mother, don't
start any peace talk--you just hold my coat for about five minutes."

BOILED

Not long ago the editor of an English paper ordered a story of a certain
length, but when the story arrived he discovered that the author had
written several hundred words too many.

The paper was already late in going to press so there was no
alternative--the story must be condensed to fit the allotted space.
Therefore the last few paragraphs were cut down to a single sentence. It
read thus:

"The Earl took a Scotch high-ball, his hat, his departure, no notice of
his pursuers, a revolver out of his hip pocket, and finally, his life."

FORCED INTO IT

Even the excessive politeness of some men may be explained on purely
practical grounds. Of a certain suburbanite, a friend said:

"I heard him speaking most beautifully of his wife to another lady on
the train just now. Rather unusual in a man these days."

"Not under the circumstances," said the other man. "That was a new cook
he was escorting out."

HOODOOED

Appealing to a lady for aid, an old darky told her that through the
Dayton flood he had lost everything he had in the world, including his
wife and six children.

"Why," said the lady, "I have seen you before and I have helped you.
Were you not the colored man who told me you had lost your wife and six
children by the sinking of the _Titanic_?"

"Yeth, ma'am, dat wuz me. Mos' unfort'nit man dat eber wuz. Kain't keep
a fam'ly nohow."

SAFE DEPOSIT

An old lady, who was sitting on the porch of a hotel at Asheville, North
Carolina, where also there were a number of youngsters, was approached
by one of them with this query:

"Can you crack nuts?"

The old lady smiled and said: "No, my dear, I can't. I lost all my teeth
years ago."

"Then," said the boy, extending two hands full of walnuts, "please hold
these while I go and get some more."

THE MATTER WITH KANSAS

Governor Capper, of Kansas, recently pointed out what he deemed to be
the "matter with Kansas." The average Kansan, he said, gets up in the
morning in a house made in Michigan, at the sound of an alarm clock made
in Illinois; puts on his Missouri overalls; washes his hands with
Cincinnati soap in a Pennsylvania basin; sits down to a Grand Rapids
table; eats Battle Creek breakfast food and Chicago bacon cooked on a
Michigan range; puts New York harness on a span of Missouri mules and
hitches them to a South Bend wagon, or starts up hi