Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 December 1877 — WIT AND HUMOR. [ARTICLE]

WIT AND HUMOR.

The more hat a man can buy for $2 the less bonnet a woman can buy for $20, and yet some folks say this world was slung together in a perfect manner. — Cincinnati Breakfast Table. A little girl saw her father making a wooden egg, and, learning the use to be made of it, she ran off to explain the matter to a visitor, prefacing her excited story with the caution, " Don’t you tell the hens I” If there is anything that sets a woman deranged, it is to have her hnsband endeavor to draw the cork from a whisky bottle with her best carving-fork, and leave one of the tines firmly imbedded in the cork. “Do you know where I can get room to store a load of salt?” asked a countryman of a Boston clerk. “Perhaps my father can accommodate you,” was the reply; “he has plenty of salt-rheum on his hands.” A distressed mother writes to a newspaper for advice, which she gets thusly: “ The only way to cure your son of staying out late o’ nights is to break his legs, or get the girl he runs after to do the housework.” “She is a perfect Amazon,” said a pupil in one of our schools, of his teacher, yesterday, to a companion. | “Yes,” said the other, who was better | versed in geography than in history, “ I noticed she had an awful big mouth.” “ Pomp, was you ever drunk ?” “No, I ’toxicated wid ardent spirits once, and dat’s enuff for dis darky. De Lord bless you, Caesar, my head felt as if it was a wood-shed, while all de niggers in de world appeared to be splitting wood in it.” It makes even a good Christian’s lip quiver and a half smile to creep over his usually stolid countenance to see the mosquito, with a blanket round bis emaciated form, rubbing up against the refrigerator, preparatory to leaving for a better world. “Ah, love!” she murmured, as they wandered [through the moonlight, ‘ ‘ah, dearest, wny do the summer roses fade?" He happened to be a young chemist of a practical turn of mind, and he replied that it was owing to the insufficiency of oxygen in the air. A young Jerseyman who had been at his club meeting the night before could not eat, but sat innocently toying witli his fork on his plate. “ Why don’t you eat your sausag.,asked his wife. “ Oh,” said he, “I’m trying to carve my namo on the bark.” A boy was sent for a doctor, his mother being ill, when looking down the street he saw a great crowd. Then came a struggle between duty and curiosity, but he finally started for the crowd, saying : ‘ ‘ The old lady’s pretty badly off, but I know she wouldn’t want me to miss that fight. ” Mark Hamilton, speaking of a belle, who was a great favorite, said : ‘ * She has a mouth like an elephant!” “Ol), Mr. Hamilton,” said a lady present, “how can you be so rude?” “Rude, ladies, rude! What do you mean? I say she has a mouth like an elephant, because it’s full of ivory. ” An honest man may be about as hard to find as a plumber with a mortgage on his house. We won’t quibble about it. But when you do stumble upon him he has his trade-mark upon his face, and, whether in home-spun or store clothes, might walk through the town with an umbrella under each arm without fear of unjust suspicion.— Breakfast Table. TeK MEERSCHAUM. Scorn not the meerschaum. Housewives, you have croaked, In ignorance of its charms. Through this small reed Did Milton now and then consume the weed ; The poet Tennyson hath oft evoked Tho Muse with glowing pipe, and Thackeray Joked And wrote and sang in nlcotinian mood ; Hawthorne with this hath cheered his solitude; A thousand times this pipe hath Lowell smoked ; Full oft have AJdrioh, Stoddard, Taylor, Crancb, And many more whose verses float about, Puffed the Virginian or Havana leaf; And, when the poet’s or the artist’s branch Drops no sustaining fruit, how sweet to pout Consolatory whiffs—alas ! too brief ! —Harper's Magazine for December.