Our town—I mean the one where I was born—formerly abounded in characters. One of our local institutions twenty years ago was a black driver named Abe, but called Old Abe for short. Abe was popular with both races. He had one social shortcoming, though. About once in so often he would slip out on a dark night and acquire something of value without the formality of speaking to the owner about it. For awhile he escaped a penitentiary sentence.

But eventually he was caught with what the Grand Jury and the prosecuting attorney regarded as the goods, the said goods consisting of a stray calf. He was lodged in jail to await trial. His cell was in the upper tier. On the Sunday afternoon following his incarceration his wife, accompanied by five or six pickaninnies, came to pay him a visit. It was the first time she had seen him since his arrest.

On her way out she was halted by the deputy jailer, whose name was Grady.

“Dora,” he said, “have you hired a lawyer for Abe yet?”

“Naw, suh,” she said, “effen Abe was guilty, right away I’d git him a lawyer. But he p’intedly tells me he ain’t de leas’ bit guilty. So, of co’se, dat bein’ de case, he ain’t needin’ no lawyer to git him clear.”

From the floor above, down the iron stairwell, came floating the voice of Abe:

“Mr. Grady, oh, Mr. Grady!—you tell ’at fool nigger ’oman down thar to git a lawyer—an’ git a damn good one, too.”

A colored person of a formidable aspect was arraigned on a charge of mayhem. As Exhibit A, for the case of the prosecution, the mutilated victim of his wrath was presented before the jurors’ eyes. The face of the victim was but little more than a recent site—a place where a face had been, but was no longer.

When the jury very promptly had returned a verdict of guilty, His Honor, pointing to the chief complaining witness and addressing the defendant, said:

“This is the most lamentable example of brutality I have ever seen in a long experience on the criminal bench. Surely no human being, unless he were inspired by infernal influences and suggestions, could deliberately work such wreckage as you have worked upon the countenance of a defenseless and helpless fellow creature. Demons from below surely must have prompted you in what you did. It must have been the devil himself who urged you on.”

“Well, Jedge,” said the prisoner, “come to think it over, I ain’t shore but whut you’re right. As I look back on it now it do seem lak to me ’at w’en I wuz cuttin’ his nose loose frum his face wid a razor, the devil wuz right behind me sayin’ ‘Tha’s right, separate him frum his nose.’ An’ I ’spects it must a been them demons you mention w’ich suggested to me stompin’ out his front teeth.

“But, Jedge, bitin’ off his ear wuz stric’ly my own idea!”

Of all the stories relating to our colored troopers in their services overseas, I think the one I like best has to do with a brawny black infantryman, who, on his way up to the front for his first taste of actual combat, fortified himself on a full quart of French wine.

As a result, he reached the forward position in a somewhat elevated and groggy state. He had been warned in advance that he was going into an exceedingly dangerous sector, but it so happened at the moment of his arrival the immediate vicinity was strangely quiet. He glanced about him in a foggy but disappointed way, and then, addressing his fellow occupants of the trench, spoke as follows:

“Wha’s de war?—tha’s whut I wants to know! White folks suttinly is mouty deceivin’. Yere dey promises me a war. So dey rides me ’crost mo’n a million miles of ocean an’ dey marches me th’ough mo’n a thousand miles of mud, an’ all de w’ile dey keeps on tellin’ me ’at w’en I gits up yere dey’ll be a war waitin’ fur me. An’ yere I is all organized fur a war an’ dey ain’t no war! Dat ain’t no way to act. Ef ary of you folks is got ary war jest fetch it on an’ leave it to me.”

A veteran of several months’ experience told him that his desires should shortly be gratified, inasmuch as the hostile positions were only about two hundred yards away, and the enemy was both active and alert.

Hearing this, the green hand leaped upon the parapet and, standing there in the moonlight, like a great black statue of defiance, he shook a broad fist in the direction of the foes’ lines, and in a voice which might have been heard half a mile away he cried out:

“Come on, you Heinie Germans, an’ gimme war! Gimme all de war you’s got! Gimme exploserives! Gimme gas shells! Gimme scrapernel! Gimme bung shells! Most in ’special I asts you fur bung shells!”

At this particular moment a German minnenwerfer, two feet long and nine inches in diameter and filled with potential ill-health, went whirring in its wabbly, uncertain flight just over his head, and with a crash like the crack of doom struck not fifty yards behind him, tearing a hole in the earth big enough for the foundations of a smoke house. The belligerent warrior was slapped flat and instantly covered in a half inch coating of powdered grit and gravel and dust.

There he lay, stunned, until the last reverberation had died away and the tortured earth had ceased from its quiverings. Then, slowly and cautiously, he sat up. First he felt himself all over to make sure he was intact; then he stole a respectful glance rearward to where the huge, new formed crater behind him still was smoking and fuming and throwing off noxious smells, and then he cast a cautious look in the direction from which the devilish visitor had come, and, finally, in a small, curiously altered voice, he said:

“Well, suzz, dey’s one thing you’s got to say fur dem Germans—dey suttinly does give you service!”

Every time the Government takes a census this story is revived, which means it enjoys a rejuvenated popularity at intervals of ten years. When I catch myself laughing at it, I know that another decade has slipped by.

The story has to do with the enumerator who called at a humble home, and there found the head of the family humped up over a large volume. It developed, in the course of the conversation, that the householder some months before had been induced by a traveling agent to invest in an encyclopedia. To get the worth of his money he had been reading the books of the set pretty constantly ever since.

In reply to the caller’s questions he gave his name and age and his wife’s name and age.

“How many infant children have you?” asked the census taker.

“I’ve got three,” said the citizen. “And that’s all there ever will be, too, you take it from me.”

