Back in those sinful days which ended in January, 1919—that is, officially they ended then—a group of congenial spirits were gathered one Saturday night in a local life-saving station on the principal corner of a small Kentucky town, engaged in the quaint old pastime of pickling themselves.

In the midst of these proceedings the swinging doors were thrust asunder and there entered one of those self-sufficient, self-important persons who crave to tell their private affairs to others, and who, in those times, preferably chose as a proper recipient for their confidences, a barkeeper—as I believe the functionary was called.

The newcomer wedged his way into the congenial group of patrons, and apropos of nothing which up until then had been said or done, introduced himself to the notice of the company by stating in a loud clear voice:

“The doctor wants me to take a trip. I haven’t been feelin’ the best in the world and my wife got worried—you know how women are—and to-night she sent for the doctor. And he came over, a little while ago, and he asked me a lot of foolish questions and took my temperature and five dollars and then he says to me that I should rest up for a spell and travel ’round. He says I ought to go out to California and see the sights. Ain’t I been to California? I have—more’n half a dozen times. Ain’t I seen every sight there is in the whole state of California? I have. As a matter of fact, I don’t mind tellin’ you fellers that I’ve been everywhere and I’ve seen practically everything there is.”

At this a gentleman who was far overtaken in stimulant, slid the entire length of the bar, using his left elbow for a rudder. Anchoring himself alongside the stranger he hooked a practiced and accomplished instep on the brass rail to hold him upright and he focused a watery, wavering, bloodshot eye upon the countenance of the other and to him in husky tones he said:

“Excus’h me, but could I ash you a ques’shun?”

“Sure, you could ask me a question,” said the stranger. “Go ahead.”

“The ques’shun,” said the alcoholic one, “ ’s as follows: Have you ever had delirium tremens?”

“Certainly not,” snorted the indignant stranger.

“Well, you big piker!” said the inebriate, “then you ain’t never been nowheres—and you ain’t never seen nothin’.”

The lawyer picked his way to the edge of the excavation and called down for Michael Finnerty.

“Who’s wantin’ me?” inquired a deep voice.

“I am,” said the lawyer. “Mr. Finnerty, did you come from Castlebar, County Mayo?”

“I did.”

“And was your mother named Mary and your father named Owen?”

“They was.”

“Then Mr. Finnerty,” said the lawyer, “it is my duty to inform you that your Aunt Kate has died in the old country, leaving you an estate of twenty thousand dollars in cash. Please come up.”

There was a pause and a commotion down below.

“Mr. Finnerty,” called the lawyer, craning his neck over the trench, “I’m waiting for you!”

“In wan minute,” said Mr. Finnerty. “I just stopped to lick the foreman!”

For six months Mr. Finnerty, in a high hat and with patent leather shoes on his feet, lived a life of elegant ease, trying to cure himself of a great thirst. Then he went back to his old job. It was there that the lawyer found him the second time.

“Mr. Finnerty,” he said, “I’ve more news for you. It is your Uncle Terence who’s dead now in the old country; and he has left you his entire property.”

“I don’t think I can take it,” said Mr. Finnerty, leaning wearily on his pick. “I’m not as strong as I wance was; and I’m doubtin’ if I could go through all that again and live!”

From the lowlands a special judge was sent up to the Kentucky mountains to try some murder cases growing out of a desperate and bloody feud. He took with him as his official stenographer a young man from Louisville, who dressed smartly and, in strong contrast to the silent mountaineers, did considerable talking. For convenience let us call him Wilkins.

On his first Sunday morning in the mountain hamlet Wilkins felt the need of a shave. He had no razor and there was no regular barber in the town; but he learned from the hotel-keeper that there was an old cobbler living a few doors away who sometimes shaved transients.

In a tiny shop Wilkins found an elderly native with straggly chin whiskers and a gentle blue eye. The old chap got out an ancient razor and was soon scraping away on the patron’s jowls. Wilkins felt the desire for conversation stealing over him.

“This is a mighty lawless country up here, ain’t it?” he began.

“I don’t know,” said the old chap mildly. “Things is purty quiet jist at present.”

He paused to put a keener edge on his blade.

“Well,” said Wilkins, “you won’t deny, I suppose, that you have a lot of murders in this town?”

“We don’t gin’rally speak of ’em as murders,” said the old man in a tone of gentle reproof. “Up here we jest calls ’em killin’s.”

“I’d call ’em murders, all right,” said Wilkins briskly. “If shooting a man down in cold blood from ambush isn’t murder, then I don’t know a murder when I see one, that’s all. When was the last man killed, as you call it, here in this town?”

“Why, last week,” said the patriarch.

“Whereabouts was he killed?” continued Wilkins.

“Right out yonder in the street in front of this here shop,” stated the old man, with the air of one desiring to turn the conversation. “Razor hurt you much?”

“The razor’s all right,” said Wilkins snappily. “What I want to know are the facts about the killing of this last man. Who killed him?”

The cobbler let the edge of the razor linger right over the Adam’s apple of the stranger for a moment.

“I done so,” he said gently.

There was where the conversation seemed to begin to languish.

On a voyage of one of the Cunard liners from New York to Liverpool a Major H. Reynolds of London was registered on the passenger list. The purser, running over the names, assigned to the same stateroom as fellow travelers, this Major Reynolds and a husky stockman from the Panhandle of Texas.

