“ On a very cold day, when the church was inadequately warmed, another minister preached from a very hot text. At the conclusion of the service he leaned over the pulpit and said, in a tone audible to all the congregation:
“Deacon Craig, do, I pray you, see to it that this church is properly warmed this afternoon. What’s the use of my preaching to a parcel of sinners about the danger of hell-fire when the church is as cold as a barn?” ”

“ While the conductor was punching his ticket, Artemus remarked: “Does this railroad company allow passengers to give it advice, if they do so in a respectful manner?” The conductor replied in gruff tones that he guessed so. “Well,” Artemus went on, “it has occurred to me that it would be well, perhaps, to detach the cow-catcher from the front of the engine and hitch it to the rear of the train. For, you see, we are not likely to overtake a cow; but what’s to prevent a cow strolling into this car and biting the passengers?” ”

“ Once upon a time there was a minister, a very orthodox man, and he was very fond of pepper-sauce, and he liked it piping hot, the very strongest kind on the market. Distrusting that furnished by the hotels, he always carried with him on his travels a bottle of his favorite brand. One day as he was seated at the dinner table of a hotel, a man on the other side of the table asked him to “please pass the pepper-sauce.” ”

“ GETTING A WIFE
The family had returned from church one Sunday, and as they had company to dinner, and dinner was a little later than usual, the six-year-old Robert was very hungry and could hardly wait any longer. He had been very much interested in the sermon, which was a very graphic account of the creation of woman. He had listened wide-eyed while the minister told how God had put Adam to sleep and had taken a rib out of his side and made it into a wife for the lonely man. But just now he was more interested in the dinner, especially in its conclusion, mince pie and cakes. ”

“ In 1892 I bought an OX team, a timber cart, a pair of Texas ponies, a gold watch, a breech-loading shotgun, A repeating rifle, A milk cow, A pair of fine hogs, and a set of books all on the instalment plan, and hired hands to dig a fish pond. In 1905 my restaurant burned flat to the ground and never left me a thing, one of my ponies died and I hired the other one to an infernal, insignificant drummer. He killed him driving him too hard. ”

“ The chaplain of a large private asylum asked a brother clergyman to preach to the inmates on a Sunday during his absence. Before going away, he said: “Preach your best, for, though insane on some points, they are very intelligent.” So he talked to them of India, and of heathen mothers who threw their dear little babies into the sacred river Ganges as offerings to their false gods. ”

“ During a great temperance agitation out in Kansas a man was lecturing in a public school building on chemistry. An interested auditor, a farmer, couldn’t at all get the hang of the lecturer’s remarks, and asked his neighbor in the next seat: “Say, what does the lecturer mean by oxy-gin and hydro-gin, and what is the difference?” “Well,” was the answer, “they come to ’bout the same thing. There ain’t enough difference betwixt them to amount to much. You see, by oxy-gin the lecturer means pure gin, and by hydro-gin he means gin and water.” ”

“ Each word had been parsed except the last, which fell to Bob, a sixteen-year-old boy, near the foot of the class, who began thus:
“Cow is a noun, feminine gender, singular number, third person, and stands for Mary.”
“Stands for Mary!” said the astonished teacher. “And, pray, Robert, how do you make that out?”
“Because,” answered the hopeful pupil, “if the cow didn’t stand for Mary, how could Mary milk the cow?” ”

“ When Thackeray, the great English novelist, visited this country, his literary friends in Boston gave a banquet in his honor. The committee of arrangements, learning that Mr. Thackeray had made some comments on the general tendency of Americans to magnify things, thought they would give their distinguished guest a demonstration of the greatness of the American oyster, at least, the more so as the oyster does not attain a great size in the British Isles. ”

“ After a dinner in one of the most hospitable residences in Washington, a party of very distinguished men—Cabinet ministers, senators, diplomats, scientists and soldiers—sat in the smoking-room, and the conversation drifted from politics to religious questions. ”

“ Modern politics are entirely too tricky. The average candidate when he enters the political struggle lets plain dealing go by the board. What, then, is the result? The result is something altogether worthless, something that reminds me of a Western clergyman.
“This clergyman was very fond of cider. His congregation, meeting secretly last autumn, decided that it would surprise him with a hogshead of the beverage he loved and arranged to hold a surprise party at the manse, each guest to bring a demijohn of cider and to empty it into a huge hogshead in the garden. ”

“ She soon discovered, for Bobbie was no sooner seated in the pew than he observed a very bald-headed man two seats to the front, and exclaimed in a loud whisper which set everybody smiling, “Oh, Aunt Lou! there’s a man with a skinned head!” Aunt Lou’s face was crimson, and she shook him, but it did little good, for when the minister took his place in the chancel, the boy remarked, “Another man with a skinned head!” ”

“ They say that the difference between an optimist and a pessimist is this: The optimist looks on the doughnut, the pessimist looks on the hole. Well, there once was a man up in a certain town in Eastern Pennsylvania who did a very good business at the baker-trade. Everybody knew and patronized the good German baker, Hans Kitzeldorfer. Hans was industrious, frugal and thrifty, and was making money, until one unfortunate day he turned pessimist and began to look on the hole in the doughnut. ”

“ Louisa was doing her level best to kick the pile over on her opposite, and had gathered both feet and let fly like a pile-driver, and was about to repeat the operation, when, at the critical moment, her chair shot out backward and Louisa sat down in a puddle of soapsuds, with what Augusta Evans in one of her novels calls a sound like the wreck of matter and the crash of worlds. What little breath was in her was knocked out, and it was unknown for a brief space whether it would ever get back. But she got up, and was duly escorted by her female companions to the back porch for needed repairs. ”