“What makes you so positive about that?” asked the visitor.

“I’ll tell you why there won’t never be but three,” said the man “It’s wrote down in this here book that every fourth child born in the world is Chinese.”

On the historic afternoon when Jack Johnson fought Jim Jeffries in Nevada for the world’s championship there was a baseball game at the old Polo Grounds. In the press stand, among others, sat Sid Mercer, the sporting writer, and Franklin P. Adams, the column conductor. For some reason or other, ringside bulletins were not being received at the ball park. Naturally, the crowd wanted to know how the fight was going.

Several hundred spectators, drawn by the fact that telegraph instruments were clicking in the press stand, packed themselves solidly behind the wire netting in the hope of hearing tidings from Reno over the wire. Mercer and Adams had a joint inspiration. They pretended to be taking a ringside description off one of the instruments. First one would chant off a purely imaginary account of a round, and then the other would.

Adams had a bet down on the negro to win, and accordingly favored the dark contender. In his turn to “read” a round, he would depict Johnson as hammering Jeffries to a pulp. But Mercer, who was a partisan of Jeffries, would each time retaliate with a spirited but, of course, purely fictitious account of how the white man, having rallied heroically, was now dealing mighty blows upon the head and body of the tottering, weakening black.

Naturally, the listening crowd was torn by conflicting emotions. Cheers and groans marked the utterances of the two gifted romancers. Eventually, when the multitude had grown in numbers until the pressure of its bulk threatened to break down the netting, the conspirators decided to bring their joke to a climax.

Mercer, cocking his head above an instrument as though the better to hear, began reciting, somewhat after this fashion:

“Round-seven! At-the-sound-of-the-bell-the-two-men-leap-to-the-center-of-the-ring! They-exchange-a-whirlwind-of-jabs-and-upper-cuts! The-fighting-is-the-fiercest-ever-seen-in-a-heavyweight-contest! Suddenly-the-knockout-blow-is-delivered-full-upon-the-point-of-the-jaw! The-defeated-man-drops-like-a-log! His-seconds-drag-his-unconscious-form-into-his-corner! The-maddened-throng-acclaims-the-winner-and-pandemonium-reigns-supreme!”

Here he paused with the air of one who has completed a hard job.

From a thousand throats behind him one question arose in a mighty chorus:

“Who wins?”

Dramatically Mercer raised his hand for silence. A deep hush befell.

“The dispatches do not state,” he said, simply, and sat down.

Once upon a time, in the middle part of Georgia, there lived a banker who was known far and wide as the Human Safety Clutch. In his day he was accused of many things, but nobody ever charged him with being a spendthrift. His home was on a plantation a mile from town. One Sunday he remembered that he had left some important papers on his desk, and he gave an aged negro servitor on the place his keys and sent him for the documents.

It was a hot day and the road was dusty, but in an hour the old darky had returned with the papers intact. The owner felt in all his pockets, one after the other.

“That’s too bad, Uncle Jim,” he said finally; “I thought I had a nickel here that I was going to give you.”

“Cap’n Henry,” said Uncle Jim, “you look ag’in. Ef ever you had a nickel you got it yit.”

The wharf at New Orleans was crowded with foot travelers, vehicles and freight piles. A brawny Irishman, driving a truck, locked wheels with another truck operated by a negro.

As the trucks jammed the negro opened his mouth in profane and highly disrespectful protest. But before he had uttered six words unconsciousness shut off further speech from him.

For the Irishman, with one flying leap, had reached the earth. His left hand closed on the negro’s ankle, and as the latter was jerked violently into space the enemy’s right fist landed a wing shot squarely on the point of his jaw, and for the time being he knew no more.

Ten minutes later the victim half opened his eyes. A policeman was bending over him.

“What’s the matter with you?” demanded the officer.

“A w’ite man hit me,” said the darky, “an’ I wants him arrested.”

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know whut his name is, boss—never seed him befo’ in my life.”

“Well, then, what does he look like?”

“I don’t rightly know dat, neither. Hit all happen’ so quick-lak I didn’t got a good look at ’im.”

“Then how do you expect me to find him if you can’t describe him?” asked the puzzled policeman.

“Boss, dat ain’t goin’ be no trouble,” stated the negro. “You jest go lookin’ for the doin’est man they is in Newerleans!”

An East Sider of foreign birth prospered to the extent where he graduated from the ranks of the sidewalk merchants and became a regular business man, with a store and showcases and everything. Also, for the first time in his life he was able to start a bank account.

One day he was engaged on the telephone by the assistant cashier of the bank where he kept his checking fund.

“Mr. Abrams,” stated the cashier, “I called you up to tell you that on the first day of this month your account appears overdrawn $108.”

“So?” droned Mr. Abrams. “Say, young man, would you do it for me a favor?”

“Sure.”

“Then, please, you should look at your books und tell me how stood the account on the foist day of last month.”

In a minute or two the bank functionary was back at the ’phone.

“Oh, Mr. Abrams,” he said, “on the first day of last month you had a balance to your credit of $322.25.”

“So!” shouted Mr. Abrams. “Und did I call you up?”

There was a down-and-outer, who made a precarious living as a sandwich man. Encased front and back, like a turtle in its shell, between broad boards which bore advertisements for a dairy lunch, he marched the Bowery all day long for wages barely sufficient to keep body and soul together.

One day, as he plodded his weary route, he saw a shining coin lying upon the sidewalk. Instantly he set his foot upon it, and then, stooping with difficulty because of his wooden waistcoat, he clutched it in his eager fingers and raised it to his eyes. His heart inside of him gave a great throb. It was a twenty-dollar gold piece. He was wealthy beyond his wildest ambitions.

