Mr. Blaine used to tell this story:
Once in Dublin, toward the end of the opera, Satan was conducting Faust through a trap-door which represented the gates of Hades. His Majesty got through all right—he was used to going below—but Faust, who was quite stout, got only about half-way in, and no squeezing would get him any farther. Suddenly an Irishman in the gallery exclaimed, devoutly, “Thank God, hell is full.”
While Mark Twain was ill in London a report that he had died was circulated. It spread to America and reached Charles Dudley Warner in Hartford, Connecticut. Mr. Warner immediately cabled to London to find out if it was really so. The cablegram in some way came directly into the humorist’s hands, and he forthwith cabled the following reply: “Reports of my death greatly exaggerated.”
GEORGE T. LANIGAN
THE FOX AND THE CROW
A crow, having secured a Piece of Cheese, flew with its Prize to a lofty Tree, and was preparing to devour the Luscious Morsel, when a crafty Fox, halting at the foot of the Tree, began to cast about how he might obtain it.
“How tasteful is your Dress,” he cried, in well-feigned Ecstacy; “it cannot surely be that your Musical Education has been neglected? Will you not oblige——?”