I
BY THE AUTHOR OF “SPEAKING OF OPERATIONS,” ETC.
■ 1
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR
AWAY
His Favorite Stories as Told by Irvin S. Cobb
GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK
GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING CO., INC.
Copyright, 1923,
By George H. Doran Company
Copyright, 1921,
By the Central Press Association
Copyright, 1922, 1923,
By the McN aught Syndicate, Inc.
A Laugh a Day Keeps the Doctor Away. Printed in the United States of America
To
Three of the Best Story-Tellers I Know:
ROBERT H. DAVIS SAMUEL G. BLYTHE HAL S. CORBETT
FOREWORD
The anecdotal form of humor is largely, I think, a native institu¬ tion. Americans did not invent or discover the short humorous story, it is true. Indeed, some short stories still are making their rounds which were old when the Pyramids were young. Probably the piper who piped before Moses rounded out his act with one of the standard jokes of the period — a joke which, dressed in new clothes, is doing duty somewhere today. The mother-in-law joke could not have originated with Adam, because Adam had no mother- in-law, but I have not the slightest doubt that Cain began using it shortly after his marriage. And beyond peradventure Father Noah wiled away many a dragging half hour in the Ark by telling Shem, Ham and Japhet one of the ones which begin: “It seems there were two Irishmen named Pat and Mike. And Pat said to Mike, ‘Faith, an’ be jabers ! — ’ ”
So it would not do for us to lay claim to sole responsibility for the short humorous story. But I am quite certain that we, more than any other people, have made it a part of our daily life, using it to point morals, to express situations, to help us solve puzzles. To these extents, at least, it is a national institution with us.
Americans like to tell short stories and like to laugh at them. We are by inheritance a race of story-tellers. There are short stories which sum up the characteristics of white Americans or black Amer¬ icans, Jews or Gentiles, city folk or country folk more completely than could ponderous essays or scholarly expositions. It is of record that Abraham Lincoln, in the darkest days of the Union, cured more than one crisis with some homely anecdote, some aptly barbed retort.
After-dinner speakers and professional jokesmiths of the stage or the printed page are not responsible for the spread of good stories to the extent with which they generally are credited. That honor properly belongs to telegraph operators and notably to telegraph operators serving on “leased” wires in newspaper offices. Late at night when the flood tides of news matter have slackened off, the operator, say, in New York, tells his friend in Buffalo a good one he heard that afternoon. The Buffalo man passes it along to Kansas City. The Kansas City man conveys it by dot-and-dash to a pal in Denver and next morning folks are grinning over it in the streets of San Francisco.
vii
vin
FOREWORD
I always have loved short funny stories. I prefer them to be new, but an old one, properly told, is often better than a new one badly presented. For the contents of this book I have sought to choose those short stories which made the greatest appeal to me. Some of them I heard years ago ; others no longer ago than yesterday.
For the book I claim two distinctions, namely, as follows :
There is only one mother-in-law story in it.
There is not a single story in it in which a colored character is referred to as “Rastus.”
I. S. C.
CONTENTS
[ Topically Arranged ]
A
Actors . *64, 178, 179
Aeronautic . I53> i87
After-dinner Speakers . . . 16, 130, 342, 355
Agricultural . . 66, 84, 348, 360
Alcoholic . 1, 11, 18, 33, 36, 64, 65, 68, 89, 150, 157, 203,
212, 232, 242, 263, 319
Americans Abroad . 10, 24, 94, 215, 219
Animal Friends . 5, 15, 25, 71, 117, 167, 216, 232, 233,
248, 291, 293, 344
Arctic . I2°> 221
Art . 8, 168
Army (A. E. F. mostly) - 21, 30, 34, 39, 62, 69, 71, 73, 97,
156, 161, 162, 163, 354, 359
Automobiling . . . 105, 303
B
Banking . 44, 52, H3» 218
Baseball . 32, 184, 228, 278, 357
Bathing . 66, 127
Bridal Couples . . 92, 200, 205, 320
Bunco Steerers . no, 273
Business . 8, 35, 44, 136, 165, 277, 341
c
Canadian . 180
Carrier-pigeons . 71
Census . 40
Children . 95, 128, 129, 223, 231, 240, 290, 293, 324, 347, 352
Chinese . . . 40, 99
Circuses . 19, 123, 171, 209, 336
Clergymen . 33, 45, 49, 56, 94, 103, 116, 158, 187
Cockney . 199, 201
Cowboy . 22, 51, 349
Cricket . 164
Criticism . 362
* These figures refer to the numbers of the stories and not to the pages in the book.
ix
X
CONTENTS
D
Dancing . . . 9
Dentists *.... . 301, 303, 312
Dining .... . 53* 65, 77, 128, 160, 192, 261, 304, 313
Doctors . 98, 146, 226, 285, 314, 361
Dogs . 190
Dwarfs . . 262, 325
Educational English . . .
E
. 57, *68. 276, 346
16, 24, 46, 130, 142, 184, 235, 249, 321, 337*, 345
F
Feminine . 9
Feuds . . 3, 101, 138, 143
Finance . 70, 241, 250, 296
Fishing . . . in, 175
Football . 78
Fortune Telling . 158
French . 30, 196, 225, 280
Frugality . . . . 35, 42, 108, 147, 265, 300, 309
Ghosts Golf .
G
. 86, 351
182, 237, 270, 317
H
Hangings . 14, 17, 54, 56, 295, 316
Health . , . 131
Hebrew . 8, 12, 44, 52, 113, 132, 197, 213, 237, 244, 245*
255* 276, 304, 305, 308-310, 335, 365
Horse-racing . 141, 327
Hotels . n, 227, 330
Hunting . 5, 337, 345
I
Indian . . 122
Irish ... 2, 49, 107, 118, 188, 247, 251, 258, 267, 294, 297, 339
CONTENTS
xi
J
Jails . 63, I7°> 27%, 3*8
Japanese . - . I49U 239
Journalistic . 41, J95> 2^i
Judicial . 3$, 9°> 91* JI5
K
Ku Klux . 3°5> 353
L
Lawyers . 7, 2&> 3L 5^, 63
Laziness . 35°
Legacies . 2, 274
Liars . 6, 60
Literature . 280, 284
Lunacy . 268
M
Mathematical . 323
Matrimonial ... 29, 81, 92, 106, 124, 135, 205, 229, 238, 302
Mental Healing . 256, 285
Mining . 333
Miscellaneous . 75, 82, 109, 131, 172, 185, 186, 189, 191,
193, 202, 208, 21 1, 214, 227, 230, 234, 236, 243, 248, 257, 259, 260, 277, 284, 286, 296, 298, 307, 315, 329, 331, 343, 346, 348, 356
Mortuary . 107-132, 254, 256, 266, 288, 308, 322
Movies . 13
Mules . 1 73, 2%7, 332
Music . . 197, 282
N
Negro . 5,14,17, 25, 34, 37, 38, 39, 42, 43, 53, 54, 55, 56,
57, 61, 67, 69, 72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 81, 83, 85, 86, 88, 90, 92, 93. 97, 100, 104, hi, 144, 146, 148, 192, 198, 205, 217, 278, 283, 289, 292, 299, 326, 363
o
Oratory . . 28, 220, 364
CONTENTS
••
xu
Politics . 67, 169, 204, 217
Prophecy . 47, 49, 58, 8o, 104, 145, 149, 158, 162, 172,
207, 222, 235
Pugilistic . 41 1 139, 253, 272, 338
R
Railroading . 174, 210
Revivals . 80, 206, 358
Rogues . 48, no, 133, 273, 279, 334
Royalty . . 152, 311
s
Science . . 181
Scotch . 27, 35, 103, 108, 112, 116, 147, 224, 265, 300
Secret Orders . . . 74, 318
Southern . 3, 15, 20, 23, 26, 28, 29, 58, 60, 79, 84, 127,
137, 140, 154, 155, 159, 206, 252, 275
Spiritualism . 59
Sports . 102, 166, 183
Sunday Schools . 167, 240, 269
Swedish . . 134, 340
T
Theatrical . 12, 114, 126, 151, 246, 271
Traveling . . . 4, 4 7, 55> 93> 96, 15 7, 221, 222, 310
v
Vaudeville . . . . . 176, 1 77* 194
w
Weather . . 87, 121, 145, 199, 287
Western . . .. 4, 22, 50, 51, 264, 279, 291, 349
Y
6, 19, 1 19, 125, 135, 145, 160, 207, 341, 360
Yankee
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
§ l The Untraveled Stranger
Back in those sinful days which ended in January, 1919 — that is, officially they ended then — a group of congenial spirits were gathered one Saturday night in a local life-saving station on the principal corner of a small Kentucky town, engaged in the quaint old pastime of pickling themselves.
In the midst of these proceedings the swinging doors were thrust asunder and there entered one of those self-sufficient, self-important persons who crave to tell their private affairs to others, and who, in those times, preferably chose as a proper recipient for their confi¬ dences, a bar-keeper — as I believe the functionary was called.
