THE LAW OF COMPENSATION.—317.
Joe being rather remiss in his Sunday-school lesson, the teacher remarked that he hadn't a very good memory. "No, ma'am," said he, hesitating, "but I have got a first-rate forgettery!"
COULDN'T MAKE AN IMPRESSION.—318.
A little boy, of four years, who had been lectured by his aunt on the evil of disobedience to parents, was shown the example of a boy who disobeyed his mother, and went to the river and got drowned. "Did he die?" said Bobby, who had given the story due attention. "Yes," was the serious reply. "What did they do with him?" asked Bobby, after a moment's reflection. "Carried him home," replied his aunt, with due solemnity. After turning the matter over in his mind, as it was hoped profitably, he looked up and closed the conversation by asking, "Why didn't they chuck him in again."
THE MINISTER'S RECEPTION.—319.
A certain lady one day had been much annoyed by the ringing of her door-bell by the mischievous boys in the vicinity, and determined to be made no more a fool of by going to the door. In the course of the forenoon, however, her minister called to see her, dressed in his nicest manner. He ascended the steps, and gently drew the bell-handle, when the lady shouted from the entry—"I see you, my boy! if I catch you I'll wring your neck!" The affrighted gentleman rushed down the steps through a crowd of young scamps, and was not seen at the lady's house again.
PRINTERS' MISTAKES.—320.
During the Mexican war, one newspaper hurriedly announced an important item of news from Mexico, that General Pillow and thirty-seven of his men had been lost in a bottle. Some other paper informed the public not long ago "that a man in a brown surtout was yesterday brought before the police court, on a charge of having stolen a small ox from a lady's workbag. The stolen property was found in his waistcoat pocket." "A rat" says another paper, "descending the river, came in contact with a steamboat, and so serious was the injury done to the boat that great exertions were necessary to save it." An English paper once stated that the Russian General Raekinoffkowsky "was found dead with a long word in his mouth." It was, perhaps, the same paper that, in giving a description of a battle between the Poles and the Russians, said that "the conflict was dreadful, and the enemy was repulsed with great laughter." Again: "A gentleman was yesterday brought up to answer the charge of having eaten a stage driver for demanding more than his fare. At the late Fourth of July dinner, in the town of Charlestown, none of the poultry were eatable except the owls."