The American Joe Miller: A Collection of Yankee Wit and Humor
John Stuart Mill · en
The _Boston Herald_ has the following infallible recipe:--"To make
pie: Play at blind man's buff in a printing-office. To have music at
dinner: Tell your wife she is not so handsome as the lady who lives
over the way. To save butter: Make it so salt that nobody can eat it."
TALL RELATIONS.--132.
The wit deservedly won his bet who, in a company when every one was
bragging of his tall relations, wagered that he himself had a brother
twelve feet high. He had, he said, "two half-brothers, each measuring
six feet."
WE WONDER, TOO.--133.
A little boy once said to his aunt, "Aunty, I should think that Satan
must be an awful trouble to God." "He must be troubled enough,
indeed, I should think," she answered. "I don't see how he came to
turn out so, when there _was no devil to put him up to it_."
INFLAMMABLE AND DANGEROUS.--134.
Judge Beeler put a notice over his factory-gate at Lowell: "No cigars
or Irishmen admitted within these walls; for," says he, "the one will
set a flame agoin' among my cotton, and t'other among my gals. I won't
have no such inflammable and dangerous things about me on no account."
A RARE PRINTER.--135.
A western paper contains the following advertisement:--"Wants a
situation, a practical printer, who is competent to take charge of
any department in a printing and publishing house. Would accept a
professorship in any of the academies. Has no objection to teach
ornamental painting and penmanship, geometry, trigonometry, and many
other sciences. Is particularly suited to act as pastor to a small
Evangelical church, or as a local preacher. He would have no objection
to form a small but select class of interesting young ladies, to
instruct in the highest branches. To a dentist or chiropodist he
would be invaluable, as he can do almost anything. Would board with a
family, if decidedly pious."
SOMETHING LIKE A GOOD SHOT.--136.
Two passengers coming down the Mississippi in a steamboat were amusing
themselves with shooting birds on the shore from the deck. Some
sporting conversation ensued; one remarked that he would turn his back
to no man in killing racoons--that he had repeatedly shot fifty a
day. "What o' that?" said a Kentuckian; "I make nothing of killing a
hundred 'coon a day, or'nary luck." "Do you know Captain Scott, of our
State?" asked a Tennessean bystander; "he, now, is something like a
shot. A hundred 'coon! why he never points at one without hitting him.
He never misses, and the 'coons know it. T'other day he levelled at an
old 'un, in a high tree; the varmint looked at him a minute, and then
bawled out, 'Hallo, Cap'n Scott, is that you?' 'Yes,' was the reply.
'Well, pray don't shoot, I'll come down to you--I'll give in--I'm dead
beat.'"
ABSENCE OF MIND.--137.