The newcomer wedged his way into the congenial group of patrons, and apropos of nothing which up until then had been said or done, introduced himself to the notice of the company by stating in a loud clear voice :
“The doctor wants me to take a trip. I haven’t been feelin’ the best in the world and my wife got worried — you know how women are — and tonight she sent for the doctor. And he came over, a little while ago, and he asked me a lot of foolish questions and took my temperature and five dollars and then he says to me that I should rest up for a spell and travel ’round. He says I ought to go out to California and see the sights. Ain’t I been to California? I have — more’n half a dozen times. Ain’t I seen every sight there is in the whole state of California? I have. As a matter of fact, I don’t mind tellin’ you fellers that I’ve been everywhere and I’ve seen practically everything there is.”
At this a gentleman who was far overtaken in stimulant, slid the entire length of the bar, using his left elbow for a rudder. Anchor¬ ing himself alongside the stranger he hooked a practiced and accom-
12 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
plished instep on the brass rail to hold him upright and he focused a watery, wavering, bloodshot eye upon the countenance of the other and to him in husky tones he said :
“ExcusTi me, but could I ash you a ques’shun?”
“Sure, you could ask me a question,” said the stranger. “Go ahead.”
“The ques’shun,” said the alcoholic one, “’s as follows : Have you ever had delirium tremens?”
“Certainly not,” snorted the indignant stranger.
“Well, you big piker!” said the inebriate, “then you ain’t never been nowheres — and you ain’t never seen nothin’.”
§ 2 The Prudent Mr. Finnerty
The lawyer picked his way to the edge of the excavation and called down for Michael Finnerty.
“Who’s wantin’ me?” inquired a deep voice.
“I am,” said the lawyer. “Mr. Finnerty, did you come from Castlebar, County Mayo?”
“I did.”
“And was your mother named Mary and your father named Owen ?”
“They was.”
“Then Mr. Finnerty,” said the lawyer, “it is my duty to inform you that your Aunt Kate has died in the old country, leaving you an estate of twenty thousand dollars in cash. Please come up.”
There was a pause and a commotion down below.
“Mr. Finnerty,” called the lawyer, craning his neck over the trench, “I’m waiting for you!”
“In wan minute,” said Mr. Finnerty. “I just stopped to lick the foreman !”
For six months Mr. Finnerty, in a high hat and with patent leather shoes on his feet, lived a life of elegant ease, trying to cure himself of a great thirst. Then he went back to his old job. It was there that the lawyer found him the second time.
“Mr. Finnerty,” he said, “I’ve more news for you. It is your Uncle Terence who’s dead now in the old country ; and he has left you his entire property.”
“I don’t think I can take it,” said Mr. Finnerty, leaning wearily on his pick. “I’m not as strong as I wance was; and I’m doubtin’ if I could go through all that again and live !”
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 13
§ 3 Enough for Wilkins
From the lowlands a special judge was sent up to the Kentucky mountains to try some murder cases growing out of a desperate and bloody feud. He took with him as his official stenographer a young man from Louisville, who dressed smartly and, in strong contrast to the silent mountaineers, did considerable talking. For convenience let us call him Wilkins.
On his first Sunday morning in the mountain hamlet Wilkins felt the need of a shave. He had no razor and there was no regular barber in the town ; but he learned from the hotelkeeper that there was an old cobbler living a few doors away who sometimes shaved transients.
In a tiny shop Wilkins found an elderly native with straggly chin whiskers and a gentle blue eye. The old chap got out an ancient razor and was soon scraping away on the patron’s jowls. Wilkins felt the desire for conversation stealing over him.
“This is a mighty lawless country up here, ain’t it?” he began.
“I don’t know,” said the old chap mildly. “Things is purty quiet jist at present.”
He paused to put a keener edge on his blade.
“Well,” said Wilkins, “you won’t deny, I suppose, that you have a lot of murders in this town?”
“We don’t gin’rally speak of ’em as murders,” said the old man in a tone of gentle reproof. “Up here we jest calls ’em killin’s.”
“I’d call ’em murders, all right,” said Wilkins briskly. “If shoot¬ ing a man down in cold blood from ambush isn’t murder, then I don’t know a murder when I see one, that’s all. When was the last man killed, as you call it, here in this town?”
“Why, last wee'k,” said the patriarch.
“Whereabouts was he killed?” continued Wilkins.
“Right out yonder in the street in front of this here shop,” stated the old man, with the air of one desiring to turn the conversation. “Razor hurt you much?”
“The razor’s all right,” said Wilkins snappily. “What I want to know are the facts about the killing of this last man. Who killed him ?”
The cobbler let the edge of the razor linger right over the Adam’s apple of the stranger for a moment.
“I done so,” he said gently.
There was where the conversation seemed to begin to languish.
14 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
§ 4 Why the Major Didn’t Suit
On a voyage of one of the Cunard liners from New York to Liverpool a Major H. Reynolds of London was registered on the passenger list. The purser, running over the names, assigned to the same stateroom as fellow travelers, this Major Reynolds and a husky stockman from the Panhandle of Texas.
A little later the cattleman, ignoring the purser, hunted up the skipper.
“Look here, cap,” he demanded, “what kind of a joker is this here head clerk of yours? I can’t travel in the same stateroom with that there Major Reynolds. I can’t and I won’t! So far as that goes, neither one of us likes the idea.”
“What complaint have you?” asked the skipper. “Do you object to an army officer for a traveling companion ?”
“Not generally,” stated the Texan — “only this happens to be the Salvation Army. That there major’s other name is Henrietta!”
§ 5 Grandfather Laughed at This One
On a Georgia plantation a group of darkies went coon hunting one night. Because of his love for the sport they took with them Uncle Sam, the patriarch of the colored quarters. Uncle Sam was over eighty years old and all kinked up with rheumatism. He hob¬ bled along behind the hunters as they filed off through the woods.
The dogs “treed” in a sweet gum snag on the edge of Pipemaker Swamp, five miles from home ; but when the tree fell there rolled out of the top of it, not a raccoon but a full-grown black bear, full of fight and temper.
The pack gave one choral ki-yi of shock and streaked away, yelping as they went; and the two-legged hunters followed, fleeing as fast as their legs would carry them.
When they came to a moonlit place in the woods they discovered that Uncle Sam was missing ; but they did not go back to look for him — they did not even check up.
“Pore ole Unc’ Sam!” bemoaned one of the fugitives, between pants. “His ole laigs must ’a’ give out on him ’foh he went ten jumps. I reckin dat bear’s feastin’ on his bones right dis minute.”
“Dat’s so! Dat’s so!” gasped one of the others. “Pore Unc’ Sam!”
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 15
When they reached the safety of the cotton patches they limped to Uncle Sam’s cottage to break the news to the widow. There was a light in the window ; and when they rapped at the door, and it opened, the sight of him who faced them across the threshold made them gasp.
“Foh de Lawd !” exclaimed one. “How you git heah ?”
“Me?” said Uncle Sam calmly, “oh, I come ’long home wid de dawgs.”
§ 6 The Day Denver Was Surprised
Swifty, the High Diver, was imported to give his performance asr a crowning feature on the last day of the annual fair and races in a certain small county-seat of interior Vermont.
Those who remember the late Swifty may recall that it was his custom, clad in silken tights, to ascend to the top of a slender ladder which reared nearly ninety feet aloft and after poising himself there for a moment to leap forth headlong into air, describing a graceful curve in his downward flight, then with a great splatter and splash to strike in a tank of water but little larger and wider and deeper than the average well-filled family bathtub, and immediately there¬ after to emerge from it, in his glittering spangles, amid the plaudits of the admiring multitude. That is to say, he did this until the sad and tragic afternoon when, just as Swifty jumped, some quaint practical joker moved the tank.
But on this particular occasion no mishap marred the splendor of the feat. Naturally enough that night, when the community loafers assembled at their favorite general store, the achievement of the afternoon was the main topic of the evening.
The official liar held in as long as he could ; and when he no longer could contain himself, he spoke up and said :
“Wall, I hain’t denyin’ but what that there Swifty is consid’able of a diver — but I had a cousin onc’t that could a-beat him.”
The official skeptic gave a scornful grunt.
“Ah, hah !” he exclaimed, “I rather thought you’d be sayin’ some¬ thin’ of that general nature before the evenin’ was over. Who, for instance, was this yere cousin of yourn?”
“Wall, for instance,” said the liar, modestly, “he wan’t no one in especial and perticular, exceptin’ the champeen diver of the world — that’s all.”
l6 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
“And what did he ever do to justify his right to that there title?” demanded the skeptic.
“Wall,” said the liar, “he done consid’able many things in the divin’ line, which was his speciality. I remember onc’t he made a bet of a hundred dollars, cash, that he could dive from Liverpool, England, to Noo York City.”
The skeptic gave a groan of resignation.
“I suppose,” he said, “that you’re goin’ to ask us to believe he won that there bet.”
“No I hain’t,” stated the liar. “I hain’t a-goin’ to lie to you. That wuz the one bet in his hull life my cousin ever lost. He miscalcu¬ lated and come up in Denver, Colorado!”
§ 7 And Worth the Money, Too!
A noted lawyer down in Texas, who labored under the defects of having a high temper and of being deaf, was trying a case in a courtroom presided over by a younger man, for whom the oldei practitioner had a poor opinion.
