A lieutenant of the 10th United States Infantry recently met with a sad rebuff at Fort Kearney. The lieutenant was promenading in full uniform one day, and approached a volunteer on sentry, who challenged him with "Halt! who comes there?" The lieutenant, with contempt in every lineament of his face, expressed his feeling with an indignant "Ass!" The sentry's reply, apt and quick, came: "Advance, Ass, and give the countersign."
A CAUTIOUS WITNESS.—189.
A witness in a certain court, not a thousand miles from Rappahannock, on being interrogated as to whether the defendant in a certain case was drunk, replied: "Well, I can't say that I have seen him drunk exactly, but I once saw him sitting in the middle of the floor, making grabs in the air, and saying that he'd be dogoned if he don't catch the bed the next time it ran around him!" This story reminds us of a cautious witness in an assault case in Baltimore, who testified that he did not see the prisoner strike the man, but he saw him take away his hand very quick, and the man fell!
A POETICAL EDITOR.—190.
The editor of an American paper has taken to writing poetry, as the following will show:—"Brethren,—Is there a man with soul so dead, who never to himself hath said: I will my country paper take, both for mine own and family's sake? If such there be, let him repent, and have the paper to him sent; and, if he'd pass a happy winter, he in advance should pay the printer."
NO PATIENTS LIVING.—191.
A jolly fellow had an office next door to a doctor's shop. One day a gentleman of the old fogey school blundered into the wrong shop. "Is the doctor in?" "Don't live here," said the lawyer, who was in full scribble over some old documents. "Oh! I thought this was his office?" "Next door." "Pray, sir, can you tell me if he has many patients?" "Not living." The old gentleman told the story in the vicinity, and the doctor threatened the lawyer with a libel suit.
CRIMINAL DIDN'T SEE IT.—192.
A criminal being asked, in the usual form, why judgment of death should not be passed against him, answered: "Why, I think there has been quite enough said about it already. If you please, we'll drop the subject."