More Toasts | Page 5

his class and opened his
book. There lay the scissors. He picked them up and, holding them
above his head, shouted:
"Here they are, dear!"
Yes, the class got it.

Deep in a ponderous calculation, the professor leaned over his desk.
One hand held his massive brow; the other guided the pencil.
Suddenly the library door was flung open, and a nurse entered, smiling
broadly.
"There's a little stranger upstairs, professor," she announced, of course
referring to the very latest arrival.
"Eh?" grunted the man of learning, poring deeply over his problem.
"It's a little boy," remarked the nurse, still smiling.
"Little boy," mused the professor. "Little boy-eh? Well ask him what
he wants."
A story is current concerning a professor who is reputed to be slightly
absent-minded. The learned man had arranged to escort his wife one
evening to the theater. "I don't like the tie you have on. I wish you
would go up and put on another," said his wife.
The professor tranquilly obeyed. Moment after moment elapsed, until
finally the impatient wife went upstairs to learn the cause of the delay.
In his room she found her husband undressed and getting into bed.
"How will you have your roast beef?" asked the waiter.
"Well done, good and faithful servant," murmured the clerical-looking
diner absent-mindedly.
See also Habit; Memory.

ACCIDENTS
Hearing a crash of glassware one morning, Mrs. Blank called to her
maid in the adjoining room, "Norah, what on earth are you doing?"
"I ain't doin' nothin', mum," replied Norah; "it's done."
A big Irishman, while carrying a ladder through a crowded street had
the misfortune to break a plate-glass window in a store. He
immediately dropped his ladder and broke into a run, but he had been
seen by the shopkeeper, who dashed after him in company with several
salesmen, and was soon caught.
"Here you big loafer!" shouted the angry shopkeeper, when he had
regained his breath. "You have broken my window!"
"I sure have," admitted the Celt, "and didn't you see me running home
to get the money to pay for it?"
There was a man who fancied that by driving good and fast He'd get his

car across the track before the train came past; He'd miss the engine by
an inch, and make the train-hands sore. There was a man who fancied
this; there isn't any more.

ACCURACY
In one of the industrial towns in South Wales a workman met with a
serious accident. The doctor was sent for, and came and examined him,
had him bandaged and carried home on a stretcher, seemingly
unconscious.
After he was put to bed the doctor told his wife to give him
sixpennyworth of brandy when he came to himself. After the doctor
had left the wife told the daughter to run and fetch threepennyworth of
brandy for her father.
The old chap opened his eyes and said, in a loud voice: "Sixpenn'orth,
the doctor said."
An editor had a notice stuck up above his desk on which was printed:
"Accuracy! Accuracy! Accuracy!" and this notice he always pointed
out to the new reporters.
One day the youngest member of the staff came in with his report of a
public meeting. The editor read it through and came to the sentence:
"Three thousand nine hundred ninety-nine eyes were fixed upon the
speaker."
"What do you mean by making a silly blunder like that?" he demanded,
wrathfully.
"But it's not a blunder," protested the youngster. "There was a one-eyed
man in the audience!"

ACTORS AND ACTRESSES
FIRST ACTRESS (behind the scenes)--"Did you hear the way the
public wept during my death scene?"
SECOND ACTRESS--"Yes, it must have been because they realized
that it was only acted!"
"These love scenes are rotten. Can't the leading man act as if he were in
love with the star?"
"Can't act at all," said the director. "Trouble is, he is in love with her."
The teacher was giving the class a natural history lecture on Australia.

"There is one animal," she said, "none of you have mentioned. It does
not stand up on its legs all the time. It does not walk like other animals,
but takes funny little skips. What is it?" And the class yelled with one
voice, "Charlie Chaplin!"
Eight-year-old Robert had been ill for nearly a month with tonsilitis,
and nothing kept him contented but pictures of his favorite, Charlie
Chaplin, clipped from the pages of the motion-picture pictorials.
One morning, as his mother sat beside his bed, he studied earnestly a
full-page drawing of the million-dollar comedian.
"Mother," he asked, "will Charlie Chaplin go to heaven?"
"Why, yes--I hope so," answered the somewhat astonished parent.
"Gee! won't the Lord have some fun then!" was Robert's comment.
Sweeping his long hair back with an impressive