satisfy
people in assigning them to billiard tables, telephone booths and cots
in the halls."

The surging crowd along Broadway
Was stirred so strangely yesterday.
It stood on tiptoe, eyes aglow,
It stared, and turned to whisper low
Of wonders such as seldom pass
That way. What swayed the living mass?
What marvel from the fabled isles
That drew the eye from Paris styles?
A street car left the track perhaps?
Two bootblacks nabbed for shooting craps?
A fire to call the engines out?
A skidding auto turned about?
A homebrew Bacchus' raisin dance?
At these perhaps the crowd would glance
But never act like this at all.
Amazed, I asked a copper tall
And broad, and heard at last;
A horse and buggy just went past.

--_Roland D. Johnson_.

An English novelist took his first look at Broadway aflame with
light. He read the flashing and leaping signs and said: "How much more
wonderful it would be for a man who couldn't read."

UNCLE EZRA--"Eph Hoskins must have had some time down in New York."

UNCLE EBEN--"Yep. Reckon he traveled a mighty swift pace. Eph's wife
said that when Eph got back and went into his room he looked at the
bed, kicked it, and said, 'What's that darn thing for?"--_Judge_.

After Mark Twain had been in New York for five years, he wrote to his
folks back home that he was the loneliest man in the world!

"What!" exclaimed his people, "in New York _and lonely_!"

"Yes," wrote Mark; "I'm the only man in this town that doesn't touch a
drop."

TEACHER--"Do you know the population of New York?"

MAMIE BACKROW--"Not all of them, ma'am, but then, we've only lived
here two years."--_Puck_.

NEWSBOYS

NEWSBOY--"Great mystery! Fifty victims! Paper, mister?"

PASSER-BY--"Here, boy, I'll take one." (After reading a moment.) "Say,
boy, there's nothing of the kind in this paper. Where is it?"

NEWSBOY--"That's the mystery, guvnor. You're the fifty-first victim."

NEWSPAPERS

APPLICANT--"I'm ready to begin at the bottom, sir."

NEWSPAPER PROPRIETOR--"Well, what's your idea?"

"To start first with the leading editorials and gradually work myself
up to the sporting page."

"Never state as a fact anything you are not certain about," the great
editor warned the new reporter, "or you will get us into libel
suits. In such cases use the words, 'alleged,' 'claimed,' 'reputed,'
'rumored,' and so on."

And then this paragraph appeared in t