Across the street was an excavation for a new building. He hurried thither. Standing on the edge of the digging he unbuckled the straps which bound the squares of planking to him, and, kicking them to pieces with a glad, exultant cry, he flung the shattered emblems of his servitude down into the hole below. Then straightway he departed for the nearest saloon. Stalking in, a triumphant figure even in his tatters, he slapped his precious gold piece down upon the bar and called for a drink of whiskey. It was to have been the first of a long and gorgeous succession of drinks of whiskey.

Some one jostled him in the side. He turned his head, and when he looked back again his double eagle mysteriously had vanished, and the barkeeper was motioning him to depart.

He protested, naturally. Whereupon the barkeeper reached for the bung starter, swung it with a skill born of long practice, and struck him squarely between the eyes. A moment later the ex-sandwich man found himself sprawling on the sidewalk, his happy visions gone forever.

A prey to melancholy, filled with deep disappointments and a yet deeper sense of injustice, he got upon his feet and started to limp away.

Next door to the saloon was a basement barber shop. From it at this instant there emerged a Bowery mission worker, an elderly gentleman of a benevolent aspect, his pink jowls newly scraped and his face powdered. As he climbed up the steps to the level of the sidewalk this gentleman bent over to refasten a loosened shoelace.

Now, to the best of his knowledge and belief, the derelict never before had seen the missionary, but as the latter stooped, presenting before him an expanse of black coat tails, the misanthrope hauled off and dealt the gentle stranger a terrific kick.

With a yell of astonishment and pain the clergyman landed ten feet away.

“What did you mean by that?” he demanded, rubbing the seat of his trousers with both hands. “Why did you kick me?”

“Oh,” said the ex-sandwich man, in tones of an uncontrollable annoyance, “you’re always tying your shoestring!”

The English have the credit for being a conservative race—a breed in which respect for traditions is so strong that they hesitate to change anything which has behind it the merits of antiquity and established comfort. The story which follows would tend to indicate that this trait really does persist in our Anglo-Saxon cousins.

Through the fields between two villages in Sussex ran a footpath. It was not the quickest route for one going from one of the hamlets to the other, for it wandered about, but it had been traced originally by the horny, naked feet of Saxon serfs, and now was worn deep into the turf by the heels of countless generations, and everybody in the neighborhood used it, because everybody always had.

A country gentleman lived midway between the towns. One day he heard a vicious bull was straying about the countryside, chasing pedestrians, frightening children and generally misbehaving himself.

Seeking for variety from the monotony of his life, the gentleman went forth in the afternoon hoping to glimpse the bull. Once he heard him bellow, but he did not see him.

He lingered afield until nearly dusk. He had reached a stile where a hedge crossed the footpath when he heard in the distance, through the thickening gloom, the patter of flying feet, mingled with the thud of heavy hoofs, a convulsive panting and the snorts of some large animal.

Into sight came the local postman, an elderly person. He was legging along at top speed, his mail pouch bouncing on his hip, his whiskers neatly parted by the wind and blowing backward over his shoulders, and just behind him came the bull, lunging with his horns at the seat of the fugitive’s trousers.

By half a length the fleeing man reached the hedge ahead of his pursuer. He flung himself headlong over the stile and in its protection lay breathless, while the bull, bellowing his disappointment, strolled off to seek an easier victim.

The spectator aided the quivering postman to his feet.

“He almost had you to-night, Fletcher,” said the gentleman, sympathetically.

“ ’E’s almost ’ad me every night this week, sir,” gasped Fletcher.

Once upon a time—this, as the sequel will show, was before prohibition came—the Palm Beach Flier, northbound, was compelled by reason of a wreck ahead to detour over a side line. When the passengers on the Pullmans awoke in the morning they found the train halted for an indefinite stop at a small settlement set among the scrub oaks, jack pines and dwarf palmettos of interior Florida. Next only to the tiny station the most important looking structure in sight was an unpainted frame shack facing the tracks. Over its doorway, in awkward capitals, was lettered this imposing promise:

Reading this sign, two Easterners on board one of the sleeping cars were seized with a waggish idea. They left their stateroom and, crossing the rails, entered the establishment.

Its interior decorations were exceedingly simple. At the front was a broad, unpainted board, supported on two barrels. Behind this barrier, against the wall, a small bleared mirror hung. On either side of the mirror, upon a narrow shelf, stood a black bottle, flanked by a meagre store of smeary toddy glasses. Beneath it was a beer keg, resting upon the floor on its side.

In the rear was a small rusty stove. The air being chilly, a fire of pine knots blazed in it. A lanky individual, plainly the proprietor, sat in a broken chair close up to the stove with his bare feet in the warm ashes, reading a tattered copy of a Jacksonville paper.

He did not raise his head as the strangers entered, nor did they hail him. They lined up side by side before the makeshift bar and one of them, addressing space, said:

“Seeing that they serve all sorts of fancy drinks here, I’ll have a gin rickey. What are you going to take?” he added, addressing his fellow joker.

“Well,” said the other, “I think I’ll take a dry martini cocktail, made with French vermouth.”

Without shifting his position or lifting his eyes from his paper the proprietor now spoke:

“I kin lick airy dam’ Yankee in the house—an’ I ain’t even looked yit!”

In those bygone times when New York’s Chinatown was in its heyday—whatever a heyday is—there were three cronies among its habitués who were popular with newspaper reporters and others in search of local color. One was Blinky Britt and one was Honest John Clary, so called because once upon a time when Blinky went to sleep and his glass eye fell out of its socket and rolled across the floor Honest John picked it up and gave it back to him; and the third was Dingo Katz. Honest John was a barkeeper in a Doyers street saloon. Blinky was a lobby-gow, or messenger, for Chinese residents, and Dingo was a pickpocket, making a specialty of robbing women passengers on crosstown trolley cars. They were the Three Musketeers of the Oriental quarter.

