"This," murmured the demure maiden, when her lover nudged up still closer on the sofa, "is the closest call I've ever had."

The rapidity of ocean transport is becoming truly marvelous. A sea captain boasts that he finished loading a cargo of wheat at San Francis...o...b.. dinner time, and then went to China for tea.

"You are making yourself rather officious in this crowd," said a burly policeman to a notorious pickpocket. "I am only trying to dis-purse them," said the thief.

The slats of the shutter of our office-window are in a dilapidated condition. "Please help the blind."

"Did you ever catch your husband flirting?"

"Yes; that's the very way I did catch him."

A deaf and dumb mute recently went into a bicycle shop and picked up a hub and spoke.

The girl who marries a t.i.tle very frequently turns her fortune to a count.

There appears to be no affinity between the prestidigitator and the theatrical manager, yet they both make pa.s.ses.

We don't always know just how the "other half" lives; but, in Chicago, the "better half" lives on her alimony.

"What did de lady do when yer asked her for an old collar?"

"She gave me a turndown."

"Are any of the colors discernible to the touch?" asked the school teacher.

"I have often felt blue," replied the boy at the head of the cla.s.s.

"What is there about betting on horse-races that is so bad for the health?" said young Mrs. Brown.

"I never heard of anything," answered the visitor.

"Didn't you? Every time Charley makes a bet he comes home and says there is something wrong with his system."

"Jackson never lights one of his cigars. Just keeps it in his mouth and chews the end. I've often wondered why."

"You wouldn't if you had ever smoked one of them."

Jones the dentist, ought to make a good poker player.

Why?

He draws and fills so well.

Customer (to the coal dealer): "Have you got any name for those scales of yours?"

"I never heard of scales having a name."

"Well, you ought to call your scales Ambush. You see, they are always lying in weight."

FIRST SENIOR--Heard about Exsheff? He went down into South Africa, and he's come home a regular repository of Zulu spearheads and Boer bullets.

SECOND SENIOR--I always said he had good metal in him.