Presently in an argument over a motion there was a clash between the lawyer and the judge. The judge ordered the lawyer to sit down, and as the lawyer, being deaf, didn’t hear him and went on talking, the judge fined him $10.
The lawyer leaned toward the clerk and cupped his hand behind his ear.
“What did he say?” he inquired.
“He fined you $10,” explained the clerk.
“For what?”
“For contempt of this court,” said the clerk.
The lawyer shot a poisonous look toward the bench and reached a hand into his pocket.
“I’ll pay it now,” he said. “It’s a just debt!”
§ 8 The Spirit of Seventy-six, with Improvements
A New York East Sider met a friend on Third Avenue and told him he had quit the buttonhole-making trade.
“I’m in the art business now,” he said, proudly — “such a fine busi¬ ness, too! Lots of money in it!”
“What do you mean — art business?” demanded his friend.
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 17
“Well,” explained the East Sider, “I go by auction sales, and I buy pictures cheap; then I sell ’em high. Yesterday I bought a picture for twenty-five dollars and to-day I sold it for fifty.”
“What was the subject?”
“It wasn’t no subject at all,” said the art collector — “it was a picture.”
“Sure, I know,” said the other. “But every picture has got to be a subject or it ain’t a regular picture, you understand. Was this here picture a marine, or a landscape, or a still life, or a portrait — or what ?”
“How should I know?” said the puzzled ex-buttonholer. “To me a picture is a picture! This here picture now didn’t have no name. It was a picture of three fellers. One feller had a fife and one feller had a drum and one feller had a headache !”
§ 9 Protecting the Gentler Sex
A certain young lady who gives interpretative dances in rather scanty costume was engaged to go to a staid community in New England and dance before the local dramatic and literary society.
The day after her appearance the entertainment committee — all women — held a meeting to discuss the affair of the night before. Several had been heard, when one member raised her voice.
“Personally,” she said, “I enjoyed it ever so much. To me it was most artistic and symbolic and everything. But if you ask me, I must say this : It certainly was no place to take a nervous man !”
§10 Not at All Singular
An American journalist in poor health spent the summer of 1910 at a resort in Southern France. The proprietor was an English woman, and all of the other guests were English too. They were friendly and kind to the invalid — all excepting one very austere and haughty lady.
On his first day as a guest at the house he heard this lady say to the landlady:
“I distinctly understood that you did not admit Americans as lodgers here, and I wish to know why you have broken the rule.”
The other woman explained that the stranger had come with good
l8 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
references and that he seemed a quiet, well-mannered person who hadn’t offered to scalp anybody and who knew how to eat with a knife and fork. Nevertheless the complaining matron was not at all pleased.
She took frequent opportunity of saying unkind things about the States and those who lived in the States. The sick American main¬ tained a polite silence. Finally one day at the dinner table she addressed him with direct reference to a certain ghastly murder case which even after the lapse of all these years will be remembered by most readers today.
“What do you Yankees think of your fellow-American, Doctor Crippen?” she inquired.
“We think he’s crazy,” said the American.
“How singular!” said the lady, arching her eyebrows.
“Not at all,” said the American. “He must have been crazy to kill an American woman in order to marry an English one.”
§11 Strictly in Confidence
The time was in the early hours of a new day ; the place was the lobby of a hotel ; the principal character was a well-dressed gentle¬ man in an alcoholic fog, who had come in and registered for the night a few minutes earlier. Now, half dressed, he descended the stair¬ way from the second floor and stood swaying slightly in front of the desk.
“Mish’ Night Clerk,” he said politely but thickly, “I’ll ’ave requesh you gimme ’nozzer room.”
“Well, sir,” stated the clerk, “we’re a little bit crowded. I don’t know whether I could shift you immediately. It’s pretty late, you know.”
“Mish’ Night Clerk,” said the guest in a courteous but firm voice, “I repeat — mush gimme ’nozzer room.”
“Isn’t the room I gave you comfortable?” parleyed the functionary.
“Sheems be perf’ly so,” admitted the transient. “Nev’less, mush ash be moved ’mediately.”
“Well, what’s the matter with your room?” demanded the pestered clerk.
The stranger bent forward, and with the air of one imparting a secret addressed the clerk in a husky half whisper:
“If you mush know, my room’s on fire!”
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 19
§ 12 He Didn’t Believe in Signs
A fireman on duty behind the scenes of one of the big New York theatres and charged with the responsibility of seeing to it that the regulations were strictly obeyed back-stage, suffered a profound shock as he came around from behind a stack of scenery, just before the evening performance. Standing in the opposite wings was a salesman for an East Side cloak and suit concern, who had procured entrance via the stage door for the purpose of soliciting orders for his wares among the young ladies of the chorus. This person was vehemently puffing on a large, long, black, malignant-looking cigar.
In three jumps the scandalized fireman had the violator by the arm.
“Say,” he demanded, “what the hell do you mean, cornin’ in here with that torch in your face? Don’t you see that sign right up over your head?”
The trespasser’s eyes turned where the fireman’s finger pointed.
“Sure, mister,” he said, “I see it.”
“Well, can’t you read?” demanded the fireman.
“Sure I can read,” admitted the other calmly.
“Then read what it says there. Don’t you see what it says in big letters ? It says — ‘No Smoking.’ ”
“Yes,” agreed the East Sider with a winning smile, “but it don’t say ‘Positively.’ ”
§13 Advice to Charlie Chaplin
When General Neville, the hero of the defense of Verdun, made his tour of America he was the guest of honor at a big public reception in one of the Los Angeles hotels. Among those invited to greet the distinguished visitor were the more prominent members of the moving-picture colony.
At the doors of General Neville’s suite Will Rogers met Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin, who in private life is a reserved and rather shy little man, was considerably fussed up over the prospect ahead of him.
“I suppose we’re expected to say a few words to the General,” he confided to Rogers. “But for the life of me I can’t think of the best way to start the conversation.”
Rogers gave to the problem a moment of earnest consideration.
20 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
“Well,” he said, “you might ask him if he was in the war, and which side he was on.”
§14 What Aunt Myra Desired
They brought a darky out of the jail in a North Carolina town with intent to hang him for murder. This was in the day when capital punishment was publicly inflicted. As a special mark of attention the widow of the murderer’s victim was permitted to wit¬ ness the event from a position of vantage directly facing the gallows. She had had a sort of small grandstand rigged up and she had decorated it with bunting, and when the march to the scaffold started, there she sat in a white mother-hubbard wrapper, gently agitating a palmleaf fan, flanked and surrounded by relatives, invited friends and sister members of her lodge.
When the condemned had been properly trussed up, with the noose dangling about his neck, the sheriff, holding the black cap in his hand, edged up to him and said:
“Well, Jim, we’re about ready. If you’ve got anything to say, I reckon this would be a mighty good time to say it.”
“Yas, suh,” said the doomed, “I has got sump’n to say. I jest wants to say dat I is fully repented fur whut I done. I taken it to de Lawd in prayer an’ I knows it’s all right wid Him. I ast de jedge w’ich tried me an’ de persecutin’ attorney an’ de foreman of de jury ef they bore me any gredge, w’ich, one an’ all, they said they did not. An’ now I kin go right straight to Hebben an’ nestle in de bosom of Father Abraham ef only I kin git de fergiveness of dat nigger lady sittin’ yonder — de wife of de man I kil’t.”
He lifted his voice, addressing the white-clad figure in front of him :
“Lady,” he entreated, “does you fergive me fur shootin’ yore husband six times wid a fo-ty-fo’ caliver revolover ?”
Excepting that her under lip jutted out a trifle farther there was no sign she had heard him. She calmly fanned on.
The darky on the scaffold tried again:
“Lady,” he pleaded, “for de secont time I axes you, ain’t you, please ma’am, gwine fergive me?”
Still from her there was no response. It was as though she had not heard him. The sympathetic sheriff felt moved to add his inter¬ cession :
“Aunt Myra,” he called, “Jim, here, will be goin’ away from us in a minute and we don’t expect him back. Surely you don’t enter-
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 21
tain any hard feelin’s against him now? Won’t you speak to him and let him go in peace?"
This time the obdurate widow shook her head in an emphatic negative. Yet still she uttered no sound. The sheriff turned to the condemned.
“Jim,” he said, “you see how it is ; that old woman is set in her ways. What’s the use of wastin’ any more time on her? Besides, it’s hot as the devil out here and I ought to be gettin’ on home to dinner. Just hold still a second and we can have this all over.”
“Mr. Lucas,” sobbed Jim, “lemrne see ef I still can’t sof’en dat nigger woman’s stony heart. Lady,” he cried out, “wid mouty nigh my dyin’ bre’f I begs you fur jest a word. I ain’t hopin’ no mo’ dat you’ll fergive me, but won’t you please, ma’am, jest speak to me?”
And now she did speak. She motioned with her fan as though it had been a baton of authority, and in impatient tones she said :
“Go on, nigger, git hung — git hung!”
§ 15 When the Dawn of Understanding Came
The caller was undeniably large. When he walked he rippled and one had the feeling that should he sit down suddenly he’d splash.