In an evil hour the law broke up the triumvirate. Dingo, while plying his profession, was arrested and lodged in the Tombs. At his trial he was found guilty, and the Judge sentenced him to three years at Sing Sing. Although the Underworld agreed that his friends had done all for him that it was humanly possible to do, it is said that an unreasonable rancor filled his soul on the morning when he was taken to prison.

Some months later a journalist prowling through Chinatown looking for material happened upon Blinky Britt sitting in Nigger Mike Callahan’s bar.

“Hello, Blinky,” he said; “when did you hear from your old sidekick, Dingo?”

“Aw, say,” answered Blinky, “cheese on dat sidekick stuff. I’m off of dat Dingo for life.”

“Why, I thought you two were pals,” said the newspaper man.

“So did I t’ink we wuz pals,” said Blinky, “so did I t’ink so. But, say, lissen, bo, and lemme slip you de lowdown on dis Dingo. Like you knows already, Dingo he gits sloughed up fur moll-buzzin’ on a Canal street rattler. Well, it looks like de sneezers is got him nailed fur fair wid de goods. But all de same I’m de one dat goes to de bat wid de fall-money fur to hire him a swell mouthpiece to git him cleared. But it ain’t no use. A jury of twelve delicatesseners and the likes of dat dey t’rows de hooks into him and de old pappy-guy in the silk night-shirt on the bench hands him a t’reetime jolt at Warble-Twice-on-the-Hudson.

“Well, w’en de poor nut is been up dere fur going on maybe two or t’ree weeks I says to myse’f dat it’s no more’n de act of a friend dat I should go to see him. So I rolls a come-on fur five iron men and I takes t’ree of dem front wheels and I buys some makin’s and some crullers and some sweet slum out of a candy shop and some soft scoffin’ out of a pie shop and one t’ing and another dat I knows Dingo likes, and, come a Sunday I gits on de rattler and I rides up dere to dat town of Boid Center and I walks up de road to de big stone hoosgow on de hill. Dere’s a bull in harness on de gate. See? So I says to dis here bull, I says, ‘Is dis visitors’ day?’ And he says, ‘It ’tis.’ So I says, ‘You pass de news to Dingo Katz dat his old pal, Blinky Britt, is come to see him.’

“And say, cull, do you know de woid dat Dingo sends back to me?

“HE SENDS ME WOID HE AIN’T IN.”

For his topic that Sabbath morning the reverend father chose the Judgment. He painted a shining picture of the scene which would be presented on the Last Day, when all the race of mankind, the quick and the dead, the old and the young, from Adam to the newest born babe, assembled before the throne of the Almighty to be judged according to their deeds done in the flesh.

When the service was over an elderly Irishman tarried after the rest of the congregation had departed. He halted the priest as the latter was leaving.

“Your Riverince,” he said, “I want to ask you a question or two, if you please. I followed your sermon close this mornin’, but still I don’t know if I got your meanin’ quite clear.”

“I rather thought my language was sufficiently plain for any understanding,” said the clergyman.

“Oh, it was plain, and most beautiful besides,” said the parishioner. “But, Father, what I want to know is this: Do you mane to say thot on the Last Day whin Gabriel’s Trumpet blows iverybody thot iver lived in this world will be gathered togither at the wan place and the wan time?”

“That is my conception of the meaning of the Scriptures and the Gospels,” said the priest.

“Do you think now, f’rinstance, thot Cain and Abel ’ll be there, side be side?”

“Beyond a doubt.”

“And thot little fella David and thot big slob Goliath—thim also, you think?”

“Surely.”

“And Brian Boru and Oliver Cromwell?”

“Of course, they will.”

“And the A.P.A.’s and the A.O.H.’s?”

“Naturally.”

“Father,” said the parishioner, “there’ll be dom little judgin’ done the first day.”

A Christmas entertainment was being planned in a remote Nevada town. The affair was to take place at the church, and the local Sunday school superintendent, a mild and gentle man, with a temperamental Adam’s apple and an aggravated habit of wearing white string ties on week days, had charge. Up until the eleventh hour it looked as though the manager of the show must depend exclusively upon home talent in making up the bill. But late in the afternoon of Christmas eve, as though directed by Providence, a shabby stranger dropped off a passing freight train carrying a slender instrument case under his arm. He sought out the superintendent, introduced himself—modestly—as a distinguished musician on tour and volunteered to take part in the night’s program. Delighted at having enlisted a visiting star from out of the East, the superintendent assigned him the place of honor.

At the proper moment the pleased promoter in his rôle of master of ceremonies, came forth upon the improvised stage and announced that he had a delightful surprise and a wonderful treat for the audience. Prof. Bilbus, a famous clarinet player direct from New York city and at present sojourning temporarily in their midst, would now favor the assembled citizens with a solo. He stepped to one side and from the wings issued the visitor, who bowed low, and then, lifting his instrument to his lips, emitted one of the sourest and most dismal of notes.

In his shock and disappointment a big miner at the back of the house forgot the proprieties.

“Well, the blanketty blank!” he exclaimed in a voice which reached beyond the footlights.

Quivering with indignation the introducer sprang forward again to the centre.

“Wait!” he called out. “Who called the clarinet player a blanketty blank?”

From the audience a third voice was lifted:

“Who called the blanketty blank a clarinet player?”

