r in Indiana noticed that a farmer was having trouble with his
horse. It would start, go slowly for a short distance, and then stop
again. Thereupon the farmer would have great difficulty in getting it
started. Finally the traveler approached and asked, solicitously:

"Is your horse sick?"

"Not as I knows of."

"Is he balky?"

"No. But he is so danged 'fraid I'll say whoa and he won't hear me, that
he stops every once in a while to listen."

A German farmer was in search of a horse.

"I've got just the horse for you," said the liveryman. "He's five years
old, sound as a dollar and goes ten miles without stopping."

The German threw his hands skyward.

"Not for me," he said, "not for me. I live eight miles from town, und
mit dot horse I haf to valk back two miles."

There's a grocer who is notorious for his wretched horse flesh.

The grocer's boy is rather a reckless driver. He drove one of his
master's worst nags a little too hard one day, and the animal fell ill
and died.

"You've killed my horse, curse you!" the grocer said to the boy the next
morning.

"I'm sorry, boss," the lad faltered.

"Sorry be durned!" shouted the grocer. "Who's going to pay me for my
horse?"

"I'll make it all right, boss," said the boy soothingly. "You can take
it out of my next Saturday's wages."

Before Abraham Lincoln became President he was called out of town on
important law business. As he had a long distance to travel he hired a
horse from a livery stable. When a few days later he returned he took
the horse back to the stable and asked the man who had given it to him:
"Keep this horse for funerals?"

"No, indeed," answered the man indignantly.

"Glad to hear it," said Lincoln; "because if you did the corpse wouldn't
get there in time for the resurrection."

HOSPITALITY

Night was approaching and it was raining hard. The traveler dismounted
from his horse and rapped at the door of the one farmhouse he had struck
in a five-mile stretch of traveling. No one came to the door.

As he stood on the doorstep the water from the eaves trickled down his
collar. He rapped again. Still no answer. He could feel the stream of
water coursing down his back. Another spell of pounding, and finally the
red head of a lad of twelve was stuck out of the second story window.

"Watcher want?" it asked.

"I want to know if I can stay here over night," the traveler answered
testily.

The red-headed lad watched the ma