He wallowed into the office of a lawyer in the foothills of the Tennessee mountains and stated that he desired to bring suit against a neighbor for ten thousand dollars’ damages on account of libel.
“How did he libel you?” asked the lawyer.
“Well, suh,” stated the aggrieved party, “he up an’ called me a hippopotamus — that’s wut he done, consarn his picture!”
“When did he call you this name?”
“It’s a ’ goin’ on two years ago.”
“When did you first hear about it?”
“That very next day.”
“Indeed,” said the lawyer; “then why did you wait nearly two years to begin taking steps to bring suit against him?”
“Well, suh,” stated the prospective plaintiff, “ontil that there Ringling Brothers’ circus showed yistiddy in Knoxville an’ I went down fur to see it I hadn’t never seen no hippopotamus.”
§16 As Translated into the English
One night at dinner in honor of a distinguished visiting English¬ man I was reminded of a yarn. I told it, and it went very well. It
22 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
had to do with a prospector in Oklahoma who, on a Saturday night, bought a quart of moonshine whiskey and took it to his lonely cabin, anticipating a pleasant Sunday. But as he crossed the threshold he stumbled and fell, dropping his precious burden and smashing the bottle, so that its contents were wasted upon the floor. De¬ pressed by his misfortune, the unfortunate man went to bed. As he lay there, a mangy, furtive, half-grown rat with one ear and part of a tail, emerged timorously from a hole in the baseboard, sat up, sniffed the laden air and then, darting swiftly to where the liquor made a puddle in a depression of the planking, ran out its tiny pink tongue, took one quick sip of the stuff and fled in sudden panic to its retreat. But it didn’t stay ; shortly it again appeared, and now a student of rats would have discerned that a transition had taken place in the spirits of this particular rat. Suddenly it had grown cocky, debonair, almost reckless. It traveled deliberately back to the liquor and imbibed again. Seemingly satisfied it started for home but, changing its mind, it returned and partook a third time of the refreshment. Immediately then its fur stood on end, its eyes burned red, like pigeon-blood rubies, and straightening itself upon its hind legs it waved its forepaws in a gesture of defiance and shrilly cried out:
“Now, bring on that dad-blamed cat!”
No one seemed to enjoy my story more than did the guest of the evening. After the party broke up he made me tell it to him all over again. I could read from his expression that he was trying to memorize it. In fact, he confessed to me that he ex¬ pected to use it when he got home as a typical example of American humor.
Six months later I was in London. I attended a dinner. My English friend was the toastmaster. Perhaps my presence recalled to him the anecdote he had so liked. At any rate, he undertook to repeat it.
His version ran for perhaps twenty minutes. He entered into a full exposition of the potency of the illicit distillation known among the Yankees, he said, as “shining moon.” He went at length into the habits of rats, pointing out that inasmuch as rats customarily did not indulge in intoxicants a few drops of any liquor carrying high alcoholic content would be likely, for the time being at least, to alter the nature of almost any rat. At length he reached his point. It ran like this :
“And then, this little rodent, being now completely transformed by its repeated potations, reared bolt upright and, voicing the pot-
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 23
valor of utter intoxication both in tone and manner, it cried out in a voice like thunder:
“ ‘I say, I wonder if there isn’t a cat about somewhere?’ ”
§17 Absolutely no Hurry about It
One chilly evening in the early part of March the sheriff entered the county jail and addressing the colored person who occupied the strongest cell, said:
“Gabe, you know that under the law my duty requires me to take you out of here to-morrow and hang you. So I’ve come to tell you that I want to make your final hours on earth as easy as possible. For your last breakfast you can have anything to eat that you want and as much of it as you want. What do you think you’d like to have?”
The condemned man studied for a minute.
“Mr. Lukins,” he said, “I b’lieves I’d lak to have a nice worter- melon.”
“But watermelons won’t be ripe for four or five months yet,” said the sheriff.
“Well, suh,” said Gabe, “I kin wait.”
§18 One Who Desired to Know
A suburbanite in New Jersey was moving from one street to another. Observing with dismay the care-free way in which the moving crew yanked his cherished antiques about, he was filled with a desire to save from possible damage a tall grandfather’s clock which he prized highly.
Taking the clock up in his arms he started for the new house. But the clock was as tall as its owner, and heavy besides, and he had to put it down every few feet and rest his arms and mop his stream- ing brow. Then he would clutch his burden to his heaving bosom and stagger on again.
After half an hour of these strenuous exertions he was nearing his destination when an intoxicated person who had been watching his labors from the opposite side of the road took advantage of ti halt to hail him.
“Mister,” he said thickly, “could I ash you a quest’n?”
24 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
“What is it?” demanded the pestered suburbanite.
“Why in thunder don’t you carry a watch?”
§19 The Poor Aim of Mr. Zeno
When the circus reached the small New Hampshire town the proprietor feared that his afternoon performance might lack its chief feature. The star of the aggregation was Zeno, the Mexican Knife Thrower, answering in private life to the name of Hennessy. Twice a day Zeno, dressed in gaudy trappings, would enter the arena accompanied by his wife, a plump young woman in pink tights, and followed by a roustabout bearing a basket full of long bowie- knives and shining battle-axes. While the band played an appro¬ priate selection of shivery music the young woman would flatten herself against a background of blue planking which had been erected in the middle of the ring. There she would pose motionless, her arms outstretched. Then Zeno, stationing himself forty feet from her, would fling his knives and axes at her, missing her each time by the narrowest of margins. Presently her form would be completely outlined by the deadly steel, but such was Zeno’s mar¬ velous skill that she took no hurt from the sharp blades which pinned her fast.
But on this day Mrs. Zeno had fallen ill and although the circus owner offered a reward for someone who would take her place, he could find no volunteers among the members of his staff. In this emergency the invalid’s mother, who traveled with the show in the capacity of wardrobe mistress, agreed to serve as an under¬ study in order that the performance might not be marred.
Forth came Zeno, wearing his professional scowl, slightly en¬ hanced. His mother-in-law, skinny and homely, with her hair knotted in a knob on her head and her daughter’s fleshings hanging in loose folds upon her figure, followed him closely. She plastered herself flat against the wooden background. Zeno gave her a look seemingly fraught with undying hate. He took up his longest, sharpest bowie- knife. He tested its needle-like point upon his thumb. He poised it, aimed it, flung it.
Like a javelin it hurtled and hissed in its flight through the air. Striking tip first a scant quarter of an inch from the lobe of the mother-in-law’s left ear, it buried itself deep in the tough oaken planking and stood there, the hilt quivering.
The pause which ensued was broken by the astonished voice of a
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 25
lank native sitting on the lowermost tier of blue seats industriously milking his whiskers :
“Wall, by Heck — he missed her!”
§ 20 Curing the Great Thirst
There was a philanthropic Tennessee distiller who believed in spreading sunshine wherever he could. One Christmas he sent a gift of prime whiskey to an improvident acquaintance who lived in a cabin up in the hills.
Along toward the end of January the beneficiary dropped in on him and intimated that if his friend was so inclined he. could use a little more liquor.
“Aren’t you rather overdoing things, Zach?” inquired the dis¬ tiller. “If my memory serves me rightly, it has been less than five weeks since I gave you a whole keg.”
“Well, Colonel,” explained the mendicant, “you got to remembei that a kag of licker don’t last very long in a fambly that can’t af¬ ford to keep a cow.”
§21 The Ways of the Army
The officer of the day was inspecting the guard.
“What are your orders?” he inquired of a drafted man.
“Sir,” said the sentry, in his newly-acquired military manner “my orders are to be vigilant.”
“What does vigilant mean?” said the officer.
“I c">n’t know,” said the sentry.
“Call the corporal of the guard and we’ll find out,” said the officer.
The corporal of the guard came.
“Corporal,” said the officer, “this man here doesn’t know the meaning of the word vigilant. Suppose you tell him.”
“It means, sir, to be alert,” answered the corporal promptly. “And what does alert mean?” said the commander, anxious that the lesson should be driven home to the pupil.
“I don’t know,” said the corporal.
§ 22 Remote from the Real Centers
A Wyoming ranch foreman was sent East by his employer in charge of a carload of polo ponies. He was gone four weeks.
26 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
When he arrived back at the ranch he wore an air of unmistakable pleasure and relief.
“Gee,” he said, “it’s good to git home again. So fur as I’m con¬ cerned I don’t want never to travel no more.”
“Didn’t you like New York?” asked one of the hands.
“Oh, it’s all right in its way,” he said, “but I don’t keer for it.” “What’s chiefly the matter with it?”
“Oh,” he said, “it’s so dad blame far frum everywhere.”
§ 23 The Way of the Neighborhood
It is not so very long ago that life in the Kentucky mountains was primitive. They used to tell a story to illustrate how primitive things actually were. It may not have been true. Probably it wasn’t, but at any rate it was an illustration, even though an exag¬ gerated one, of a prevalent condition.
There was a narrow-gauge, jerk-water road which skirted through the knobs. One day the train — there was only one train a day, each way — was laboring slowly upgrade when the engineer halted his locomotive to let a cavalcade cross the track ahead of him. First there streaked past a pack of hounds, all baying. Behind the dogs followed men, on horse-back and mule-back, galloping at top speed and cheering the hunt on with shrill whoops and blasts from a horn. The troupe had vanished into the deep timber bordering the right' of-way when a Northern man, riding in the shabby day-coach, addressed a fellow-passenger who was a native.