After his retirement from the presidency Colonel Roosevelt was making one of his periodical trips through the Southwest, when word came to him in a town in New Mexico that one of his old Rough Riders, a cow hand, was in jail on a serious charge over in Arizona and craved that his beloved commander would come to see him and, if possible, aid him in his present troubles.

Promptly the Colonel crossed the line. In a small brick coop of a county prison he found the veteran. When greetings had been exchanged through the bars, Col. Roosevelt said:

“Jim, I’m certainly sorry to see you in this place.”

“Kernel,” stated the captive, “I’m sorry ’bout it myself. And I’m hopin’ you kin use your influence to git me out pronto. They really ain’t got no right to keep me locked up. My bein’ here is all due to a mistake anyway.”

“A mistake?” echoed the Colonel. “Why, I understood you were charged with some serious offence—shooting somebody, wasn’t it?”

“Well,” said the prisoner, “it’s true I did shoot a lady in the eye. But it was an accident, Colonel.”

“An accident?”

“Yes suh, a pure accident. I wasn’t shootin’ at that lady at all. I was shootin’ at my wife.”

To a prosperous cloak and suit merchant on the lower East Side came an acquaintance of many years’ standing. The newcomer had made a failure of it as a pushcart huckster, and then as a dealer in castoff garments. But he was undismayed; his ambition still soared. It seemed that now he aspired to open a regular store—on borrowed capital.

“But I don’t want I should ask my friends for the money,” he explained. “So this morning I go by that bank over yonder on the other side of the street and I talk with the bank president, a feller named Howard, about it. But what should I know about banks? Nothing, that’s what. He says to me I should make him a note with indorsements. I asks him what is a note, and what is this here indorsement? So he asks me who do I know in this neighborhood what has plenty money, and I says to him that I know you—that we came over together, greeners, on the same ship from Poland eighteen years ago. And then he fixes up this here piece of paper, and he says to me I should bring it over here and get you to sign your name on the back of it, and then I should bring it back to him and he would right away give me the two thousand dollars I need. So, here I am, Goldberg.”

Mr. Goldberg’s voice was husky with emotion as he answered:

“Moe,” he said, “honestly for you I am positively ashamed that you should do this thing. Ain’t always we been friends both in the old country and over here? Ain’t always I loved you like a brother? And now when you need some money do you come to me and ask for it, man to man? No, you go to a goy like that Howard. Oy! Oy! for you I hang my head that you should do so!

“Listen: I am the one which is going to help you and not some feller in a bank. You get that Howard to sign his name on the back of this paper and then I give you the money!”

Two traveling men sat at breakfast in the hotel dining room of a South Carolina mill town. To them came a polite negro, soliciting their orders.

Said the first:

“Bring me grape fruit, coffee with hot milk, corn muffins, bacon and eggs.”

“Yassuh,” confirmed the waiter. He addressed the second patron:

“Whut’s yourn goin’ be, Cap’n?”

“I’ll take the same as my friend here, except that the eggs should be eliminated.”

At the sound of that last mysterious word the darky stiffened.

“ ’Scuse me, suh—how’d you say you wanted ’em aigs?” he asked.

The white man caught the point. He was by way of being something of a practical joker anyhow. He raised his voice slightly for added emphasis:

“I said I wanted them eliminated.”

The waiter blinked hard but recovered gallantly.

“Yas suh,” he said, and departed for the kitchen. Almost immediately there floated in through the swinging doors which separated kitchen from dining room, a medley of sounds betokening a violent debate between two persons of African antecedents. And then on the heels of this the waiter reappeared, perspiring freely, and returned to where the two white men sat.

“Cap’n,” he said, “wouldn’t you des’ ez soon have yore aigs fried? Or mebbe scrambled? We also meks a mouty tasty om’let yere. Folks w’ich tries our om’lets speaks mos’ highly of ’em. Or I mout——”

The joker broke in on him:

“Say,” he demanded, “what’s the matter with you? I gave you my order once—told you what I wanted. Now, I’m on a diet. Under the doctor’s orders I must always have my eggs eliminated. And I’m going to have them that way here or else some nigger’s going to be looking for a job.”

“ ’Tain’t my fault, suh,” pleaded the waiter. “Hit’s de cook. I tells him jes’ ez plain. I sez, ‘’Liminate a couple of fresh aigs fur a Naw’the’n genelman,’ I sez, an’ ’en he starts argufyin’. An’ he tell me to come on back yere an’ suggest to you——”

“Never mind that,” snapped the humorist, now seemingly in a highly indignant state. “You go tell that cook that I want him to fill my order according to instructions or there’ll be trouble.”

Once more the waiter sped away. Half a minute later he came through the swinging doors. With him was a large, coal black person in a greasy apron, and with a look of grave concern upon his face.

“Whar’s de gen’elman?” asked the newcomer.

“Thar he set,” said the waiter, pointing.

The cook presented himself at the table and bowed low.

“Boss,” he said, “I’se de cook yere an’ I strives to please. But you’ll please, suh, haf’ to ’scuse me reguardin’ yore desires ’is mawnin’ fur ’liminated aigs—an’ tha’s a fact.”

“Don’t you know how to eliminate an egg?” demanded the joker.

The cook favored him with a winning smile.

“Who, me?—w’y to be suttinly, I does. Any other time dem ’liminated aigs’d be settin’ right dar in front of you now, smokin’ hot. But to tell you de truth, boss, dey wuz a flighty nigger gal come foolin’ round de kitchen yistiddy w’ich she rightly didn’t have no business to be there neither; an’ she drapped the ’liminator an’ bruk de handle off of it.”

It befell in the old days that a mob one night took a negro out of a county jail in southern Kentucky and carried him just across the line into Tennessee and there hanged him at the roadside. As he dangled they riddled him with bullets and then kindled a fire under him with intent to destroy the body.

