to ninety-five
cents, I see that they have come."

_See also_ Salvation.

CONUNDRUMS

"Mose, what is the difference between a bucket of milk in a rain storm
and a conversation between two confidence men?"

"Say, boss, dat nut am too hard to crack; I'se gwine to give it up."

"Well, Mose, one is a thinning scheme and the other is a skinning
theme."

CONVERSATION

"My dog understands every word I say."

"Um."

"Do you doubt it?"

"No, I do not doubt the brute's intelligence. The scant attention he
bestows upon your conversation would indicate that he understands it
perfectly."

THE TALL AND AGGRESSIVE ONE--"Excuse me, but I'm in a hurry! You've had
that phone twenty minutes and not said a word!"

THE SHORT AND MEEK ONE--"Sir, I'm talking to my wife."--_Puck_.

HUS (during a quarrel)--"You talk like an idiot."

WIFE--"I've got to talk so you can understand me."

Irving Bacheller, it appears, was on a tramping tour through New
England. He discovered a chin-bearded patriarch on a roadside rock.

"Fine corn," said Mr. Bacheller, tentatively, using a hillside filled
with straggling stalks as a means of breaking the conversational ice.

"Best in Massachusetts," said the sitter.

"How do you plow that field?" asked Mr. Bacheller. "It is so very
steep."

"Don't plow it," said the sitter. "When the spring thaws come, the rocks
rolling down hill tear it up so that we can plant corn."

"And how do you plant it?" asked Mr. Bacheller. The sitter said that he
didn't plant it, really. He stood in his back door and shot the seed in
with a shotgun.

"Is that the truth?" asked Bacheller.

"H--ll no," said the sitter, disgusted. "That's conversation."

Conversation is the laboratory and workshop of the student.--_Emerson_.

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than
ten years' study of books.--_Longfellow_.

COOKERY

"John, John," whispered an alarmed wife, poking her sleeping husband in
the ribs. "Wake up, John; there are burglars in the pantry and they're
eating all my pies."

"Well, what do we care," mumbled John, rolling over, "so long as they
don't die in the house?"

"This is certainly a modern cook-book in every way."

"How so?"

"It says: 'After mixing your bread, you can watch two reels at the
movies before putting it in the oven.'"--_Puck_.

There was recently presented to a newly-married young woman in Baltimore
such a un