“Sheriff’s posse, I suppose?” he said.
“Nope,” said the mountaineer.
“Perhaps your people are seeking to lynch somebody?” suggested the Northerner.
“No, ’tain’t that neither.”
“Then may I ask what is the purpose — the intent — of this chase ?”
“Well, mister,” said the native, “it’s like this: County Judge Sim Hightower’s oldest boy, Simmy Junior, comes of age to-day and they’re runnin’ him down to put pants on him.”
§24 A Radical Difference Noted
A friend of mine has a friend who went abroad while Victoria the beloved, was still on the throne of Great Britain.
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 27
In London one night the traveler saw Madame Bernhardt play in “Anthony and Cleopatra.”
The scene came where Cleopatra receives news of Mark Antony’s defeat at Actium. Bernhardt was at her best as Egypt’s fiery queen that night. She stabbed the unfortunate slave who had borne the tidings to her, stormed, raved, frothed at the mouth, wrecked some of the scenery in her frenzy and finally, as the curtain fell, dropped in a shuddering, convulsive heap.
As the thunderous applause died down, the American heard a middle-aged British matron in the next seat remarking to her neighbor in tones of satisfaction :
“How different — how very different from the home life of our own dear queen!”
§ 25 Where the Partnership Dissolved
One of the oldest stories in the known world — and in my humble judgment one of the best ones — deals with three actors — an aged negro, an itinerant conjurer and a twelve pound snapping-turtle.
It is a hot day in a Mississippi countryside. The conjurer, who is making his way across country afoot, is sitting alongside the dusty road, resting. There passes him an ancient negro returning from a fishing expedition. The darky is not going home empty-handed. He has captured a huge snapping-turtle. He is holding it fast by its long tail, which is stretched tautly over his right shoulder so that the flat undershell of the captive rests against his back. He bids the stranger a polite good-morning and trudges on. He has gone perhaps twenty feet further when an impish inspiration leaps into the magician’s brain. In addition to his other gifts he is by way of being a fair ventriloquist.
He throws his voice into the turtle’s mouth and speaking in a muddy, guttural tone such as would be suitable to a turtle if ? turtle ever indulged in conversation, he says sharply:
“Look here, nigger, where are you taking me?”
The old man freezes in his tracks. He rolls his eyes rearward. There is the look of a vast, growing, terrific bewilderment on his face.
“W-h-who — who dat speakin’ to me?” he asks falteringly.
“It’s me speakin’ to you,” the turtle seemingly says, “here on your back. I asked you where you were taking me.”
“Huh, boss,” cries the old man, “I ain’t takin’ you nowhars — I’sC- leavin’ you right yere!”
28 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
§ 26 Absolutely Unfitted for the Role
A few months before his death Gen. Basil Duke of Kentucky, who commanded Morgan’s Cavalry after the killing of his brother- in-law, Gen. John Morgan, told this tale at a Confederate reunion :
During one of the Tennessee campaigns Morgan’s Men surprised and routed a regiment of Federal troopers. In the midst of the retreat one of the enemy, who was mounted upon a big bay horse, suddenly turned and charged the victorious Confederates full-tilt, waving his arm and shrieking like mad as he bore down upon them alone. Respecting such marvellous courage, the Confederates fore¬ bore shooting at the approaching foe, but when he was right upon them they saw there was a reason for his seeming foolhardiness.
He was a green recruit. His horse had run away with — the bit had broken, and, white as a sheet and scared stiff, the .uckless youth was being propelled straight at the whooping Kentuckians, begging for mercy as he came.
Jeff Sterritt, the wit of the command, stopped the horse and made a willing prisoner of the rider. Sterritt, who had not washed or shaved for days and was a ferocious looking person, pulled out a big pistol and wagged its muzzle in the terrified Federal’s face.
“I don’t know whether to kill you right now,” he said, “or wait until the fight is over !”
“Mister,” begged the quivering captive, “as a favor to me, please don’t do it at all ! I’m a dissipated character — and I ain’t prepared to die!”
§ 27 The Careful MacTavish
Mr. MacTavish attended a christening where the hospitality of the host knew no bounds except the capacities of the guests.
In the midst of the celebration Mr. MacTavish rose up and made the rounds of the company, bidding each person present a ceremonious farewell.
“But, Sandy, mon,” objected the host, “ye’re no’ goin’ yet, with the evenin’ just startin’?”
“Nay,” said the prudent MacTavish, “I’m no’ goin’ yet. But I’m tellin’ ye good night while I know ye.”
§ 28 The Sway of Eloquence
Down in my part of the country in the old days we were a high strung and sentimental people, and oratory moved us as nothing else
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWaY 29
would. There was once a brawny blacksmith in our county who was elected justice of the peace on the strength of his Confederate record. The first case he sat to hear was one growing out of the death of a cow under a freight train. After the evidence was all in, the attorney for the plaintiff made a most effective argument. In vivid word pictures he sketched the abundant virtues of the late cow ; he described her sweetness and her gentleness, her capacity as to milk; he told of the great bereavement to her immediate family, consisting of a young calf, and he dwelt upon the heartlessness of a railroad system which by its brutal carelessness had at one fell swoop, as it were, made stew meat of the parent and an orphan of the offspring. His peroration is still remembered.
“And, finally, squire,” he said, “if the train had been run as she should have been ran, and if the bell had been rung as she should have been rang, and if the whistle had been blowed as she should have been blew — both of which they done neither — this here cow would not have been injured at the time she was killed.”
As he sat down the new justice in a voice husky with feeling, said : “I’ve done heared enough ! Plaintiff wins !” and proceeded to enter judgment for the full amount of damages. But the lawyer for the other side protested. He insisted he had a right to be heard, and, though the justice said he had already made up his mind, he admitted that it was no more than fair for the young gentleman to make a speech, too, if he wanted to.
The lawyer for the railroad cut his moorings and went straight up. He was a genuine silver tongue. He soared right into the clouds. Among other matters pertinent to the issue, he introduced the American Eagle, Magna Charta, First and Second Manassas, Paul Revere’s Ride and the Bonny Blue Flag Which Bears but a Single Star, concluding the whole by giving the Rebel Yell.
As he sank into his seat the justice, with a touch of the true old Jeffersonian simplicity, wiped his streaming eyes upon his shirt sleeve, and in a voice quivering with sobs exclaimed :
“Well, don’t that beat all ! Defence wins !”
§ 29 The Unuttered Wish
A North Carolina mountain woman fell ill, and for the first time in his life her husband had to work. It devolved upon him to nurse the invalid, look after a large family of tow headed children, milk the cow, feed the pig, cook the meals and tend a straggly acre ol
corn.
30 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
After ten days of these frightful labors he staggered down to the general store at the forks of the road and fell at the doorway in an exhausted heap.
The storekeeper came out and said: “Hello, Anse, how’s yore wife ?”
“She ain’t no better,” moaned the husband. “I paid out a whole four bits fur a bottle of bitters fur her, but it seems like hit don’t do her no good. I’m plumb wore out!”
He paused a moment and sighed deeply.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I git to wishin’ the old woman would git well — or somethin’!”
§ 30 The Gift of Tongues
Over in France the average doughboy had a gorgeous confidence in his ability to speak the language of the country. In a Norman village one day a perplexed looking private, who had not been abroad very long, approached a seasoned campaigner of the A. E. F. and asked the latter if he spoke French.
“Sure I speak French,” said the veteran. “What’s the matter?”
“Here’s what’s the matter,” said the green soldier. “The Frog that keeps that shop yonder across the street sold me some post cards, and I gave him a ten franc note, and now he’s holding out part of my money on me. I wish you’d come on over there with me and straighten the thing out and make that guy hand me back what’s coming to me.”
“Sure I will,” said the other.
Moved by curiosity, a friend of mine trailed behind them, arriving just in time to hear the following dialogue between the linguist and the storekeeper:
“Parley voo Fransay?”
“Oui, oui, Monsieur.”
“Then, why the hell don’t you give this here boy his right change ?”
§31 He Lacked Storage Space
Congressman John K. Hendrick of Kentucky, now deceased, was notoriously soft hearted. He was sitting in a courtroom one day when a young and struggling member of the local bar, who was not especially renowned for mental brilliancy, undertook to read a peti¬ tion in a divorce suit and speedily got himself badly tangled up in a
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 31
confused maze of legal phrases. The judge sought to set the young lawyer right, but the only result was to tangle him worse than ever. The judge was showing signs of losing his temper when Col. Hendrick arose.
“I hope, your Honor,” he said, “that you will bear patiently with our young friend here. He is doing his best.”
“I know that, Col. Hendrick,” said the judge, somewhat testily, “and I intend to bear patiently with him. I am merely trying to give Mr. So-and-So an idea.”
“Your Honor,” said Col. Hendrick, “don’t do it. He’s got no place to put it.”