A little later the cattleman, ignoring the purser, hunted up the skipper.

“Look here, cap,” he demanded, “what kind of a joker is this here head clerk of yours? I can’t travel in the same stateroom with that there Major Reynolds. I can’t and I won’t! So far as that goes, neither one of us likes the idea.”

“What complaint have you?” asked the skipper. “Do you object to an army officer for a traveling companion?”

“Not generally,” stated the Texan—“only this happens to be the Salvation Army. That there major’s other name is Henrietta!”

On a Georgia plantation a group of darkies went coon hunting one night. Because of his love for the sport they took with them Uncle Sam, the patriarch of the colored quarters. Uncle Sam was over eighty years old and all kinked up with rheumatism. He hobbled along behind the hunters as they filed off through the woods.

The dogs “treed” in a sweet gum snag on the edge of Pipemaker Swamp, five miles from home; but when the tree fell there rolled out of the top of it, not a raccoon but a full-grown black bear, full of fight and temper.

The pack gave one choral ki-yi of shock and streaked away, yelping as they went; and the two-legged hunters followed, fleeing as fast as their legs would carry them.

When they came to a moonlit place in the woods they discovered that Uncle Sam was missing; but they did not go back to look for him—they did not even check up.

“Pore ole Unc’ Sam!” bemoaned one of the fugitives, between pants. “His ole laigs must ’a’ give out on him ’foh he went ten jumps. I reckin dat bear’s feastin’ on his bones right dis minute.”

“Dat’s so! Dat’s so!” gasped one of the others. “Pore Unc’ Sam!”

When they reached the safety of the cotton patches they limped to Uncle Sam’s cottage to break the news to the widow. There was a light in the window; and when they rapped at the door, and it opened, the sight of him who faced them across the threshold made them gasp.

“Foh de Lawd!” exclaimed one. “How you git heah?”

“Me?” said Uncle Sam calmly, “oh, I come ’long home wid de dawgs.”

Swifty, the High Diver, was imported to give his performance as a crowning feature on the last day of the annual fair and races in a certain small county-seat of interior Vermont.

Those who remember the late Swifty may recall that it was his custom, clad in silken tights, to ascend to the top of a slender ladder which reared nearly ninety feet aloft and after poising himself there for a moment to leap forth headlong into air, describing a graceful curve in his downward flight, then with a great splatter and splash to strike in a tank of water but little larger and wider and deeper than the average well-filled family bathtub, and immediately thereafter to emerge from it, in his glittering spangles, amid the plaudits of the admiring multitude. That is to say, he did this until the sad and tragic afternoon when, just as Swifty jumped, some quaint practical joker moved the tank.

But on this particular occasion no mishap marred the splendor of the feat. Naturally enough that night, when the community loafers assembled at their favorite general store, the achievement of the afternoon was the main topic of the evening.

The official liar held in as long as he could; and when he no longer could contain himself, he spoke up and said:

“Wall, I hain’t denyin’ but what that there Swifty is consid’able of a diver—but I had a cousin onc’t that could a-beat him.”

The official skeptic gave a scornful grunt.

“Ah, hah!” he exclaimed, “I rather thought you’d be sayin’ somethin’ of that general nature before the evenin’ was over. Who, for instance, was this yere cousin of yourn?”

“Wall, for instance,” said the liar, modestly, “he wan’t no one in especial and perticular, exceptin’ the champeen diver of the world—that’s all.”

“And what did he ever do to justify his right to that there title?” demanded the skeptic.

“Wall,” said the liar, “he done consid’able many things in the divin’ line, which was his speciality. I remember onc’t he made a bet of a hundred dollars, cash, that he could dive from Liverpool, England, to Noo York City.”

The skeptic gave a groan of resignation.

“I suppose,” he said, “that you’re goin’ to ask us to believe he won that there bet.”

“No I hain’t,” stated the liar. “I hain’t a-goin’ to lie to you. That wuz the one bet in his hull life my cousin ever lost. He miscalculated and come up in Denver, Colorado!”

A noted lawyer down in Texas, who labored under the defects of having a high temper and of being deaf, was trying a case in a courtroom presided over by a younger man, for whom the older practitioner had a poor opinion.

Presently in an argument over a motion there was a clash between the lawyer and the judge. The judge ordered the lawyer to sit down, and as the lawyer, being deaf, didn’t hear him and went on talking, the judge fined him $10.

The lawyer leaned toward the clerk and cupped his hand behind his ear.

“What did he say?” he inquired.

“He fined you $10,” explained the clerk.

“For what?”

“For contempt of this court,” said the clerk.

The lawyer shot a poisonous look toward the bench and reached a hand into his pocket.

“I’ll pay it now,” he said. “It’s a just debt!”

A New York East Sider met a friend on Third Avenue and told him he had quit the buttonhole-making trade.

“I’m in the art business now,” he said, proudly—“such a fine business, too! Lots of money in it!”

“What do you mean—art business?” demanded his friend.

“Well,” explained the East Sider, “I go by auction sales, and I buy pictures cheap; then I sell ’em high. Yesterday I bought a picture for twenty-five dollars and to-day I sold it for fifty.”

“What was the subject?”

“It wasn’t no subject at all,” said the art collector—“it was a picture.”

