up inside of it. He turned excitedly to
his steward:

"Look here, where's the ruin, man?"

"The ruin, my lord?" replied the steward. "Oh, that ould thing! Sure,
I used it to build the wall with."

RUMMAGE SALES

"Oh, John," sobbed Mrs. John, "I've done something awful, and I'm
almost afraid to tell you--but I must! I made a most awful mistake
this morning and sent your new dress suit to the rummage sale instead
of your old one, and when I found out what I had done and ran over to
get it back, it had been sold."

"That's all right, Mabel, dear," said John amiably. "I stopped in at
the sale myself and bought it back for thirty-five cents."

SACRIFICES

"George, where are your school-books?"

"When notices appeared that books were wanted for the wounded, I gave
mine to them."

"But, my dear," said his wife, after he had complained about the food
the new cook had brought in. "You know during these terrible times it
is absolutely necessary that we make great sacrifices."

"Oh, of course, but what I object to is that cook's making hers in the
form of a burnt offering."

SAFETY

Throughout the trial the Englishman, whose crimes had been many and
black, bore himself with an air of complete indifference and received
the sentence of the supreme penalty with a bored yawn. After he had
been led on to the scaffold and just as the hood and noose were about
to be placed over his head, the attendant priest, still persisting
in his attempts to awaken penitence, in spite of the doomed man's
deafness to his prayers, asked him again for a final statement.

The prisoner's gaze wandered to the noose and rested there
meditatively. Suddenly he turned to the priest:

"See here, old chap," he demanded, "is this thing perfectly safe?"

Mark Twain once sat in the smoking room of a steamer and listened
for an hour to some remarkable stories. Then he drawled, "Boys, these
feats of yours that you've been telling about recall an adventure of
my own in Hannibal. There was a fire in Hannibal one night, and Old
Man Hankinson got caught in the fourth story of the burning house. It
looked as if he was a goner. None of the ladders was long enough to
reach him. The crowd stared at one another with awed eyes. Nobody
could think of anything to do.

"Then all of a sudden, boys, an idea occurred to me. 'Fetch a rope!' I
yelled.

"Somebody fetched a rope, and with great presence of mind I flung the
end of it up