"Here, you Zeb! Where've you been all this time?"
The darky grinned placatingly.
"Why, boss," he explained, "I hain't been--I'se gwine!"
PROFANITY
The longshoreman was indulging in a fit of temper, which he interpreted in a burst of language that shocked the lady passing by. She regarded him reprovingly, as she demanded:
"My man, where did you learn such awful language?"
"Where did I learn it?" the longshoreman repeated. "Huh! I didn't learn it, it's a gift."
The deacon carried a chain to the blacksmith to have a link welded. When he returned to the shop a few hours later, he saw the chain lying on the floor, and picked it up. It was just next to red hot, and the deacon dropped it with the ejaculation:
"Hell!" Then he added hastily: "I like to have said."
PROFITEERS
The wife of the profiteer discoursed largely on the luxuries of the new country estate.
"And, of course," she vouchsafed, "we have all the usual animals--horses, cows, sheep, pigs, hens, and so forth."
"Oh, hens!" the listener gushed. "Then you'll have fresh eggs."
"Really, I'm not sure. The hens can work, if they like, but of course in our position, it's quite unnecessary--er, perhaps not quite suitable, you know."
The advertisement offered for fifty cents a recipe by which to whiten the hands and soften them. Girls who sent the money received the following directions:
"Soak the hands three times a day in dish water while mother rests."
"Are you sure this handbag is genuine crocodile skin?" the woman asked the shopkeeper.
"Absolutely," was the reply. "I shot that crocodile myself."
"But it is badly soiled."
"Well, yes, of course. That's where it hit the ground, when it fell out of the tree."
Customer: "But if it costs twenty dollars to make these watches, and you sell them for twenty dollars, where does your profit come in?"
Shopkeeper: "That comes from repairing them."
PROGRESS
The cottager was crippled by rheumatism, and the kindly clergyman taught him his letters, and put him through the primer and into the Bible. On his return after a vacation, the clergyman met the cottager's wife.
"How does John get along with his reading of the Bible?" he asked.
"Oh, bless your reverence," she replied proudly, "'e's out of the Bible and into the newspaper long ago."
The kindly clergyman, newly come to the parish, was at great pains to teach an illiterate old man, crippled with rheumatism, his letters so that he could read the Bible. On the clergyman's return after a short absence from the parish, he met the old man's wife.
"And how is Thomas making out with reading his Bible?"
"Bless you, sir," the wife declared proudly, "he's out of the Bible and into the newspaper long ago."
The physician advised his patient to eat a hearty dinner at night, without any worry over the ability to digest it. The patient, however, protested:
"But the other time when I came to see you, you insisted I must eat only a very light supper in the evening."
The physician nodded, smiling complacently.
"Yes, of course--that shows what great progress the science of medicine is making."
PROHIBITION
The objector to prohibition spoke bitterly:
"Water has killed more folks than liquor ever did."
"You are raving," declared the defender of the Eighteenth Amendment.
"How do you make that out?"
"Well, to begin with, there was the Flood."
The wife complained to her husband that the chauffeur was very drunk indeed, and must be discharged instantly.
"Discharged--nothing!" the husband retorted joyously. "When he's sobered off, I'll have him take me out and show me where he got it."