“Sure, I know,” said the other. “But every picture has got to be a subject or it ain’t a regular picture, you understand. Was this here picture a marine, or a landscape, or a still life, or a portrait—or what?”

“How should I know?” said the puzzled ex-buttonholer. “To me a picture is a picture! This here picture now didn’t have no name. It was a picture of three fellers. One feller had a fife and one feller had a drum and one feller had a headache!”

A certain young lady who gives interpretative dances in rather scanty costume was engaged to go to a staid community in New England and dance before the local dramatic and literary society.

The day after her appearance the entertainment committee—all women—held a meeting to discuss the affair of the night before. Several had been heard, when one member raised her voice.

“Personally,” she said, “I enjoyed it ever so much. To me it was most artistic and symbolic and everything. But if you ask me, I must say this: It certainly was no place to take a nervous man!”

An American journalist in poor health spent the summer of 1910 at a resort in Southern France. The proprietor was an English woman, and all of the other guests were English too. They were friendly and kind to the invalid—all excepting one very austere and haughty lady.

On his first day as a guest at the house he heard this lady say to the landlady:

“I distinctly understood that you did not admit Americans as lodgers here, and I wish to know why you have broken the rule.”

The other woman explained that the stranger had come with good references and that he seemed a quiet, well-mannered person who hadn’t offered to scalp anybody and who knew how to eat with a knife and fork. Nevertheless the complaining matron was not at all pleased.

She took frequent opportunity of saying unkind things about the States and those who lived in the States. The sick American maintained a polite silence. Finally one day at the dinner table she addressed him with direct reference to a certain ghastly murder case which even after the lapse of all these years will be remembered by most readers to-day.

“What do you Yankees think of your fellow-American, Doctor Crippen?” she inquired.

“We think he’s crazy,” said the American.

“How singular!” said the lady, arching her eyebrows.

“Not at all,” said the American. “He must have been crazy to kill an American woman in order to marry an English one.”

The time was in the early hours of a new day; the place was the lobby of a hotel; the principal character was a well-dressed gentleman in an alcoholic fog, who had come in and registered for the night a few minutes earlier. Now, half dressed, he descended the stairway from the second floor and stood swaying slightly in front of the desk.

“Mish’ Night Clerk,” he said politely but thickly, “I’ll ’ave requesh you gimme ’nozzer room.”

“Well, sir,” stated the clerk, “we’re a little bit crowded. I don’t know whether I could shift you immediately. It’s pretty late, you know.”

“Mish’ Night Clerk,” said the guest in a courteous but firm voice, “I repeat—mush gimme ’nozzer room.”

“Isn’t the room I gave you comfortable?” parleyed the functionary.

“Sheems be perf’ly so,” admitted the transient. “Nev’less, mush ash be moved ’mediately.”

“Well, what’s the matter with your room?” demanded the pestered clerk.

The stranger bent forward, and with the air of one imparting a secret addressed the clerk in a husky half whisper:

“If you mush know, my room’s on fire!”

A fireman on duty behind the scenes of one of the big New York theatres and charged with the responsibility of seeing to it that the regulations were strictly obeyed back-stage, suffered a profound shock as he came around from behind a stack of scenery, just before the evening performance. Standing in the opposite wings was a salesman for an East Side cloak and suit concern, who had procured entrance via the stage door for the purpose of soliciting orders for his wares among the young ladies of the chorus. This person was vehemently puffing on a large, long, black, malignant-looking cigar.

In three jumps the scandalized fireman had the violator by the arm.

“Say,” he demanded, “what the hell do you mean, comin’ in here with that torch in your face? Don’t you see that sign right up over your head?”

The trespasser’s eyes turned where the fireman’s finger pointed.

“Sure, mister,” he said, “I see it.”

“Well, can’t you read?” demanded the fireman.

“Sure I can read,” admitted the other calmly.

“Then read what it says there. Don’t you see what it says in big letters? It says—‘No Smoking.’ ”

“Yes,” agreed the East Sider with a winning smile, “but it don’t say ‘Positively.’ ”

When General Neville, the hero of the defense of Verdun, made his tour of America he was the guest of honor at a big public reception in one of the Los Angeles hotels. Among those invited to greet the distinguished visitor were the more prominent members of the moving-picture colony.

At the doors of General Neville’s suite Will Rogers met Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin, who in private life is a reserved and rather shy little man, was considerably fussed up over the prospect ahead of him.

“I suppose we’re expected to say a few words to the General,” he confided to Rogers. “But for the life of me I can’t think of the best way to start the conversation.”

Rogers gave to the problem a moment of earnest consideration.

“Well,” he said, “you might ask him if he was in the war, and which side he was on.”

They brought a darky out of the jail in a North Carolina town with intent to hang him for murder. This was in the day when capital punishment was publicly inflicted. As a special mark of attention the widow of the murderer’s victim was permitted to witness the event from a position of vantage directly facing the gallows. She had had a sort of small grandstand rigged up and she had decorated it with bunting, and when the march to the scaffold started, there she sat in a white mother-hubbard wrapper, gently agitating a palmleaf fan, flanked and surrounded by relatives, invited friends and sister members of her lodge.

When the condemned had been properly trussed up, with the noose dangling about his neck, the sheriff, holding the black cap in his hand, edged up to him and said:

“Well, Jim, we’re about ready. If you’ve got anything to say, I reckon this would be a mighty good time to say it.”