§ 32 The Voice of the Purist
In the National League formerly was an umpire who was a stickler for correct deportment on the diamond. In a game in which he officiated at the Polo Grounds Chief Meyers, catcher for New York, came to bat. Certain of the Boston players sitting on their bench began to guy the brawny red man.
In an instant the umpire had left his place behind the catcher and was running toward the visitors’ bombproof.
“Cut out them oersonalities !” he ordered. “Cut out them person¬
alities !”
A high pitched voice filtered out from the grandstand : “Cut out them grammar P
§ 33 There
Voice
The town drunkard of a small Scotch community went on an especially vehement tear. The village authorities locked him up.
On the second day of his captivity, as he sat in his cell, thirsty beyond words, the minister, who was of a full habit of life, came to give him consolation and good advice.
They sat down side by side and the dominie read the parable of the Prodigal Son. The prisoner seemed to hang on the words. He nudged up closer and closer, bending forward until his face almost was in the minister’s face, and listened.
“Please read it over once more,” he said when the dominie had finished the chapter and started to close the Good Book.
Touched by this further sign of penitence, the minister read it again.
32 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
“Tell me, poor man,” he said when he was done, “what was it held you so close the while I was reading — was it the lesson of the Scrip¬ ture or was it the words?”
“Nay, nay,” said the tippler — “ ’twas your grand breath !”
§ 34 The Treacherous Warehouse
When the Yanks prepared to make their advance through Belleau Wood there was brought up from the south of France, a negro labor battalion, not a man of which until that time had ever heard a big gun crack in anger, but who, before this, had been employed in building roads and mending bridges and unloading freight cars. This outfit was set to work constructing defences of fallen timbers in the lower fringe of the forest, on the contingency that our troops, after their first onslaught might be driven back and need shelter behind which to fight on the retreat.
On a morning when the enemy, for reasons best known to them¬ selves, were feeling unusually peevish and fretful, one of the cor¬ respondents, picking his cautious way through the thickets, came upon a coal black woodchopper in a ragged khaki shirt, who was swinging his ax on a fallen tree and between strokes looking up to where German shells were whistling through the ragged foliage overhead and occasionally exploding in his vicinity with a large, harsh, grating, unpleasant sound.
At each fresh report the darky would say — and even a perfect stranger to him could tell that from the very bottom of his soul he meant it —
“Oh, Lawsy, how I does wish’t I wuz home !”
“Well,” asked the correspondent, “why did you enlist if you didn’t care to face some danger?”
“Huh, man,” he snorted, “I never onlisted!”
“Well, why did you come over here, then?”
“I didn’t exac’ly come.”
“Well, you weren’t born over here, were you?”
“Naw suh, an’ I trusts not to die yere.”
“Well,” said the newspaper man, “you’re evidently past the draft age, and since you did not enlist and didn’t come over here of your own free will and weren’t born here, what I want to know is, how did you get here?”
“Mister,” said the negro, “it meks a kind of a sad story. My reg’lar home is Waycross, Georgia, an’ I suttinly does crave to be there right this minute ! Here ’bout a yeah ago a w’ite man come
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 33
down frum de Nawth, an’ he corralled a whole passel of us together an’ he say to us, he say: ‘Boys, I want you all to go up Nawth wid me an’ wuk fur de gove’mint. Plain niggers is gwine git eight dol¬ lars a day; fancy niggers ’at shows speed, is gwine git ten.’ An’ I sez to myse’f, I sez: ‘W’ite man, you don’t know it yit, but you’s lookin’ at one of the ten dollar ones right now !’
“So he loads a whole raft of us on board de steam cyars an’ he totes us plum’ to Noo Yawk city. An’ w’en we gits thar we wuks jest one mawnin’, down by de water. W’en de time come to knock off for dinner de w’ite man gets up on a box an’ meks us a speech. ‘Boys,’ he says, ‘I wuz wrong ’bout you — w’y, they ain’t a eight dollar nigger in the lot. Come on wid me to de warehouse an’ sign up for ten!’
“Natchelly I led de parade. Right behind me comes de w’ite man yellin’ : ‘Dis way to de warehouse !’ An’ right behind him comes all de rest of dem Waycross niggers, jest runnin’.
“So he teks us th’ough a kind of a long shed. An’ he ’scorts us ’crost a lil’ narrow plank. An’ he leads us th’ough a kind of a lil’ round iron do’.
“An’ w’en we wuz all inside, de w’ite man slammed de iron do’ —AN’ DE WAREHOUSE SAILED AWAY!”
§35 A Scotchman’s Conscience
The purchasing agent of a big jobbing concern was a Scotchman. He gave an extensive order — to a salesman for a supply house. Al¬ though he had obtained the business in open competition, the sales¬ man felt gratitude at being favored and sought a way to show it.
He knew he dare not offer the Scot a commission; likewise a gift of money, he figured, would be regarded as an insult. The Scot, he noticed, constantly smoked cigars. So the salesman slipped out to a cigar store and bought a box containing fifty of the finest Havanas the tobacconist carried in stock. The price for the fifty was fifteen dollars. He brought the box back and asked the purchasing agent to accept it with his compliments.
The latter explained that it was against the policy of his house for its buyers to accept presents of any sort from those with whom the concern did busines. He was sorry, he said, but he could not take the cigars as a present, even though he felt sure his young friend had tendered them with the best of intentions and in absolute good faith.
The salesman had another idea:
34 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
“Well,” he said, “I hate to throw these cigars away. They are of no use to me — I smoke only cigarettes. I wonder if you would buy them from me ? — there’s no harm in that, I’m sure.”
“What would you be asking for them, laddy?” inquired the pru¬ dent Scot.
“I’ll sell the whole fifty to you for a nickel,” stated the salesman.
The purchasing agent lifted one of the cigars from the top row, smelled it, rolled it in his fingers and eyed it closely.
“Very well,” he said, “at that price I’ll take four boxes.”
§ 36 Establishing an Identity
It was plain the stranger was suffering from an excess of alcoholic stimulant. He wavered and lurched and wabbled as he ran to catch the trolley car ; he slipped and almost fell as he swung aboard ; he trampled on the toes of those who rode upon the rear platform and at length when he fell into a seat he struck with considerable violence a somewhat testy gentleman alongside him.
The latter resented being jostled. Probably he had scruples against the use of intoxicants in any form and at any time. He fixed a stern and condemning eye upon the new passenger and of him demanded to know why he did not exercise a little more care when entering a public vehicle.
The person thus reproved, focused his uncertain vision upon the face of the other.
“Dye shee me when I gotta board thish car ?” he asked.
“I did.”
“Dve ever shee me before in your who’ life?”
“No.”
“Ever hear an’body call my name?”
“No.”
“Ever hear an’body speak ’bout me?”
“Certainly not.”
“Then how the hell did you know it was me ?”
§ 37 An Earnest Cry for Elelp
Our town — I mean the one where I was born — formerly abounded in characters. One of our local institutions twenty years ago was a black driver named Abe, but called Old Abe for short. Abe was popular with both races. He had one social shortcoming, though.
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 3?
About once in so often he would slip out on a dark night and acquire something of value without the formality of speaking to the owner about it. For awhile he escaped a penitentiary sentence.
But eventually he was caught with what the Grand Jury and the prosecuting attorney regarded as the goods, the said goods consist¬ ing of a stray calf. He was lodged in jail to await trial. His cell was in the upper tier. On the Sunday afternoon following his in¬ carceration his wife, accompanied by five or six pickaninnies, came to pay him a visit. It was the first time she had seen him since his arrest.
On her way out she was halted by the deputy jailer, whose name was Grady.
“Dora,” he said, “have you hired a lawyer for Abe yet?”
“Naw, suh,” she said, “effen Abe was guilty, right away I’d git him a lawyer. But he p’intedly tells me he ain’t de leas’ bit guilty. So, of co’se, dat bein’ de case, he ain’t needin’ no lawyer to git him
clear.”
From the floor above, down the iron stairwell, came floating the voice of Abe :
“Mr. Grady, oh, Mr. Grady ! — you tell ’at fool nigger ’oman down thar to git a lawyer — an’ git a damn good one, too.”
The Pride of Creative Genius
A colored person of a formidable aspect was arraigned on a charge of mayhem. As Exhibit A, for the case of the prosecution, the mutilated victim of his wrath was presented Defore the jurors’ eyes. The face of the victim was but little more than a recent site — a place where a face had been, but was no longer.
When the jury very promptly had returned a verdict of guilty, His Honor, pointing to the chief complaining witness and address¬ ing the defendant, said :
“This is the most lamentable example of brutality I have ever seen in a long experience on the criminal bench. Surely no human being, unless he were inspired by infernal influences and suggestions, could deliberately work such wreckage as you have worked upon the countenance of a defenseless and helpless fellow creature. Demons from below surely must have prompted you in what you did. It must have been the devil himself who urged you on.”
“Well, Jedge,” said the prisoner, J'come to think it over, I ain’t shore but whut you’re right. As I look back on it now it do seem lak to me ’at w’en I wuz cutrin’ his nose loose frum his face wid a
36 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
razor, the devil wuz right behind me sayin’ ‘Tha’s right, separate him frum his nose.’ An’ I ’spects it must a been them demons you men¬ tion w’ich suggested to me stompin’ out his front teeth.
