They had driven fourteen miles to the lake, and then rowed six miles
across the lake to get to the railroad station, when the Chicago man
asked:

"How in the world do you get your mail and newspapers here in the
winter when the storms are on?"

"Wa-al, we don't sometimes. I've seen this lake thick up so that it
was three weeks before we got a Chicago paper," answered the man from
"nowhere."

"Well, you were cut off," said the Chicago man.

"Ya-as, we were so," was the reply. "Still, the Chicago folks were
just as badly off."

"How so?"

"Wa-al," drawled the man, "we didn't know what was going on in
Chicago, of course. But then, neither did Chicago folks know what was
going on down here."

PUBLIC SERVICE CORPORATIONS

The attorney demanded to know how many secret societies the witness
belonged to, whereupon the witness objected and appealed to the court.

"The court sees no harm in the question," answered the judge. "You may
answer."

"Well, I belong to three."

"What are they?"

"The Knights of Pythias, the Odd Fellows, and the gas company."

"Yes, he had some rare trouble with his eyes," said the celebrated
oculist. "Every time he went to read he would read double."

"Poor fellow," remarked the sympathetic person. "I suppose that
interfered with his holding a good position?"

"Not at all. The gas company gobbled him up and gave him a lucrative
job reading gas-meters."

PUBLIC SPEAKERS

ORATOR--"I thought your paper was friendly to me?"

EDITOR--"So it is. What's the matter?"

ORATOR--"I made a speech at the dinner last night, and you didn't
print a line of it."

EDITOR--"Well, what further proof do you want?"

TRAVELING LECTURER FOR SOCIETY (to the remaining listener)--"I should
like to thank you, sir, for so attentively hearing me to the end of a
rather too long speech."

LOCAL MEMBER OF SOCIETY--"Not at all, sir. I'm the second speaker."

Ex-senator Spooner of Wisconsin says the best speech of introduction
he ever heard was delivered by the German mayor of a small town in
Wisconsin, where Spooner had been engaged to speak.

The mayor said:

"Ladies und shentlemens, I haf been asked to indrotoose you to the
Honorable Senator Spooner, who vill make to you a speech, yes. I haf
now done so; he vill now do so."

"When I arose to speak," related a martyred statesman, "some one
hurled a base, cowardly egg at me and it struck me in the chest."

"And what kind of