A good thing out of Nazareth
Comes up sometimes, I guess,
On hand, all right, to help and cheer
A sucker in distress."

"I believe not," said Mr. Cooly.

"It's a hymn," said J. Pinkney Bloom. "Now, show me the way to a
livery stable, son, for I'm going to hit the dirt road back to Okochee."

CONFESSIONS OF A HUMORIST

There was a painless stage of incubation that lasted twenty-five years,
and then it broke out on me, and people said I was It.

But they called it humor instead of measles.

The employees in the store bought a silver inkstand for the senior
partner on his fiftieth birthday. We crowded into his private office
to present it. I had been selected for spokesman, and I made a little
speech that I had been preparing for a week.

It made a hit. It was full of puns and epigrams and funny twists that
brought down the house--which was a very solid one in the wholesale
hardware line. Old Marlowe himself actually grinned, and the employees
took their cue and roared.

My reputation as a humorist dates from half-past nine o'clock on that
morning. For weeks afterward my fellow clerks fanned the flame of my
self-esteem. One by one they came to me, saying what an awfully clever
speech that was, old man, and carefully explained to me the point of
each one of my jokes.

Gradually I found that I was expected to keep it up. Others might
speak sanely on business matters and the day's topics, but from me
something gamesome and airy was required.

I was expected to crack jokes about the crockery and lighten up the
granite ware with persiflage. I was second bookkeeper, and if I failed
to show up a balance sheet without something comic about the footings
or could find no cause for laughter in an invoice of plows, the other
clerks were disappointed. By degrees my fame spread, and I became a
local "character." Our town was small enough to make this possible.
The daily newspaper quoted me. At social gatherings I was
indispensable.

I believe I did possess considerable wit and a facility for quick and
spontaneous repartee. This gift I cultivated and improved by practice.
And the nature of it was kindly and genial, not running to sarcasm or
offending others. People began to smile when they saw me coming, and
by the time we had met I generally had the word ready to broaden the
smile into a laugh.

I had married early. We had a charming boy of three and a girl of
five. Naturally, we lived in