A gentleman, nearly a century old, on hearing that a neighbor of his had died at 85 years of age, remarked that all his family were short-lived!
In Kentucky, a traveller on the other side of the table at a hotel, will address you with, “I say, stranger, give us a leetle sprinkle of that bread, if you please.”
A man seeing an oyster seller pass by, called out, “Hallo! give me a pound of oysters.” “We sell oysters by measure, not by weight,” replied the other. “Well, then give me a yard of them!”
A lady passing through New Hampshire observed the following notice on a board: “Horses taken in to grass; long tails three shillings and sixpence; short tails two shillings.” She asked the owner of the land the difference of the price. He answered, “Why, you see, marm, the long tails can brush away the flies, but the short ones are so tormented by them that they can hardly eat at all.”
Thomas Wilson, who was Bishop of the Isle of Man about a century since, was a particularly benevolent man. To supply the poor with clothing, he kept in constant employment at his own house several tailors and shoemakers. On one occasion, in giving orders to one of his tailors to make him a cloak, he directed that it should be very plain, having simply a button and loop to keep it together. “But, my lord,” said the tailor, “what would become of the poor button-makers, if every one thought in that way? they would be starved outright.” “Do you say so, John?” replied the bishop; “why then button it all over, John.”