"Come join us," called out one of the men hospitably. "No, thank you," said the bishop. "The fact is, I never drink." "Do you eat hay?" retorted the West Virginian, nettled at the bishop’s refusal and eying him quizzically. "No," was the bland reply. "Then I say," drawled the mountaineer looking at the others to see the effect of his witticism, "then I say, you’re not fit company for man or beast." *FOLLOWING THE SEA* Two Irishmen had taken a day off and had gone on a little pleasure trip to Atlantic City. Walking beside the sea one of them exclaimed: "Pat, would yer like to follow the sea always?" "Shure, an’ that Oi would," replied Pat, "if Oi could go the whole distance on the boardwalk." *HE RESPECTFULLY SUBSCRIBED* One of the stories attributed to Bishop Potter concerns a young and inexperienced clergyman who had just been called to a city charge. At the end of the first month his salary was paid by a check, and he took it to the bank and passed it in at the paying-teller’s window. The official looked at it and then passed it back. "It’s perfectly good," he said, "but I will have to ask you to indorse it." The young clergyman took his pen and wrote across the face of the check, "I respectfully subscribe to the sentiments herein expressed." *PROOF OF ACCIDENT* The lady of the house was congratulating herself on obtaining a very good cook--the only trouble was her carelessness. One day hearing a dish fall and break, and the cook’s remark, "Hup, there she goes!" she called her, and said: "Can’t you be more careful? You seem to enjoy breaking dishes." "Indade," replied the cook consolingly, "’tis only cheap chinyware you use; shure, there’s no pleasure in breakin’ thot koind." *A POWERFUL POISON* A certain high school teacher amused his students the other day during a lecture on chemistry by relating a story about an old German professor who, in narrating the fact that cyanide of potassium was a very deadly poison, went so far as to say that "one drop of this stuff placed on the tongue of a rabbit would kill the strongest man!" *WHY HE LAUGHED* On one occasion, Dan Leno, the London comedian, had appeared at a house in Park Lane, and given his best entertainment. The languor of his listeners made him feel not too happy, and he was glad to retire to the dressing-room allotted him. While he was removing the paint a very young peer, who had strolled after him, told Leno in the most approved drawl that some of his sayings had really been rather funny. "Especially that one, you know, where your wife made a pancake on a gridiron and the pancake slipped through and put the fire out. That made me laugh awfully, because I know what a gridiron is. I have seen one." *A SAFEGUARD*