“But, Jedge, bitin’ off his ear wuz stric’ly my own idea!”
§ 39 The Prompt Response
Of all the stories relating to our colored troopers in their services overseas, I think the one I like best has to do with a brawny black infantryman, who, on his way up to the front for his first taste of actual combat, fortified himself on a full quart of French wine.
As a result, he reached the forward position in a somewhat elevated and groggy state. He had been warned in advance that he was going into an exceedingly dangerous sector, but it so happened at the moment of his arrival the immediate vicinity was strangely quiet. He glanced about him in a foggy but disappointed way, and then, addressing his fellow occupants of the trench, spoke as follows :
“Wha’s de war? — tha’s whut I wants to know! White folks suttinly is mouty deceivin’. Yere dey promises me a war. So dey rides me ’crost mo’n a million miles of ocean an’ dey marches me th’ough mo’n a thousand miles of mud, an’ all de w’ile dey keeps on tellin’ me ’at w’en I gits up yere dey’ll be a war waitin’ fur me. An’ yere I is all organized fur a war an’ dey ain’t no war ! Dat ain’t no way to act. Ef ary of you folks is got ary war jest fetch it on an' leave it to me.”
A veteran of several months’ experience told him that his desires should shortly be gratified, inasmuch as the hostile positions were only about two hundred yards away, and the enemy was both active and alert.
Hearing this, the green hand leaped upon the parapet and, standing there in the moonlight, like a great black statue of defiance, he shook a broad fist in the direction of the foes’ lines, and in a voice which might have been heard half a mile away he cried out:
“Come on, you Heinie Germans, an’ gimme war ! Gimme all de war you’s got ! Gimme exploserives ! Gimme gas shells ! Gimme, scrapernel ! Gimme bung shells ! Most in ’special I asts you fur bung shells !”
At this particular moment a German minnenwerfer, two feet long and nine inches in diameter and filled with potential ill-health, went whirring in its wabbly, uncertain flight just over his head, and with a crash like the crack of doom struck not fifty yards behind him, tearing a hole in the earth big enough for the foundations of a
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 37
smoke house. The belligerent warrior was slapped flat and instantly covered in a half inch coating of powdered grit and gravel and dust.
There he lay, stunned, until the last reverberation had died away and the tortured earth had ceased from its quiverings. Then, slowly and cautiously, he sat up. First he felt himself all over to make sure he was intact; then he stole a respectful glance rearward to where the huge, new formed crater behind him still was smoking and fuming and throwing off noxious smells, and then he cast a cautious look in the direction from which the devilish visitor had come, and, finally, in a small, curiously altered voice, he said:
“Well, suzz, dey’s one thing you’s got to say fur dem Germans — dey suttinly does give you service !”
§ 40 Once Every Ten Years
Every time the Government takes a census this story is revived, which means it enjoys a rejuvenated popularity at intervals of ten years. When I catch myself laughing at it, I know that another decade has slipped by.
The story has to do with the enumerator who called at a humble home, and there found the head of the family humped up over a large volume. It developed, in the course of the conversation, that the householder some months before had been induced by a traveling agent to invest in an encyclopedia. To get the worth of his money he had been reading the books of the set pretty constantly ever since.
In reply to the caller’s questions he gave his name and age and his wife’s name and age.
“How many infant children have you?” asked the census taker.
“I’ve got three,” said the citizen. “And that’s all there ever will be, too, you take it from me.”
“What makes you so positive about that? asked the visitor.
“I’ll tell you why there won’t never be but three,” said the man “It’s wrote down in this here book that every fourth child born in the world is Chinese.”
§41 One Detail Was Missing
On the historic afternoon when Jack Johnson fought Jim Jeffries in Nevada for the world’s championship there was a baseball game at the old Polo Grounds. In the press stand, among others, sat Sid Mercer, the sporting writer, and Franklin P. Adams, the column conductor. For some reason or other, ringside bulletins were not
38 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
being received at the ball park. Naturally, the crowd wanted to know how the fight was going.
Several hundred spectators, drawn by the fact that telegraph instruments were clicking in the press stand, packed themselves solidly behind the wire netting in the hope of hearing tidings from Reno over the wire. Mercer and Adams had a joint inspiration. They pretended to be taking a ringside description off one of the instruments. First one would chant off a purely imaginary account of a round, and then the other would.
Adams had a bet down on the negro to win, and accordingly favored the dark contender. In his turn to “read” a round, he would depict Johnson as hammering Jeffries to a pulp. But Mercer, who was a partisan of Jeffries, would each time retaliate with a spirited but, of course, purely fictitious account of how the white man, having rallied heroically, was now dealing mighty blows upon the head and body of the tottering, weakening black.
Naturally, the listening crowd was torn by conflicting emotions. Cheers and groans marked the utterances of the two gifted romancers. Eventually, when the multitude had grown in numbers until the pressure of its bulk threatened to break down the netting, the conspirators decided to bring their joke to a climax.
Mercer, cocking his head above an instrument as though the better to hear, began reciting, somewhat after this fashion :
“Round-seven ! At-the-sound-of-the-bell-the-two-men-leap-to-the- center-of-the-ring ! They-exchange-a-whirlwind-of-jabs-and-upper- cuts ! The-fighting-is-the-fiercest-ever-seen-in-a-heavyweight-contest 3 Suddenly-the-knockout-blo w-is-delivered - full - upon-the-point-o f -the- jaw! The-defeated-man-drops-like-a-log ! His -seconds -drag- his - unconscious-f orm-into-his-corner ! The - maddened - throng - acclaims- the-winner-and-pandemonium-reigns-supreme!”
Here he paused with the air of one who has completed a hard job.
From a thousand throats behind him one question arose in a mighty chorus :
“Who wins?”
Dramatically Mercer raised his hand for silence. A deep hush befell.
The dispatches do not state,” he said, simply, and sat down.
§ 42 In Permanent Storage
Once upon a time, in the middle part of Georgia, there lived a banker who was known far and wide as the Human Safety Clutch. In his day he was accused of many things, but nobody ever charged
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 39
him with being a spendthrift. His home was on a plantation a mile from town. One Sunday he remembered that he had left some important papers on his desk, and he gave an aged negro servitor <m the place his keys and sent him for the documents.
It was a hot day and the road was dusty, but in an hour the old darky had returned with the papers intact. The owner felt in all his pockets, one after the other.
“That’s too bad. Uncle Jim,” he said finally; “I thought I had a nickel here that I was going to give you.”
“Cap’n Henry,” said Uncle Jim, “you look ag’in. Ef ever you had a nickel you got it yit.”
§ 43 What Might Be Called an Active Man
The wharf at New Orleans was crowded with foot travelers, vehicles and freight piles. A brawny Irishman, driving a truck, locked wheels with another truck operated by a negro.
As the trucks jammed the negro opened his mouth in profane and highly disrespectful protest. But before he had uttered six words Unconsciousness shut oft further speech from him.
For the Irishman, with one flying leap, had reached the earth. His left hand closed on the negro’s ankle, and as the latter was jerked violently into space the enemy’s right fist landed a wing shot squarely on the point of his jaw, and for the time being he knew no more.
Ten minutes ’.ater the victim half opened his eyes. A policeman was bending over him.
“What's the matter with you?” demanded the officer.
“A w'ite man hit me,” said the darky, “an’ I wants him arrested.”
“What's his name?”
“I don’t know whut his name is, boss — never seed him befo’ in my life.”
“Well, then, what does he look like?”
“I don’t rightly know dat, neither. Hit all happen’ so quick-lalc I didn’t got a good look at ’im.”
“Then how do you expect me to find him if you can’t describe him?” asked the puzzled policeman.
“Boss, dat ain’t goin’ be no trouble,” stated the negro. “You jest go lookin’ for the doin’est man they is in Newer leans!”
§ 44 Sauce for the Goose
An East Sider of foreign birth prospered to the extent where he graduated from the ranks of the sidewalk merchants and became a
40 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
regular business man, with a store and showcases and everything. Also, for the first time in his life he was able to start a bank account.
One day he was engaged on the telephone by the assistant cashier of the bank where he kept his checking fund.
“Mr. Abrams,” stated the cashier, “I called you up to tell you that on the first day of this month your account appears overdrawn $108.”
“So?” droned Mr. Abrams. “Say, young man, would you do it for me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Then, please, you should look at your books und tell me how stood the account on the foist day of last month.”
In a minute or two the bank functionary was back at the ’phone. “Oh, Mr. Abrams,” he said, “on the first day of last month you had a balance to your credit of $322.25.”
“So!” shouted Mr. Abrams. “Und did I call you up?”
§ 45 Driven Beyond His Strength
There was a down-and-outer, who made a precarious living as a sandwich man. Encased front and back, like a turtle in its shell, between broad boards which bore advertisements for a dairy lunch, he marched the Bowery all day long for wages barely sufficient to keep body and soul together.
One day, as he plodded his weary route, he saw a shining coin lying upon the sidewalk. Instantly he set his foot upon it, and then, stooping with difficulty because of his wooden waistcoat, he clutched it in his eager fingers and raised it to his eyes. His heart inside of him gave a great throb. It was a twenty-dollar gold piece. He was wealthy beyond his wildest ambitions.
