He had strayed into the wrong bureau.
A number of mischievous boys on their way to drive the cows home from pasture one evening, passing by the low and lonely cabin occupied by a poor old woman, hearing some one talking within, peeped through the window and saw the poor old body on her knees before the wide old-fashioned chimney. She was pitifully beseeching God to send her bread. The boys thinking it would be a good joke, ran back home and got some loaves of bread. The old lady was praying still for bread when they returned, all out of breath. They climbed up on the roof quietly and threw the loaves down the chimney, scrambled down to the door and listened to the poor old soul pouring her heart out in thanksgiving to God for sending her bread from heaven. Then they opened the door, and burst in on her with:
“Why, granny! Did you think God sent you that bread? We tumbled it down the chimbley!”
And she said, “Well, boys, God did send it even if the devil did bring it.”
NO WATER IN HIS
During a great temperance agitation out in Kansas a man was lecturing in a public school building on chemistry. An interested auditor, a farmer, couldn’t at all get the hang of the lecturer’s remarks, and asked his neighbor in the next seat: “Say, what does the lecturer mean by oxy-gin and hydro-gin, and what is the difference?” “Well,” was the answer, “they come to ’bout the same thing. There ain’t enough difference betwixt them to amount to much. You see, by oxy-gin the lecturer means pure gin, and by hydro-gin he means gin and water.”
“Thank you, sir,” replied Hayseed, “I reckon I’ll take oxy-gin. It goes further.”
RAISING CAIN
Robert Burdette, in one of his lectures, thus describes scientific education in primeval times: “When a placid but exceedingly unanimous-looking animal went rolling by, producing the general effect of an eclipse, Cain would shout: