquote, a Southern lady once told the following: “A cavalry officer, bespattered with mud, entered an opera box during the representation of ‘Orpheus and Eurydice,’ and exclaimed: ‘Well I have just ridden ten miles to see Orpheus—’ ‘And Eurydice,’ remarked a young belle, amid much laughter. Having occasion to visit the opposite box, he was asked what caused all that laughter, whereupon he laughed heartily and said, ‘Oh, that Miss Eyre is the wittiest girl I know; when I said I had come to see Orpheus,’ she said, ‘And I presume that you came on horseback, Captain.’”
Fenderson heard a good joke the other day about a man who had two cork legs, the key of the same being that he was born in Cork. Fenderson determined to spring it at the supper table. And this is how he did it: “I heard a funny thing to-day. It was about a man who had two cork legs, and he got along just as well as anybody else, and he suffered with cold feet, too. They were cork legs, you know, because he was born in Dublin. Good joke, eh? No? It doesn’t seem to be much of a joke, that’s a fact; but you’d ought to hear the fellows laugh when they heard it last night. I laughed myself, but there doesn’t seem to be much in it, after all. I guess the fun was in the way that chap told it.”