BLUFFING

VISITOR (at private hospital)--"Can I see Lieutenant Barker, please?"

MATRON--"We do not allow ordinary visiting. May I ask if you're a
relative?"

VISITOR (boldly)--"Oh, yes! I'm his sister."

MATRON--"Dear me! I'm very glad to meet you. I'm his
mother."--_Punch_.

Yes, life's like poker sure enough. It pays to know just when to
bluff.

Half-way up the steep hill the stage-coach stopped. For the seventh
time the driver climbed down from his seat and opened and slammed the
rear door.

"What do you do that for?" asked a passenger, whose curiosity had got
the better of him.

"Sh-h; spake aisy. Don't let th' mare 'ear yer," cautioned the driver.
"Every toime she 'ears th' door shut she thinks some one has got down,
and it starrts 'er up quicker loike."

Ollie James is a big man personally and politically. He is a United
States senator from Kentucky, and he weighs a trifle more than three
hundred and fifty pounds.

On one occasion, in traveling from New York to Washington, he barely
caught the midnight train, and discovered that the only berth left was
an upper. Having learned from experience that the process of coiling
up his three hundred and fifty pounds and his six feet three inches in
an upper berth was tough stuff, he was indignant. He was particularly
enraged when he noticed that the lower directly under his berth was
occupied by a small man who tipped the scales at not more than a
hundred and twenty.

Ollie grasped the curtains of the berth, shook them vigorously,
growled once or twice, and remarked vindictively to the porter:

"So I've got to sleep in an upper, have I? The last time I did that it
was on a trip from Frankfort to Washington, and the blamed thing broke
down and mashed the man under me. Throw that grip up there, and I hope
to Heaven the berth will hold me."

Then he went back to the smoker and had a cigar.

When he returned, the little man was in the upper.

_As it is_

Weep and you are called a baby,
Laugh and you are called a fool,
Yield and you're called a coward,
Stand and you're called a mule,
Smile and they'll call you silly,
Frown and they'll call you gruff,
Put on a front like a millionaire,
And somebody calls you a bluff.

A successful old lawyer tells the following story anent the beginning
of his professional life: "I had just installed myself in my office,"
he said, "had put in a phone a