A laugh a day keeps the doctor awayCobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
General
A laugh a day keeps the doctor away
Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
American wit and humor; Anecdotes
In company with a newspaper man he was touring Spain. One morning in
Malaga the two Americans dropped into a little café for breakfast. They
knew no Spanish and their waiter knew no English. Largely by signs they
made him understand that they wanted coffee and rolls. But when the
newspaperman decided that he wished also a glass of milk difficulties
arose.
Singly and in chorus they pronounced the word “milk.” Then they spelled
it out. Then they shouted it loudly as one always does, somehow, when
using one’s own language, one is dealing with a stranger who doesn’t
understand that language. The waiter merely shrugged his shoulders and
spread his fingers in a gesture of helplessness.
The man who wanted milk imitated the action of one milking a cow,
meanwhile mooing plaintively, and then, to round out the illustration,
went through the pantomime of emptying an imaginary glass. Still the
waiter stared at him uncomprehendingly.
“Hold on,” said the artist, “I’ve got an idea. I can draw about as well
as the next one. Lend me a pencil; it won’t take me a minute to make
this fellow understand.”
With the pencil, on the table cloth, he sketched rapidly what seemed to
him a very graphic likeness of a domestic cow, and, squatted down
alongside the cow, his conception of a conventional milkmaid engaged in
the act of milking.
As he made the finishing strokes the waiter, who had been watching the
operation over his shoulder, burst into a delighted cry of “Sí! Sí!
Señor!” and, tucking up his apron, dashed from the restaurant and ran
across the street into the shop of a tobacconist.
“Now, then,” said the artist to his friend, “see what a knack with the
pencil will do for a fellow when he gets into difficulties in a foreign
country? I’ll venture I could go all over the world, making my meaning
clear by dashing off these little illustrations.”
“Maybe so,” said the newspaper man, “but why in thunder did the waiter
go to a cigar store for milk?”
“Probably a custom of the country,” said the artist. “The main point was
that just as soon as he’d had a good look at my drawing he was on his
way. He’ll be back here in a minute with your glass of milk.”
The prediction was only partly true. The waiter was back again in a
minute or less, but he brought no milk. Triumphantly, he laid down in
front of his patrons two tickets for a bull-fight.
§ 169 To the Depths of Dogology
It was back in 1899 that State Senator William Goebel seized the
Democratic nomination for Governor of Kentucky and, so doing, split the
party in the state to flinders. The feuds born of that fight are still
alive to-day after the lapse of more than twenty-three years. It was my
fortune as a reporter from a Louisville paper to follow the story of the
conflict.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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