At a Camp Fire of the Grand Army of the Republic a comrade, being called on for a speech, got up and said, “Now, boys, you all know I can’t make a speech; I never could. And the Commander shouldn’t have called on me to get up. I feel now like my brother Sam felt, one summer night, when he hadn’t anything particular to do. He wandered into a Methodist prayer-meeting and sat down near the door in one of those high-backed old-fashioned pews. He had no idea that he’d be called on to say anything, or he wouldn’t have gone near, but what did the blame preacher do when he spied Sam but call on him to pray! Sam was nearly scared to death. He didn’t know what to do; but when he saw all the congregation getting down on their hunkers between the pews where they couldn’t see him, and the door was open, he heard the bugle call to “Retreat,” got down on all fours and turned turtle, and crawled out of that church on a double quick, and skipped for Home, sweet Home.”
A LONELY PLACE
“Mamma,” said a little girl, “George Washington never told a lie, did he?” Being so assured, she continued: “And I guess pretty nearly everybody else did?” This being likewise admitted as probable, she went on, “I guess even father sometimes tells a fib, doesn’t he?” It was hard to admit that, but it had to be. “And, mamma, you tell some once in a while? I know I do.” When this was also reluctantly confessed, the child drew a sigh and said, “Oh, mamma! What a lonely place Heaven will be, with nobody in it but God and George Washington!”
THE PRICE OF A DOG
A man had a dog, and the dog was such a poor, miserable cur that everybody wondered at the attachment of the man to such a beast. One day in the barroom of a tavern a number of young men were rallying him on his dog, and wanted to know how much he’d take for his pet. The man said that he loved that dog so much that he couldn’t think of parting with him—he “wouldn’t take twenty dollars for that dog.” His tormentors, knowing him to be thoroughly conscientious, although poor, and that when he had given his word he would never go back on it, got together forty silver half-dollars, piled them up on the bar, and called on him to decide whether he would rather have that miserable dog or all that pile of silver? “No, gentlemen,” said he, walking up to the bar and counting the money carefully, “I stick to what I said. I won’t take twenty dollars for Pete. It’s too much. Nineteen dollars and a half is every cent he’s worth. The dog is yours.” Leaving one half-dollar on the bar, he scooped the other thirty-nine into his hat.
WHY THE HAWKEYE MAN COULDN’T PAY
Iowa, 12, 3, ’06.
Dear Sir:—Your sumptuous letter received, and in reply will say that they come frequently, and it would have afforded the boys much amusement had not the melancholy thought come with it that you had no better sense than to abuse, slander and dun a gentleman.
You speak of honor, if you are honorable you know not whereof you speak. You also speak of causing me much trouble, my land, I have already trouble enough to send a whole brigade of you wise boys over the road fifty times. I will give you a history of this case, and if you are surprised at my actions in regard to your claim for 10.00 you are undoubtedly the worst set of misers on earth.
To begin with in 1891 I bought a restaurant on credit. In 1892 I bought an OX team, a timber cart, a pair of Texas ponies, a gold watch, a breech-loading shotgun, A repeating rifle, A milk cow, A pair of fine hogs, and a set of books all on the instalment plan, and hired hands to dig a fish pond. In 1905 my restaurant burned flat to the ground and never left me a thing, one of my ponies died and I hired the other one to an infernal, insignificant drummer. He killed him driving him too hard. Then I joined the farmers alliance and Methodist church, and took advantage of the homestead exemption and honest debtors’ relief law, and then had my applycation wrote out to join the masons. In the latter part of 1905 my father died and my mother married a Mexican. And my brother Bud was lynched for horse stealing. My sister choked to death on a button and I had to pay her funeral expenses.