13. A very well-known writer had a similar experience. He was selling copies of his first literary venture, and telegraphed to the publisher to send him "three hundred books at once." He answered. "Shall I send them on an emigrant train, or must they go first-class? Had to scour the city over to get them. You must be going into the hotel business on a great scale to need so many Cooks." I was bewildered; but all was explained when a copy of the dispatch showed that the telegraph clerk had mistaken the small "b" for a capital "C."
14. MAKING AN EXCUSE; OR, JOHNNY PEEP
[A guest pleading to be excused from a speech or a song might say that he wanted to be accounted as "Johnny Peep" in the following story which Allan Cunningham tells of Robert Burns.]
Strolling one day in Cumberland the poet lost his friends, and thinking to find them at a certain tavern he popped his head in at the door. Seeing no one there but three strangers, he apologized, and was about to retire, when one of the strangers called out, "Come in, Johnny Peep." This invitation the convivial poet readily accepted, and spent a very pleasant time with his newly-found companions. As the conversation began to flag, it was proposed that each should write a verse, and place it, together with two-and-six pence, under the candlestick, the best poet to take the half-crowns, while the unsuccessful rhymers were to settle the bill among them. According to Cunningham, Burns obtained the stakes by writing:
"Here am I, Johnny Peep;
I saw three sheep,
And these three sheep saw me.
Half-a-crown apiece
Will pay for their fleece,
And so Johnny Peep goes free."
15. STERN LOGIC
[Probably this boy would have seen the necessity of avoiding such rich banquets as this.]
"Say, ma, do they play base-ball in heaven?"
"Why, no, my dear; of course not. Why do you ask?"
"Huh! Well, you don't catch me being good and dying young then; that's all."