“Yas, suh,” said the doomed, “I has got sump’n to say. I jest wants to say dat I is fully repented fur whut I done. I taken it to de Lawd in prayer an’ I knows it’s all right wid Him. I ast de jedge w’ich tried me an’ de persecutin’ attorney an’ de foreman of de jury ef they bore me any gredge, w’ich, one an’ all, they said they did not. An’ now I kin go right straight to Hebben an’ nestle in de bosom of Father Abraham ef only I kin git de fergiveness of dat nigger lady sittin’ yonder—de wife of de man I kil’t.”

He lifted his voice, addressing the white-clad figure in front of him:

“Lady,” he entreated, “does you fergive me fur shootin’ yore husband six times wid a fo-ty-fo’ caliver revolover?”

Excepting that her under lip jutted out a trifle farther there was no sign she had heard him. She calmly fanned on.

The darky on the scaffold tried again:

“Lady,” he pleaded, “for de secont time I axes you, ain’t you please ma’am, gwine fergive me?”

Still from her there was no response. It was as though she had not heard him. The sympathetic sheriff felt moved to add his intercession:

“Aunt Myra,” he called, “Jim, here, will be goin’ away from us in a minute and we don’t expect him back. Surely you don’t entertain any hard feelin’s against him now? Won’t you speak to him and let him go in peace?”

This time the obdurate widow shook her head in an emphatic negative. Yet still she uttered no sound. The sheriff turned to the condemned.

“Jim,” he said, “you see how it is; that old woman is set in her ways. What’s the use of wastin’ any more time on her? Besides, it’s hot as the devil out here and I ought to be gettin’ on home to dinner. Just hold still a second and we can have this all over.”

“Mr. Lucas,” sobbed Jim, “lemme see ef I still can’t sof’en dat nigger woman’s stony heart. Lady,” he cried out, “wid mouty nigh my dyin’ bre’f I begs you fur jest a word. I ain’t hopin’ no mo’ dat you’ll fergive me, but won’t you please, ma’am, jest speak to me?”

And now she did speak. She motioned with her fan as though it had been a baton of authority, and in impatient tones she said:

“Go on, nigger, git hung—git hung!”

The caller was undeniably large. When he walked he rippled and one had the feeling that should he sit down suddenly he’d splash.

He wallowed into the office of a lawyer in the foothills of the Tennessee mountains and stated that he desired to bring suit against a neighbor for ten thousand dollars’ damages on account of libel.

“How did he libel you?” asked the lawyer.

“Well, suh,” stated the aggrieved party, “he up an’ called me a hippopotamus—that’s wut he done, consarn his picture!”

“When did he call you this name?”

“It’s a’ goin’ on two years ago.”

“When did you first hear about it?”

“That very next day.”

“Indeed,” said the lawyer; “then why did you wait nearly two years to begin taking steps to bring suit against him?”

“Well, suh,” stated the prospective plaintiff, “ontil that there Ringling Brothers’ circus showed yistiddy in Knoxville an’ I went down fur to see it I hadn’t never seen no hippopotamus.”

One night at dinner in honor of a distinguished visiting Englishman I was reminded of a yarn. I told it, and it went very well. It had to do with a prospector in Oklahoma who, on a Saturday night, bought a quart of moonshine whiskey and took it to his lonely cabin, anticipating a pleasant Sunday. But as he crossed the threshold he stumbled and fell, dropping his precious burden and smashing the bottle, so that its contents were wasted upon the floor. Depressed by his misfortune, the unfortunate man went to bed. As he lay there, a mangy, furtive, half-grown rat with one ear and part of a tail, emerged timorously from a hole in the baseboard, sat up, sniffed the laden air and then, darting swiftly to where the liquor made a puddle in a depression of the planking, ran out its tiny pink tongue, took one quick sip of the stuff and fled in sudden panic to its retreat. But it didn’t stay; shortly it again appeared, and now a student of rats would have discerned that a transition had taken place in the spirits of this particular rat. Suddenly it had grown cocky, debonair, almost reckless. It traveled deliberately back to the liquor and imbibed again. Seemingly satisfied it started for home but, changing its mind, it returned and partook a third time of the refreshment. Immediately then its fur stood on end, its eyes burned red, like pigeon-blood rubies, and straightening itself upon its hind legs it waved its forepaws in a gesture of defiance and shrilly cried out:

“Now, bring on that dad-blamed cat!”

No one seemed to enjoy my story more than did the guest of the evening. After the party broke up he made me tell it to him all over again. I could read from his expression that he was trying to memorize it. In fact, he confessed to me that he expected to use it when he got home as a typical example of American humor.

Six months later I was in London. I attended a dinner. My English friend was the toastmaster. Perhaps my presence recalled to him the anecdote he had so liked. At any rate, he undertook to repeat it.