By the light of the mounting flames somebody saw something stirring in a brush pile, close by the scene of execution. He kicked the brush away and dragged out an old colored man, who had been on his way home when he saw the lynchers coming. He had deemed it the part of prudence to take cover immediately. But as luck would have it, he had gone into retirement at the very spot where the mob halted to do its work.

Men poked big guns in his face and swore to take his life if ever he dared reveal what he had that night beheld. The old man protested that the whole thing was purely an affair of the white folks, in which he had no concern nor interest. He was quite sure that by daybreak of the following morning all memories of the night would be gone from his mind.

The leader of the mob felt it incumbent to press the lesson home to the consciousness of the witness. Still casually cocking and uncocking a long pistol, he flirted a thumb over his shoulder toward the gallows-tree and said:

“Well, you know that black scoundrel yonder got what he deserved, don’t you?”

The old man craned his neck about and gazed for a moment upon the grisly spectacle.

“Boss,” he said fervently, “it looks lak to me he got off mighty light.”

The traveling man had occasion to pass through the colored compartment of the train on his way to the baggage car, where he wished to open one of his trunks. He took note of a large black person who slept audibly, with his head lolled back against the seat, his mouth agape and his tongue hanging down on his chest like a pink plush necktie.

Now the traveling man was by way of being a practical joker. Also he had in his waistcoat pocket a number of five-grain quinine capsules.

When he returned from the baggage car he held in his hand one of those capsules, with its top removed. Along the furry surface of that pendant tongue he gently sifted the crystals of quinine. The sleeper stirred but did not waken.

The wag halted at the rear door of the Jim Crow section to await results. Presently a fly lit on the nose of the slumbering one, and he sucked his tongue back inside of his mouth. Instantly he was wide awake. He spat violently, then arose with a look of deep concern on his face and headed for the back platform.

At the door he encountered the traveling man. “Mister,” he demanded, anxiously, “does you know ef dey’s a doctor on dis yere train?”

“Who needs a doctor?” countered the white man.

“I does, tha’s who.”

“Are you sick?”

“I shore is. An’ whut’s more I knows whut ails me, an’ I knows I needs to git to a doctor right away.”

“Well, what does ail you?”

“Boss, my gall’s busted!”

Not long ago a very wise literary critic suggested in my presence the attractiveness of the idea of compiling a funny book about hangings. He pointed out that there were scores of yarns, all dealing more or less humorously with the unhumorous subject of hangings, legal and otherwise. He thought that a suitable beginning for the volume might be found in the ancient anecdote of the shipwrecked mariner who, after drifting for days on an improvised raft, was carried by a friendly current within sight of a strange land. As he drew nearer he saw some men on the shore erecting a gallows, and, falling upon his knees, cried out: “Thank Heaven, I have reached a Christian country!”

I do not know whether my friend will carry out his threat of compiling such a work, but if he ever does I claim the collection will be incomplete unless in his pages he includes the narrative pertaining to that colored person who was condemned to death on the scaffold, and who was unable to readjust himself to the prospect. The nearer the date of execution came the greater became the reluctance on his part, until toward the end it amounted with him to what might be called a positive diffidence.

On the night before the fatal day a clergyman sat with the prisoner striving by counsel and admonition to prepare him for the ordeal.

“My brother, my poor brother,” said the minister, soothingly, “try to face the fate which confronts you on the morrow with courage and resolution. Remember that thousands and thousands before you all through the ages, some justly condemned and some unjustly, have suffered this same punishment with fortitude. Even the early Christian martyrs died much as you must die.”

“Yas, suh, I knows,” quavered the condemned, “but—but it wuz a hobby wid them.”

They were holding an examination of aspirants for the position of principal of a colored grade school in Louisville. One of the most promising candidates for the vacancy was a small yellow man, who wore shiny, gold-rimmed spectacles, and bore himself with that air of assurance which learning sometimes imparts.

The superintendent of the public school system was sounding the qualifications of this person. The subject was syntax. The inquisitor would choose a word at random from the lexicon and the applicant would give his conception of its proper definition.

Out of a clear sky, so to speak, the superintendent sped this one:

“Jeopardy.”

The candidate froze stiff. His eyes rolled in his head as he recoiled from the shock.

“Which?” he inquired softly.

“Jeopardy.”

“I believe you said ‘jeopardy,’ didn’t you, suh?” said the little yellow man, still sparring for time.

“Certainly, ‘jeopardy.’ You know the word, don’t you?”

“Oh, yas, suh, fluently.”

“Well, then, since you are familiar with it, what is your understanding of its meaning?”

Like a man preparing to dive from a great height into vasty depths the candidate took a deep breath. Then gallantly he leaped headlong.

“Well, suh,” he stated, “in reply to the question just propounded I should say that ‘jeopardy’ would properly refer to any act committed by a jeopard.”

He got the job on the spot.

The original of my fiction character of “Judge Priest” was a certain Judge William Bishop, now deceased. He was a wonderful old man—shrewd, simple, kindly, witty, gentle.

One time the old Judge was acting as chairman of a committee of three lawyers who sat to examine a gangling young man from the country who sought a license to practice at the local bar. The candidate had started out to be a blacksmith, but he had decided that wearing a frock coat and making speeches to juries would be easier than bending mule shoes and shrinking wagon tires.

Judge Bishop opened the inquiry.

“Henry, my son,” he began in his usual benignant fashion, “I suppose you have done a course of reading with a view to acquiring the rudiments of this calling of ours and thereby fitting yourself for your new career?”

“Well, Jedge, I done some readin’ but not so very much,” confessed Henry. “I aims to do the most of my readin’ after I opens an office.”

