Jokes For All Occasions | Page 7

passenger coach behind the long
line of freight cars, he addressed the official with great seriousness:
"I ask you, conductor, why don't you take the cow-catcher off the
engine and put it behind the car here? As it is now, there ain't a thing to
hinder a cow from strolling into a car and biting a passenger."
Similar extravagance appears in another story of a crawling train. The
conductor demanded a ticket from a baldheaded old man whose face
was mostly hidden in a great mass of white whiskers.
"I give it to ye," declared the ancient.
"I don't reckon so," the conductor answered. "Where did you get on?"
"At Perkins' Crossin'," he of the hoary beard replied.
The conductor shook his head emphatically.
"Wasn't anybody got aboard at Perkins' Crossin' 'cept one little boy."

"I," wheezed the aged man, "was that little boy."
In like fashion, we tell of a man so tall that he had to go up on a ladder
to shave himself--and down cellar to put his boots on.
We Americans are good-natured, as is necessary for humor, and we
have brains, as is necessary for wit, and we have the vitality that makes
creation easy, even inevitable. So there is never any dearth among us of
the spirit of laughter, of its multiform products that by their power to
amuse make life vastly more agreeable. Every newspaper, and most
magazines carry their quota of jests. Never, anywhere, was the good
story so universally popular as in America today. It is received with
gusto in the councils of government, in church, in club, in cross-roads
store. The teller of good stories is esteemed by all, a blessing
undisguised. The collection that follows in this volume is, it is believed,
of a sort that will help mightily to build an honorable fame for the
narrator.
For greater convenience in references to the volume, the various stories
and anecdotes are placed under headings arranged in alphabetical order.
The heading in every case indicates the subject to which the narration
may be directly applied. This will be found most useful in selecting
illustrations for addresses of any sort, or for use in arguments. History
tells us how Lincoln repeatedly carried conviction by expressing his
ideas through the medium of a story. His method is rendered available
for any one by this book.

STORIES.
JOKES FOR ALL OCCASIONS
ABSENTMINDEDNESS
The man of the house finally took all the disabled umbrellas to the
repairer's. Next morning on his way to his office, when he got up to
leave the street car, he absentmindedly laid hold of the umbrella
belonging to a woman beside him, for he was in the habit of carrying

one. The woman cried "Stop thief!" rescued her umbrella and covered
the man with shame and confusion.
That same day, he stopped at the repairer's, and received all eight of his
umbrellas duly restored. As he entered a street car, with the unwrapped
umbrellas tucked under his arm, he was horrified to behold glaring at
him the lady of his morning adventure. Her voice came to him charged
with a withering scorn:
"Huh! Had a good day, didn't you!"
* * *
The absentminded inventor perfected a parachute device. He was taken
up in a balloon to make a test of the apparatus. Arrived at a height of a
thousand feet, he climbed over the edge of the basket, and dropped out.
He had fallen two hundred yards when he remarked to himself, in a
tone of deep regret:
"Dear me! I've gone and forgotten my umbrella."
* * *
The professor, who was famous for the wool-gathering of his wits,
returned home, and had his ring at the door answered by a new maid.
The girl looked at him inquiringly:
"Um--ah--is Professor Johnson at home?" he asked, naming himself.
"No, sir," the maid replied, "but he is expected any moment now."
The professor turned away, the girl closed the door. Then the poor man
sat down on the steps to wait for himself.
* * *
The clergyman, absorbed in thinking out a sermon, rounded a turn in
the path and bumped into a cow. He swept off his hat with a flourish,
exclaiming:

"I beg your pardon, madam."
Then he observed his error, and was greatly chagrined. Soon, however,
again engaged with thoughts of the sermon, he collided with a lady at
another bend of the path.
"Get out of the way, you brute!" he said.
* * *
The most absent-minded of clergymen was a Methodist minister who
served several churches each Sunday, riding from one to another on
horseback. One Sunday morning he went to the stable while still
meditating on his sermon and attempted to saddle the horse. After a
long period of toil, he aroused