His version ran for perhaps twenty minutes. He entered into a full exposition of the potency of the illicit distillation known among the Yankees, he said, as “shining moon.” He went at length into the habits of rats, pointing out that inasmuch as rats customarily did not indulge in intoxicants a few drops of any liquor carrying high alcoholic content would be likely, for the time being at least, to alter the nature of almost any rat. At length he reached his point. It ran like this:

“And then, this little rodent, being now completely transformed by its repeated potations, reared bolt upright and, voicing the pot-valor of utter intoxication both in tone and manner, it cried out in a voice like thunder:

“ ‘I say, I wonder if there isn’t a cat about somewhere?’ ”

One chilly evening in the early part of March the sheriff entered the county jail and addressing the colored person who occupied the strongest cell, said:

“Gabe, you know that under the law my duty requires me to take you out of here to-morrow and hang you. So I’ve come to tell you that I want to make your final hours on earth as easy as possible. For your last breakfast you can have anything to eat that you want and as much of it as you want. What do you think you’d like to have?”

The condemned man studied for a minute.

“Mr. Lukins,” he said, “I b’lieves I’d lak to have a nice wortermelon.”

“But watermelons won’t be ripe for four or five months yet,” said the sheriff.

“Well, suh,” said Gabe, “I kin wait.”

A suburbanite in New Jersey was moving from one street to another. Observing with dismay the care-free way in which the moving crew yanked his cherished antiques about, he was filled with a desire to save from possible damage a tall grandfather’s clock which he prized highly.

Taking the clock up in his arms he started for the new house. But the clock was as tall as its owner, and heavy besides, and he had to put it down every few feet and rest his arms and mop his streaming brow. Then he would clutch his burden to his heaving bosom and stagger on again.

After half an hour of these strenuous exertions he was nearing his destination when an intoxicated person who had been watching his labors from the opposite side of the road took advantage of a halt to hail him.

“Mister,” he said thickly, “could I ash you a quest’n?”

“What is it?” demanded the pestered suburbanite.

“Why in thunder don’t you carry a watch?”

When the circus reached the small New Hampshire town the proprietor feared that his afternoon performance might lack its chief feature. The star of the aggregation was Zeno, the Mexican Knife Thrower, answering in private life to the name of Hennessy. Twice a day Zeno, dressed in gaudy trappings, would enter the arena accompanied by his wife, a plump young woman in pink tights, and followed by a roustabout bearing a basket full of long bowie-knives and shining battle-axes. While the band played an appropriate selection of shivery music the young woman would flatten herself against a background of blue planking which had been erected in the middle of the ring. There she would pose motionless, her arms outstretched. Then Zeno, stationing himself forty feet from her, would fling his knives and axes at her, missing her each time by the narrowest of margins. Presently her form would be completely outlined by the deadly steel, but such was Zeno’s marvelous skill that she took no hurt from the sharp blades which pinned her fast.

But on this day Mrs. Zeno had fallen ill and although the circus owner offered a reward for someone who would take her place, he could find no volunteers among the members of his staff. In this emergency the invalid’s mother, who traveled with the show in the capacity of wardrobe mistress, agreed to serve as an understudy in order that the performance might not be marred.

Forth came Zeno, wearing his professional scowl, slightly enhanced. His mother-in-law, skinny and homely, with her hair knotted in a knob on her head and her daughter’s fleshings hanging in loose folds upon her figure, followed him closely. She plastered herself flat against the wooden background. Zeno gave her a look seemingly fraught with undying hate. He took up his longest, sharpest bowie-knife. He tested its needle-like point upon his thumb. He poised it, aimed it, flung it.

Like a javelin it hurtled and hissed in its flight through the air. Striking tip first a scant quarter of an inch from the lobe of the mother-in-law’s left ear, it buried itself deep in the tough oaken planking and stood there, the hilt quivering.

The pause which ensued was broken by the astonished voice of a lank native sitting on the lowermost tier of blue seats industriously milking his whiskers:

“Wall, by Heck—he missed her!”

There was a philanthropic Tennessee distiller who believed in spreading sunshine wherever he could. One Christmas he sent a gift of prime whiskey to an improvident acquaintance who lived in a cabin up in the hills.

Along toward the end of January the beneficiary dropped in on him and intimated that if his friend was so inclined he could use a little more liquor.

“Aren’t you rather overdoing things, Zach?” inquired the distiller. “If my memory serves me rightly, it has been less than five weeks since I gave you a whole keg.”

“Well, Colonel,” explained the mendicant, “you got to remember that a kag of licker don’t last very long in a fambly that can’t afford to keep a cow.”

The officer of the day was inspecting the guard.

“What are your orders?” he inquired of a drafted man.

“Sir,” said the sentry, in his newly-acquired military manner “my orders are to be vigilant.”

“What does vigilant mean?” said the officer.

“I don’t know,” said the sentry.

“Call the corporal of the guard and we’ll find out,” said the officer.

The corporal of the guard came.

“Corporal,” said the officer, “this man here doesn’t know the meaning of the word vigilant. Suppose you tell him.”

“It means, sir, to be alert,” answered the corporal promptly.

“And what does alert mean?” said the commander, anxious that the lesson should be driven home to the pupil.

“I don’t know,” said the corporal.

A Wyoming ranch foreman was sent East by his employer in charge of a carload of polo ponies. He was gone four weeks. When he arrived back at the ranch he wore an air of unmistakable pleasure and relief.

“Gee,” he said, “it’s good to git home again. So fur as I’m concerned I don’t want never to travel no more.”

“Didn’t you like New York?” asked one of the hands.

“Oh, it’s all right in its way,” he said, “but I don’t keer for it.”

“What’s chiefly the matter with it?”

