"You understand your duties thoroughly, don't you?" she said to the new footman.
"Yes, ma'am, certainly, ma'am."
"And you know your way to announce?"
"Well, ma'am, I shouldn't perhaps like to go quite so far as that, but I think I know my weight to a pound or so."
"Father, is the zebra a black animal with white stripes or a white animal with black stripes?"
"Has Jobkins any money?" asked Hickenlooper.
"Oh, he must have," said Garroway.
"Oh, we all must have--but have we?" said Hickenlooper.
There is an elevator boy in a New York office building, who is among a large number of public servants that resent needless questions.
One day there entered his car a rather fussy old lady, and garrulous as well.
"Don't you ever feel sick going up and down in this elevator all day?"
she asked.
"Yes, ma'am," said the boy.
"Is it the motion going down?"
"No, ma'am."
"The motion going up?"
"No, ma'am."
"Is it the stopping that does it?"
"No, ma'am."
"Then what is it?"
"Answering questions, ma'am."
"My father and I know everything in the world," said a small boy to his companion.
"All right," said the latter. "Where's Asia?"
It was a stiff question, but the little fellow answered coolly: "That is one of the questions my father knows."
Owen Wister, the novelist, apropos of useless questions, once told of a man who stood before a mirror in his room, his face lathered and an open razor in his hand. His wife came in. She looked at him and said, "Are you shaving?" The man, a foe to surplusage, replied fiercely, "No; I am blacking the kitchen range. Where are you--out driving or at a four-o'clock tea?"
_See also_ Curiosity.
RADICALS
A radical is a man without a sense of humor; a conservative is one without a sense of the ridiculous.
RAILROADS
"Where's the president of this railroad?" asked the man who called at the general offices.
"He's down in Washington, attendin' th' session o' some kind uv an investigatin' committee," replied the office boy.
"Where is the general manager?"
"He's appearin' before th' Interstate Commerce Commission."
"Well, where's the general superintendent?"
"He's at th' meetin" of th' legislature, fightin' some bum new law."
"Where is the head of the legal department?"
"He's in court, tryin' a suit."
"Then where is the general passenger agent?"
"He's explainin' t' th' commercial travelers why we can't reduce th'
fare."
"Where is the general freight agent?"
"He's gone out in th' country t' attend a meeting o' th' grange an'
tell th' farmers why we ain't got no freight-cars."
"Who's running the blame railroad, anyway?"