onth."

"Foah de Lord's sake!" ejaculated the first negro. "You-all carried
moah'n a million passengers? Go on with you, nigger; we dun kill moah
passengers than you carry."

It was on a little branch railway in a southern state that the New
England woman ventured to refer to the high rates.

"It seems to me five cents a mile is extortion," she said, with
frankness, to her southern cousin.

"It's a big lot of money to pay if you think of it by the mile," said
the southerner, in her soft drawl; "but you just think how cheap it is
by the hour, Cousin Annie--only about thirty-five cents."--_Youth's
Companion_.

RAPID TRANSIT

One cold, wintry morning a man of tall and angular build was walking
down a steep hill at a quick pace. A treacherous piece of ice under the
snow caused him to lose control of his feet; he began to slide and was
unable to stop.

At a cross-street half-way down the decline he encountered a large,
heavy woman, with her arms full of bundles. The meeting was sudden, and
before either realized it a collision ensued and both were sliding down
hill, a grand ensemble--the thin man underneath, the fat woman and
bundles on top. When the bottom was reached and the woman was trying in
vain to recover her breath and her feet, these faint words were borne to
her ear:

"Pardon me, madam, but you will have to get off here. This is as far as
I go."

READING

_See_ Books and Reading.

REAL ESTATE AGENTS

Little Nelly told little Anita what she termed a "little fib."

ANITA--"A fib is the same as a story, and a story is the same as a lie."

NELLY--"No, it is not."

ANITA--"Yes, it is, because my father said so, and my father is a
professor at the university."

NELLY--"I don't care if he is. My father is a real estate man, and he
knows more about lying than your father does."

REALISM

The storekeeper at Yount, Idaho, tells the following tale of Ole Olson,
who later became the little town's mayor.

"One night, just before closin' up time, Ole, hatless, coatless, and
breathless, come rushin' into the store, an' droppin' on his knees
yelled, 'Yon, Yon, hide me, hide me! Ye sheriff's after me!'

"'I've no place to hide you here, Ole,' said I.

"'You moost, you moost!' screamed Ole.

"'Crawl into that gunny-sack then,' said I.

"He'd no more'n gotten hid when in runs the sheriff.

"'Seen Ole?' said he.

"'Don't see him here,' said I, without lyin'.

"Then