“Oh,” he said, “it’s so dad blame far frum everywhere.”

It is not so very long ago that life in the Kentucky mountains was primitive. They used to tell a story to illustrate how primitive things actually were. It may not have been true. Probably it wasn’t, but at any rate it was an illustration, even though an exaggerated one, of a prevalent condition.

There was a narrow-gauge, jerk-water road which skirted through the knobs. One day the train—there was only one train a day, each way—was laboring slowly upgrade when the engineer halted his locomotive to let a cavalcade cross the track ahead of him. First there streaked past a pack of hounds, all baying. Behind the dogs followed men, on horseback and mule-back, galloping at top speed and cheering the hunt on with shrill whoops and blasts from a horn. The troupe had vanished into the deep timber bordering the right-of-way when a Northern man, riding in the shabby day-coach, addressed a fellow-passenger who was a native.

“Sheriff’s posse, I suppose?” he said.

“Nope,” said the mountaineer.

“Perhaps your people are seeking to lynch somebody?” suggested the Northerner.

“No, ’tain’t that neither.”

“Then may I ask what is the purpose—the intent—of this chase?”

“Well, mister,” said the native, “it’s like this: County Judge Sim Hightower’s oldest boy, Simmy Junior, comes of age to-day and they’re runnin’ him down to put pants on him.”

A friend of mine has a friend who went abroad while Victoria the beloved, was still on the throne of Great Britain.

In London one night the traveler saw Madame Bernhardt play in “Anthony and Cleopatra.”

The scene came where Cleopatra receives news of Mark Antony’s defeat at Actium. Bernhardt was at her best as Egypt’s fiery queen that night. She stabbed the unfortunate slave who had borne the tidings to her, stormed, raved, frothed at the mouth, wrecked some of the scenery in her frenzy and finally, as the curtain fell, dropped in a shuddering, convulsive heap.

As the thunderous applause died down, the American heard a middle-aged British matron in the next seat remarking to her neighbor in tones of satisfaction:

“How different—how very different from the home life of our own dear queen!”

One of the oldest stories in the known world—and in my humble judgment one of the best ones—deals with three actors—an aged negro, an itinerant conjurer and a twelve pound snapping-turtle.

It is a hot day in a Mississippi countryside. The conjurer, who is making his way across country afoot, is sitting alongside the dusty road, resting. There passes him an ancient negro returning from a fishing expedition. The darky is not going home empty-handed. He has captured a huge snapping-turtle. He is holding it fast by its long tail, which is stretched tautly over his right shoulder so that the flat undershell of the captive rests against his back. He bids the stranger a polite good-morning and trudges on. He has gone perhaps twenty feet further when an impish inspiration leaps into the magician’s brain. In addition to his other gifts he is by way of being a fair ventriloquist.

He throws his voice into the turtle’s mouth and speaking in a muddy, guttural tone such as would be suitable to a turtle if a turtle ever indulged in conversation, he says sharply:

“Look here, nigger, where are you taking me?”

The old man freezes in his tracks. He rolls his eyes rearward. There is the look of a vast, growing, terrific bewilderment on his face.

“W-h-who—who dat speakin’ to me?” he asks falteringly.

“It’s me speakin’ to you,” the turtle seemingly says, “here on your back. I asked you where you were taking me.”

“Huh, boss,” cries the old man, “I ain’t takin’ you nowhars—I’se leavin’ you right yere!”

A few months before his death Gen. Basil Duke of Kentucky, who commanded Morgan’s Cavalry after the killing of his brother-in-law, Gen. John Morgan, told this tale at a Confederate reunion:

During one of the Tennessee campaigns Morgan’s Men surprised and routed a regiment of Federal troopers. In the midst of the retreat one of the enemy, who was mounted upon a big bay horse, suddenly turned and charged the victorious Confederates full-tilt, waving his arm and shrieking like mad as he bore down upon them alone. Respecting such marvellous courage, the Confederates fore-bore shooting at the approaching foe, but when he was right upon them they saw there was a reason for his seeming foolhardiness.

He was a green recruit. His horse had run away with him—the bit had broken, and, white as a sheet and scared stiff, the luckless youth was being propelled straight at the whooping Kentuckians, begging for mercy as he came.

Jeff Sterritt, the wit of the command, stopped the horse and made a willing prisoner of the rider. Sterritt, who had not washed or shaved for days and was a ferocious looking person, pulled out a big pistol and wagged its muzzle in the terrified Federal’s face.

“I don’t know whether to kill you right now,” he said, “or wait until the fight is over!”

“Mister,” begged the quivering captive, “as a favor to me, please don’t do it at all! I’m a dissipated character—and I ain’t prepared to die!”

Mr. MacTavish attended a christening where the hospitality of the host knew no bounds except the capacities of the guests.

In the midst of the celebration Mr. MacTavish rose up and made the rounds of the company, bidding each person present a ceremonious farewell.

“But, Sandy, mon,” objected the host, “ye’re no’ goin’ yet, with the evenin’ just startin’?”

“Nay,” said the prudent MacTavish, “I’m no’ goin’ yet. But I’m tellin’ ye good night while I know ye.”