“ It keepeth the weasen from stiffling, the stomach from wambling and the heart from swelling. It keepeth the hands from shivering, the sinews from shrinking, the veins from crumbling, the bones from aching, and the marrow from soaking. ”

“ Theodore L. Cuyler once put the question, “What is the chief end of man?” to a gathering of Sunday-school scholars, he received for an answer, “To glorify God and annoy Him forever.” Another minister relates that he once asked this famous question of a very much neglected boy, “What is the chief end of man?” ”

“ The minister was a very genial man and a very witty man. He had great difficulty in getting his salary promptly. Of late it was much in arrears, and he did not know what to do. One day he entered the hardware store kept by his leading deacon, and asked to look at corkscrews. He looked over the assortment very carefully, saying that he wanted quite a large one, one that was very strong, too. And when the deacon asked him what he wanted with a corkscrew, the minister replied, “I want it to draw my salary with.” ”

“ This is how the colonel and the lieutenant-colonel of a French regiment in Algeria were lionized. The major of the regiment one day came across a lion suffering grievous pain from a thorn in his paw. Pitying the poor animal, the major extracted the thorn. Considering what he could do in return for the kindness, the grateful lion secured a copy of the army register, ran his eye over the list of officers in the gentle major’s regiment, and waylaid and devoured both the colonel and the lieutenant-colonel, so that his friend, the major, could be promoted. ”

“ A missionary in the Far West, residing near an Indian reservation, relates how one day there came to his house an Indian and a squaw wishing to “get married white man’s way.” Everything being in order they were duly made man and wife according to the service of the Church. “I was a little apprehensive,” said the minister, laughing, “that it might not turn out well with them. They had such queer names. His name was ‘Little Red Horse,’ and hers was ‘Jane-kick-a-hole-in-the-sky.”
THE STRONGEST MAN
“Who was the strongest man?” asked the Sunday-school teacher. ”

“ A number of gentlemen from different parts of the country were lodging at one of the hotels in Atlantic City. It was their custom to amuse themselves at table by relating anecdotes and conundrums. One of the men, a Pennsylvania Dutchman, was always greatly delighted at these jokes and laughed louder than the rest, but never related anything himself. ”

“ The late Horace Leland, who for many years kept the Leland Hotel at Springfield, Ill., was an exceedingly generous man and an especial lover of children. One day he and Judge A. C. Matthews, then Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, and afterward the First Controller of the Treasury, were walking out together when they met a man with a cluster of toy balloons. School was just out and hundreds of boys and girls came pouring from a building near at hand and formed in groups around the balloon man. ”

“ The good woman looked at him and said, “An’ faith, an’ why is it that the conductor takes the money of a poor Irishwoman, an’ don’t ask ye for anything, an’ ye seem to be a rich mon?” The lawyer replied, “My good woman, I am traveling on my beauty.” The woman looked at him more carefully for a moment, and said, “An’ is that so? An’ then, sure, you must be near your journey’s end.”
BOO!
A Virginia farmer was trying to train a small horse for a saddle-horse for his daughter, and was riding the animal up and down the road past a haystack. ”

“ The colonel and a friend were sitting on the back porch of the house smoking and talking. They fell to discussing the intoxicating properties of beer. The colonel maintained that a man couldn’t possibly drink enough beer to make him drunk, but his friend was of a contrary mind. The colonel went into his kitchen and brought out a two-gallon tin bucket, and said, “See this bucket? Well, I have a German sawing wood down in my barn at the end of the lot. I’ll bet you ten dollars that he can drink all the beer that bucket will hold at one sitting, and not be the worse for it.” ”

“ He, supposing it was the dog after his sausage again, let fly a most vigorous kick, which caught the poor deacon in the middle of the forehead and knocked him rattling down into the chancel, the preacher, still looking the other way, and saying, “My friends, I am sorry for this disturbance, but—I have some sausage in my pocket and that miserable dog has been following me all this morning trying to steal it!” ”

“ He said to the driver, “What advantage is there in paying for a first class ticket when holders of second and third class tickets have precisely the same accommodations?” The driver said, “You just wait a while and you will see.” So by and by they came to a steep hill, and the driver called out, “First class passengers will keep their seats; second class passengers will get out and walk; third class passengers will get out and push.”
They have a new brand of whiskey down in Kentucky known as “The Horn of Plenty,” because it will corn-you-copiously. ”

“ It was a missionary meeting, and the man was begging money for Missions, and he said if you gave him your money why the Lord would send it back to you doubled—He would pay you a hundred per cent.”
“I hope,” expostulated his father, “you didn’t put that half dollar on the collection plate?” “Yes, I did, father,” said the boy, “and the man he said that the Lord is a good paymaster and that He’d send it back doubled.”
“And you believed him! O pshaw, I’m utterly disappointed in you, James. You’ll never make a business man. The idea of your believing such stuff like that. ”

“ A Larimer County farmer lost a valuable cow in a very unusual and distressing manner. The animal, in rummaging through a summer kitchen, found and swallowed an old umbrella and a cake of yeast. The yeast, fermenting in the poor beast’s stomach, raised the umbrella and she died in great agony. ”

“ One day at the dinner table they were teasing Annie about Mr. Lovejoy—that was the beau’s name—and Annie declared that she didn’t like him one bit, and said moreover that Mr. Lovejoy “had a soft spot in his head.” That called off the dogs, for a time at least, but her brother Bobbie took note.
The next evening Mr. Lovejoy called to see Annie. They were both in the parlor. He was sitting on the sofa, and she occupied a chair on the other side of the room. Bobbie strolled into the room, climbed up on the sofa and began a very diligent examination of Mr. Lovejoy’s head. ”