"Then what is it?"
"Answering questions, ma'am."
"My father and I know everything in the world," said a small boy to his companion.
"All right," said the latter. "Where's Asia?"
It was a stiff question, but the little fellow answered coolly: "That is one of the questions my father knows."
Owen Wister, the novelist, apropos of useless questions, once told of a man who stood before a mirror in his room, his face lathered and an open razor in his hand. His wife came in. She looked at him and said, "Are you shaving?" The man, a foe to surplusage, replied fiercely, "No; I am blacking the kitchen range. Where are you—out driving or at a four-o'clock tea?"
See also Curiosity.