Down in my part of the country in the old days we were a high strung and sentimental people, and oratory moved us as nothing else would. There was once a brawny blacksmith in our county who was elected justice of the peace on the strength of his Confederate record. The first case he sat to hear was one growing out of the death of a cow under a freight train. After the evidence was all in, the attorney for the plaintiff made a most effective argument. In vivid word pictures he sketched the abundant virtues of the late cow; he described her sweetness and her gentleness, her capacity as to milk; he told of the great bereavement to her immediate family, consisting of a young calf, and he dwelt upon the heartlessness of a railroad system which by its brutal carelessness had at one fell swoop, as it were, made stew meat of the parent and an orphan of the offspring. His peroration is still remembered.

“And, finally, squire,” he said, “if the train had been run as she should have been ran, and if the bell had been rung as she should have been rang, and if the whistle had been blowed as she should have been blew—both of which they done neither—this here cow would not have been injured at the time she was killed.”

As he sat down the new justice in a voice husky with feeling, said: “I’ve done heared enough! Plaintiff wins!” and proceeded to enter judgment for the full amount of damages. But the lawyer for the other side protested. He insisted he had a right to be heard, and, though the justice said he had already made up his mind, he admitted that it was no more than fair for the young gentleman to make a speech, too, if he wanted to.

The lawyer for the railroad cut his moorings and went straight up. He was a genuine silver tongue. He soared right into the clouds. Among other matters pertinent to the issue, he introduced the American Eagle, Magna Charta, First and Second Manassas, Paul Revere’s Ride and the Bonny Blue Flag Which Bears but a Single Star, concluding the whole by giving the Rebel Yell.

As he sank into his seat the justice, with a touch of the true old Jeffersonian simplicity, wiped his streaming eyes upon his shirt sleeve, and in a voice quivering with sobs exclaimed:

“Well, don’t that beat all! Defence wins!”

A North Carolina mountain woman fell ill, and for the first time in his life her husband had to work. It devolved upon him to nurse the invalid, look after a large family of tow headed children, milk the cow, feed the pig, cook the meals and tend a straggly acre of corn.

After ten days of these frightful labors he staggered down to the general store at the forks of the road and fell at the doorway in an exhausted heap.

The storekeeper came out and said: “Hello, Anse, how’s yore wife?”

“She ain’t no better,” moaned the husband. “I paid out a whole four bits fur a bottle of bitters fur her, but it seems like hit don’t do her no good. I’m plumb wore out!”

He paused a moment and sighed deeply.

“Sometimes,” he said, “I git to wishin’ the old woman would git well—or somethin’!”

Over in France the average doughboy had a gorgeous confidence in his ability to speak the language of the country. In a Norman village one day a perplexed looking private, who had not been abroad very long, approached a seasoned campaigner of the A. E. F. and asked the latter if he spoke French.

“Sure I speak French,” said the veteran. “What’s the matter?”

“Here’s what’s the matter,” said the green soldier. “The Frog that keeps that shop yonder across the street sold me some post cards, and I gave him a ten franc note, and now he’s holding out part of my money on me. I wish you’d come on over there with me and straighten the thing out and make that guy hand me back what’s coming to me.”

“Sure I will,” said the other.

Moved by curiosity, a friend of mine trailed behind them, arriving just in time to hear the following dialogue between the linguist and the storekeeper:

“Parley voo Fransay?”

“Oui, oui, Monsieur.”

“Then, why the hell don’t you give this here boy his right change?”

Congressman John K. Hendrick of Kentucky, now deceased, was notoriously soft hearted. He was sitting in a courtroom one day when a young and struggling member of the local bar, who was not especially renowned for mental brilliancy, undertook to read a petition in a divorce suit and speedily got himself badly tangled up in a confused maze of legal phrases. The judge sought to set the young lawyer right, but the only result was to tangle him worse than ever. The judge was showing signs of losing his temper when Col. Hendrick arose.

“I hope, your Honor,” he said, “that you will bear patiently with our young friend here. He is doing his best.”

“I know that, Col. Hendrick,” said the judge, somewhat testily, “and I intend to bear patiently with him. I am merely trying to give Mr. So-and-So an idea.”

“Your Honor,” said Col. Hendrick, “don’t do it. He’s got no place to put it.”

In the National League formerly was an umpire who was a stickler for correct deportment on the diamond. In a game in which he officiated at the Polo Grounds Chief Meyers, catcher for New York, came to bat. Certain of the Boston players sitting on their bench began to guy the brawny red man.

In an instant the umpire had left his place behind the catcher and was running toward the visitors’ bombproof.

“Cut out them personalities!” he ordered. “Cut out them personalities!”

A high pitched voice filtered out from the grandstand:

“Cut out them grammar!”

The town drunkard of a small Scotch community went on an especially vehement tear. The village authorities locked him up.

On the second day of his captivity, as he sat in his cell, thirsty beyond words, the minister, who was of a full habit of life, came to give him consolation and good advice.

They sat down side by side and the dominie read the parable of the Prodigal Son. The prisoner seemed to hang on the words. He nudged up closer and closer, bending forward until his face almost was in the minister’s face, and listened.

“Please read it over once more,” he said when the dominie had finished the chapter and started to close the Good Book.

Touched by this further sign of penitence, the minister read it again.

“Tell me, poor man,” he said when he was done, “what was it held you so close the while I was reading—was it the lesson of the Scripture or was it the words?”

“Nay, nay,” said the tippler—“ ’twas your grand breath!”