“Well, let’s see just what reading you have done,” pursued Judge Bishop. “I assume naturally that you have read Blackstone?”

“Black which, Jedge?”

“Blackstone, author of great textbooks on the practice and principle of the law.”

The candidate shook his head.

“I ain’t never heared of him,” he confessed.

“Well, how about Coke?”

“I don’t know ez I ever heared tell of him, neither.”

“Well, surely then you have studied the Constitution of the United States of America and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights of the State of Kentucky?”

“To tell you the truth, Jedge, I ain’t got round to them yit,” admitted the aspiring blacksmith.

“Henry,” pressed Judge Bishop, “suppose you tell us just what books—what authorities—you have studied since you became seized with the desire to be a member of our bar?”

Henry pondered a moment. Then his face brightened.

“I tell you, Jedge,” he said, “I read one big book called ‘Revised Statutes of the State of Kintucky’ mighty nigh through, an’ I kin remember part of what it says.”

“My son,” stated Judge Bishop, “the trouble with you is that the next Legislature is liable to meet and repeal every damn thing you know.”

There was a seance on—a regular seance, with a trance medium and a black cheesecloth cabinet and a mysterious table rapper and a ghostly guitar picker and everything orthodox, like that. The medium was a stout lady whose controls took those liberties with the English language which seemingly is permitted in a realm where there is neither space nor time—nor grammar. The audience was of fairish size. Amid the throng sat a half-grown youth from about five miles out on R. F. D. No. 3. He was attending his first spiritualistic seance. As manifestation succeeded manifestation, his eyes popped and his ears twitched.

Presently the medium’s husband, who acted, so to speak, as ringmaster, desired to know whether there was yet another present desirous of having speech with some dear departed one. If so, Madame would undertake to establish liaison.

This was the cue for the yokel. He mustered courage to stutter an embarrassed plea. He wished to hear from the shade of his late father.

After a proper wait there were sounds in the cabinet and through the darkness there spoke the tones of one of seeming hoary age.

“Is that you, my son?” asked the voice.

“Yes, paw, this here is me,” answered the youth.

“Was there any questions you wished to ast me concernin’ my present state?” continued the accommodating voice.

The boy thought a moment. Then:

“Where air you, Paw?” he inquired with simple directness.

“Heaven, my son.”

“Air you an angel, Paw?”

“Oh, yes, my son.”

“An angel with wings and a harp and everything?”

The answer was somewhat muffled but seemingly in the affirmative. The son considered a moment.

“Say, Paw,” he demanded eagerly, “whut do you measure frum tip to tip?”

There used to be a character in George Creel’s town in Missouri, a transplanted Kentuckian and a veteran of Shelby’s command, who was a born orator and an inspired romancer.

One sunny afternoon he was holding forth to an attentive audience upon the part he had played in the war between the States. It was rather to be inferred that he was one of the main reasons why the Confederacy endured, against odds, for four years. He progressed to where he was enriching history with an account of the first engagement in which he had participated.

“Gentlemen,” he proclaimed, “envisage the scene. There we stand, a little group, armed for the most part with nondescript weapons, with flint lock muskets, with scythes, with axes, even with cudgels. We are underfed, half shod and ragged, yet inspired by the dauntless resolution and splendid valor which sustained the Southern heart. Over the slope and straight against our line come pouring the Northern hordes, those relentless invaders of our beloved Southland, lusty and strong and equipped with every appliance for conducting warfare that modern science can provide.

“We are outnumbered three to one; we are weak from hunger while they are lusty with bacon and beef. But none among us quails. A righteous belief in our sacred cause inspires us, every one. Each one feels himself a giant. And what is the result? Suddenly we leap forward in the charge. We grapple with them, we fight like demons. And, gentlemen, such is the impetuosity of our attack, such the ferocity of our blows that soon the blue lines break and in mad disorder routed the enemy flees, unable to face that irresistible torrent of Southern manhood.”

From the audience spoke up a gray bearded listener.

“Say, looky here, Kurnel,” he said. “I was in that there fight myself and whut really happened wuz that them plegged Yanks give us a fust rate lickin’ and run us ten miles acrost country.”

With a magnificent gesture of surrender the Colonel rose to his feet.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “another instance of a good story spoiled by a damn eyewitness!”

Achmed Abdullah, the novelist, is an Afghan, a descendant of an old and noble family of Afghanistan and a son of a former Governor of Kabul. He was educated in Europe, and he has lived and adventured pretty much all over the world. Being a natural linguist, he has picked up tongues as he went.

With the rank of captain he was on recruiting service once for the British army in Cairo. To him came an Egyptian officer of police to ask his aid. Two native constables had picked up in the bazaars a black man whose nationality was unknown and whose purposes were unfathomable, seeing that he could not be made to understand the questions put to him by his captors.

It seemed that for several days before his arrest the prisoner had been lurking about the bazaars, a butt for gamins and the despair of those who sought to interrogate him. As much for his own protection as for any other motive the police had locked him up. Now the assistance of Capt. Abdullah as translator was solicited.

Abdullah accompanied the puzzled functionary to the prison. In a corner of a cell crouched a huge black man staring with apprehensive, sullen eyes at the newcomers. It was evident that he was of some African stock; also it was plain that he was in a badly frightened state. He was clad in a nondescript costume of tatters which he had picked up somewhere—the sandals of an Arabian, a Turkish fez and the ragged remains of a donkey driver’s robe.