When the Yanks prepared to make their advance through Belleau Wood there was brought up from the south of France, a negro labor battalion, not a man of which until that time had ever heard a big gun crack in anger, but who, before this, had been employed in building roads and mending bridges and unloading freight cars. This outfit was set to work constructing defences of fallen timbers in the lower fringe of the forest, on the contingency that our troops, after their first onslaught might be driven back and need shelter behind which to fight on the retreat.

On a morning when the enemy, for reasons best known to themselves, were feeling unusually peevish and fretful, one of the correspondents, picking his cautious way through the thickets, came upon a coal black woodchopper in a ragged khaki shirt, who was swinging his ax on a fallen tree and between strokes looking up to where German shells were whistling through the ragged foliage overhead and occasionally exploding in his vicinity with a large, harsh, grating, unpleasant sound.

At each fresh report the darky would say—and even a perfect stranger to him could tell that from the very bottom of his soul he meant it—

“Oh, Lawsy, how I does wish’t I wuz home!”

“Well,” asked the correspondent, “why did you enlist if you didn’t care to face some danger?”

“Huh, man,” he snorted, “I never onlisted!”

“Well, why did you come over here, then?”

“I didn’t exac’ly come.”

“Well, you weren’t born over here, were you?”

“Naw suh, an’ I trusts not to die yere.”

“Well,” said the newspaper man, “you’re evidently past the draft age, and since you did not enlist and didn’t come over here of your own free will and weren’t born here, what I want to know is, how did you get here?”

“Mister,” said the negro, “it meks a kind of a sad story. My reg’lar home is Waycross, Georgia, an’ I suttinly does crave to be there right this minute! Here ’bout a yeah ago a w’ite man come down frum de Nawth, an’ he corralled a whole passel of us together an’ he say to us, he say: ‘Boys, I want you all to go up Nawth wid me an’ wuk fur de gove’mint. Plain niggers is gwine git eight dollars a day; fancy niggers ’at shows speed, is gwine git ten.’ An’ I sez to myse’f, I sez: ‘W’ite man, you don’t know it yit, but you’s lookin’ at one of the ten dollar ones right now!’

“So he loads a whole raft of us on board de steam cyars an’ he totes us plum’ to Noo Yawk city. An’ w’en we gits thar we wuks jest one mawnin’, down by de water. W’en de time come to knock off for dinner de w’ite man gets up on a box an’ meks us a speech. ‘Boys,’ he says, ‘I wuz wrong ’bout you—w’y, they ain’t a eight dollar nigger in the lot. Come on wid me to de warehouse an’ sign up for ten!’

“Natchelly I led de parade. Right behind me comes de w’ite man yellin’: ’Dis way to de warehouse!’ An’ right behind him comes all de rest of dem Waycross niggers, jest runnin’.

“So he teks us th’ough a kind of a long shed. An’ he ’scorts us ’crost a lil’ narrow plank. An’ he leads us th’ough a kind of a lil’ round iron do’.

“An’ w’en we wuz all inside, de w’ite man slammed de iron do’—AN’ DE WAREHOUSE SAILED AWAY!”

The purchasing agent of a big jobbing concern was a Scotchman. He gave an extensive order—to a salesman for a supply house. Although he had obtained the business in open competition, the salesman felt gratitude at being favored and sought a way to show it.

He knew he dare not offer the Scot a commission; likewise a gift of money, he figured, would be regarded as an insult. The Scot, he noticed, constantly smoked cigars. So the salesman slipped out to a cigar store and bought a box containing fifty of the finest Havanas the tobacconist carried in stock. The price for the fifty was fifteen dollars. He brought the box back and asked the purchasing agent to accept it with his compliments.

The latter explained that it was against the policy of his house for its buyers to accept presents of any sort from those with whom the concern did business. He was sorry, he said, but he could not take the cigars as a present, even though he felt sure his young friend had tendered them with the best of intentions and in absolute good faith.

The salesman had another idea:

“Well,” he said, “I hate to throw these cigars away. They are of no use to me—I smoke only cigarettes. I wonder if you would buy them from me?—there’s no harm in that, I’m sure.”

“What would you be asking for them, laddy?” inquired the prudent Scot.

“I’ll sell the whole fifty to you for a nickel,” stated the salesman.

The purchasing agent lifted one of the cigars from the top row, smelled it, rolled it in his fingers and eyed it closely.

“Very well,” he said, “at that price I’ll take four boxes.”

It was plain the stranger was suffering from an excess of alcoholic stimulant. He wavered and lurched and wabbled as he ran to catch the trolley car; he slipped and almost fell as he swung aboard; he trampled on the toes of those who rode upon the rear platform and at length when he fell into a seat he struck with considerable violence a somewhat testy gentleman alongside him.

The latter resented being jostled. Probably he had scruples against the use of intoxicants in any form and at any time. He fixed a stern and condemning eye upon the new passenger and of him demanded to know why he did not exercise a little more care when entering a public vehicle.

The person thus reproved, focused his uncertain vision upon the face of the other.

“Dye shee me when I gotta board thish car?” he asked.

“I did.”

“Dye ever shee me before in your who’ life?”

“No.”

“Ever hear an’body call my name?”

“No.”

“Ever hear an’body speak ’bout me?”

“Certainly not.”

“Then how the hell did you know it was me?”