Being admitted to the cell, the volunteer interpreter proceeded to fire simple questions at the captive, first in French, then in Afghan and then in Ashantee, in Turkish, in Tibetan, in Greek, in Chinese, in Persian and in Batu. There was no response; the black merely continued to glower at him dumbly. So then Abdullah tried him in some of the tongues of the Sahara Desert and in the clucking dialects of one or two Congo tribes and finally in Zuluese, with which he was also more or less familiar. Still the hunched-up figure gave no sign of understanding.

In despair Abdullah gave it up. “I wonder,” he said aloud to himself in English, “what in thunder you are, anyway?”

With a bellow of thanksgiving the prisoner leaped to his feet.

“Boss,” he whooped, “I’se a Free Will Baptist!”

And so he was—a country darky from Alabama who had shipped on a tramp steamer out of New Orleans, had deserted off the African coast, swimming ashore naked, and had for days past been dodging about the native quarters, growing hourly more bewildered and more desperate in these strange surroundings.

In September of 1918 Col. Bozeman Bulger, in charge of the press bureau of the A. E. F., was driving in his car up toward the front on the afternoon of a day when there had been hard fighting with the stubborn Germans. Limping down the high road on the way from the forward trenches to rest billets came a company of infantry, or what was left of it, just relieved after more than a week of practically continuous service under fire.

The officer in command was a lanky youth of perhaps twenty-two whose face was gray with exhaustion. He hailed Bulger, asking for something to smoke. He had been without tobacco, he said, for four days—without food, too, for most of that time.

Bulger left his car and he and the youth sat down together in a convenient shell hole to pass the time of day. Between long, grateful puffs on a cigarette the youth discoursed of his recent experiences in the slow drawl of a Southwesterner.

“Major,” he said, “we’ve had it pretty toler’ble tough these last few days—the Heinies shelling us day and night, communication interrupted and liaison broken, no chow to speak of, no makin’s, no nothing except mud and wet and the chances of being blown into little scraps.

“As a matter of fact, I’ve had pretty rough sledding ever since I got over here, and that’s more than a year ago. I haven’t had any leave—they seem to have overlooked me when they were passing out the trips to Paris—and I’ve been working my head off when I wasn’t in the line on active duty. And now finally, to top off with, we have this week up front.”

“Where are you from?” asked Bulger.

“Texas,” replied the youth. “Yes, sir, I was teaching school down there when we got into this war. I had a mother dependent on me, and while I wanted to go and do my bit I thought it better on my mother’s account that I should wait until the draft took me. But while I was trying to decide Senator Morris Sheppard came to our town and made a recruiting speech. He said it was high time we were satisfying our national honor. Well, sir, that phrase hit me right where I lived. The next day I went in as a volunteer, and after a spell I got a commission—and here I am.

“Major, I don’t regret having done what I did do. If it was to do over again I reckon I wouldn’t hesitate. But, Major, as I look back on what I’ve gone through with ever since I landed, I don’t mind telling you, in strict confidence, that my national honor is dern near satisfied!”

A youth in southeastern Missouri became involved in legal proceedings as the result of the mysterious disappearance of a neighbor’s mare and the upshot was that a jury went so far as to find him guilty of horse-stealing and the judge gave him a sentence of five years at hard labor. A friend of mine defended him at his trial.

Some months after his late client had been taken away to begin serving his sentence this friend was sitting one morning in his office when the door opened and there entered the father of the youth, an elderly bearded hillsman.

“Hal,” began the newcomer, “I come to see you to git you to do somethin’ ’bout my boy Wesley Junior.”

“Well, Uncle Wes,” said the lawyer, “I don’t believe there is anything I can do. You remember how hard I worked for him at his trial—how I sweated down two or three collars over yonder in that courthouse and how I wasted all the oratory I had in my system and how I snapped both my suspenders. But in spite of all I could say, you know as well as I do what happened. The case went against us and the Judge gave Wesley five years in the State penitentiary and there he is!”

“Yas, suh, Hal,” said the father. “Wesley Junior, is up thar in that there penitentiary and that’s jest the p’int! I got a letter frum him this mawnin’. And he told me to come to see you and to tell you to git him out of that place right-away—he’s plum dissatisfied.”

There is a certain young actor in New York, a player of romantic swashbuckler parts who, when he is sober, is one of the gentlest and most companionable of men. But when he indulges in strong water his nature changes. He becomes dogmatic, disputatious, and occasionally quarrelsome. Such times he delights to corner some inoffensive acquaintance and pin him down to a definite position on this subject or that and then debate the point for hours on end.

One night, being in one of these alcoholically promoted moods, he trapped a friend against the bar of a certain club. The latter wished not to argue with any one on any topic whatsoever. But the actor would not have it so.

“You go ’round saying you know so mush, don’t you?” he demanded belligerently. “You go ’round saying you know so many people in this town, don’t you? Thatsh kinda fellow you are, ain’t you—huh?”

“Not at all,” protested the hapless friend, “I never——”

“Pleash don’t contradict me,” said the actor; “thatsh no way to carry on argument between gen’men. Lemme get through stating my side and then I’ll lisshen to you. You go ’round saying you know more people in this club than I know, don’t you? Just answer me that!”

“Why, I never said any such——”

“Kin’ly lemme get word in edgeways, if you please,” said the actor with elaborate politeness. “You say you know more members of thish club ’en I do—more than anybody knows? A’right, then, you answer me thish: Do you know Jerome Lawrence—he’sh member here?”

“Certainly, I know him,” said the badgered one, thinking he saw a loophole. “As it happens, I also know his brother, Oscar, who looks so much like him.”

“Ah, hah!” exulted the intoxicated one, with the air of having led an unwilling witness into a damaging admission. “You say you know Jerome Lawrence and you say you know his brother Oscar that looks so mush like him? Well, then, if you know so mush, you tell me thish: Whish one of ’em looks the most alike?”