Across the street was an excavation for a new building. He hurried thither. Standing on the edge of the digging he unbuckled the straps which bound the squares of planking to him, and, kicking them to pieces with a glad, exultant cry, he flung the shattered emblems of his servitude down into the hole below. Then straight¬ way he departed for the nearest saloon. Stalking in, a triumphant figure even in his tatters, he slapped his precious gold piece down upon the bar and called for a drink of whiskey. It was to have been the first of a long and gorgeous succession of drinks of whiskey.
Some one jostled him in the side. Pie turned his head, and when he looked back again his double eagle mysteriously had vanished, and the barkeeper was motioning him to depart.
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 41
He protested, naturally. Whereupon the barkeeper reached for the bung starter, swung it with a skill born of long practice, and struck him squarely between the eyes. A moment later the ex¬ sandwich man found himself sprawling on the sidewalk, his happy visions gone forever.
A prey to melancholy, filled with deep disappointments and a yet deeper sense of injustice, he got upon his feet and started to limp away.
Next door to the saloon was a basement barber shop. From it at this instant there emerged a Bowery mission worker, an elderly gentleman of a benevolent aspect, his pink jowls newly scraped and his face powdered. As he climbed up the steps to the level of the sidewalk this gentleman bent over to refasten a loosened shoelace.
Now, to the best of his knowledge and belief, the derelict never before had seen the missionary, but as the latter stooped, presenting before him an expanse of black coat tails, the misanthrope hauled off and dealt the gentle stranger a terrific kick.
With a yell of astonishment and pain the clergyman landed ten feet away.
“What did you mean by that?” he demanded, rubbing the seat of ,us trousers with both hands. “Why did you kick me?”
“Oh,” said the ex-sandwich man, in tones of an uncontrollable annoyance, “you’re always tying your shoestring!”
§ 46 The Custom of the Country
The English have the credit for being a conservative race — a breed in which respect for traditions is so strong that they hesitate to change anything which has behind it the merits of antiquity and established comfort. The story which follows would tend to indi¬ cate that this trait really does persist in our Anglo-Saxon cousins.
Through the fields between two villages in Sussex ran a footpath. It was not the quickest route for one going from one of the hamlets to the other, for it wandered about, but it had been traced originally by the horny, naked feet of Saxon serfs, and now was worn deep into the turf by the heels of countless generations, and everybody in the neighborhood used it, because everybody always had.
A country gentleman lived midway between the towns. One day he heard a vicious bull was straying about the countryside, chasing pedestrians, frightening children and generally misbehaving himself.
Seeking for variety from the monotony of his life, the gentleman went forth in the afternoon hoping to glimpse the bull. Once he heard him bellow, but he did not see him.
42 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
He lingered afield until nearly dusk. He had reached a stile where a hedge crossed the footpath when he heard in the distance, through the thickening gloom, the patter of flying feet, mingled with the thud of heavy hoofs, a convulsive panting and the snorts of some large animal.
Into sight came the local postman, an elderly person. He was legging along at top speed, his mail pouch bouncing on his hip, his whiskers neatly parted by the wind and blowing backward over his shoulders, and just behind him came the bull, lunging with his horns at the seat of the fugitive’s trousers.
By half a length the fleeing man reached the hedge ahead of his pursuer. He flung himself headlong over the stile and in its pro¬ tection lay breathless, while the bull, bellowing his disappointment, strolled off to seek an easier victim.
The spectator aided the quivering postman to his feet.
“He almost had you to-night, Fletcher,” said the gentleman, sympathetically.
“ ’E’s almost ’ad me every night this week, sir,” gasped Fletcher.
§ 47 Sight Unseen, As It Were
- 4
Once upon a time — this, as the sequel will show, was before pro¬ hibition came — the Palm Beach Flier, northbound, was compelled by reason of a wreck ahead to detour over a side line. When the passengers on the Pullmans awoke in the morning they found the train halted for an indefinite stop at a small settlement set among the scrub oaks, jack pines and dwarf palmettos of interior Florida. Next only to the tiny station the most important looking structure in sight was an unpainted frame shack facing the tracks. Over its doorway, in awkward capitals, was lettered this imposing promise:
NEW YORK BAR.
ALL KINDS OF FANCY DRINKS SERVED HERE.
Reading this sign, two Easterners on board one of the sleeping cars were seized with a waggish idea. They left their stateroom and, crossing the rails, entered the establishment.
Its interior decorations were exceedingly simple. At the front was a broad, unpainted board, supported on two barrels. Behind this barrier, against the wall, a small bleared mirror hung. On either side of the mirror, upon a narrow shelf, stooa a black bottle, flanked
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 43
by a meagre store of smeary toddy glasses. Beneath it was a beer keg, resting upon the floor on its side.
In the rear was a small rusty stove. The air being chilly, a fire of pine knots blazed in it. A lanky individual, plainly the proprietor, sat in a broken chair close up to the stove with his bare feet in the warm ashes, reading a tattered copy of a Jacksonville paper.
He did not raise his head as the strangers entered, nor did they hail him. They lined up side by side before the makeshift bar and one of them, addressing space, said:
“Seeing that they serve all sorts of fancy drinks here, I'll have a gin rickey. What are you going to take ?” he added, addressing his fellow joker.
“Well,” said the other, “I think I’ll take a dry martini cocktail, made with French vermouth.”
Without shifting his position or lifting his eyes from his paper the proprietor now spoke:
“I kin lick airy dam’ Yankee in the house — an’ I ain’t even looked yit!”
§48 A Born Snob
In those bygone times when New York’s Chinatown was in its heyday — whatever a heyday is — there were three cronies among its habitues who were popular with newspaper reporters and others in search of local color. One was Blinky Britt and one was Honest John Clary, so called because once upon a time when Blinky went to sleep and his glass eye fell out of its socket and rolled across the floor Honest John picked it up and gave it back to him ; and the third was Dingo Katz. Honest John was a barkeeper in a Doyers street saloon. Blinky was a lobby-gow, or messenger, for Chinese resi¬ dents, and Dingo was a pickpocket, making a specialty of robbing women passengers on crosstown trolley cars. They were the Three Musketeers of the Oriental quarter.
In an evil hour the law broke up the triumvirate. Dingo, while plying his profession, was arrested and lodged in the Tombs. At his trial he was found guilty, and the Judge sentenced him to three years at Sing Sing. Although the Underworld agreed that his friends had done all for him that it was humanly possible to do, it is said that an unreasonable rancor filled his soul on the morning when he was taken to prison.
Some months later a journalist prowling through Chinatown look¬ ing for material happened upon Blinky Britt sitting in Nigger Mike Callahan’s bar.
44 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
“Hello, Blinky,” he said ; “when did you hear from your old side- kick, Dingo?"
“Aw, say," answered Blinky, “cheese on dat sidekick stuff. I’m off of dat Dingo for life.”
“Why, I thought you two were pals,” said the newspaper man.
“So did I t’ink we wuz pals,” said Blinky, “so did I t’ink so. But, say, lissen, bo, and lemme slip you de lowdown on dis Dingo. Like you knows already, Dingo he gits sloughed up fur moll-buzzin’ on a Canal street rattler. Well, it looks like de sneezers is got him nailed fur fair wid de goods. But all de same I’m de one dat goes to de bat wid de fall-money fur to hire him a swell mouthpiece to git him cleared. But it ain’t no use. A jury of twelve delicates- seners and the likes of dat dey t’rows de hooks into him and de old pappy-guy in the silk nightshirt on the bench hands him a t’reetime jolt at Warble-Twice-on-the-Hudson.
“Well, w’en de poor nut is been up dere fur going on maybe two or t’ree weeks I says to myse’f dat it’s no more’n de act of a friend dat I should go to see him. So I rolls a come-on fur five iron men and I takes t’ree of dem front wheels and I buys some maldn's and some crullers and some sweet slum out of a candy shop and some soft scoffin’ out of a pie shop and one t’ing and another dat I knows Dingo likes, and, come a Sunday I gits on de rattler and I rides up dere to dat town of Boid Center and I walks up de road to de big stone hoosgow on de hill. Dere’s a bull in harness on de gate. See? So I says to dis here bull, I says, Ts dis visitors’ day?’ And he says, ‘It ’tis.’ So I says, ‘You pass de news to Dingo Katz dat his old pal, Blinky Britt, is come to see him.’
“And say, cull, do you know de woid dat Dingo sends back to me?
“HE SENDS ME WOID HE AIN’T IN.”
§ 49 Maybe Not on the Second Day, Either
For his topic that Sabbath morning the reverend father chose the Judgment. He painted a shining picture of the scene which would be presented on the Last Day, when all the race of mankind, the quick and the dead, the old and the young, from Adam to the newest born babe, assembled before the throne of the Almighty to be judged according to their deeds done in the flesh.
When the service was over an elderly Irisliman tarried after the rest of the congregation had departed. He halted the priest as the latter was leaving.
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 45
“Your Riverince,” he said, “I want to ask you a question or two, if you please. I followed your sermon close this mornin’, but still I don’t know if I got your meanin’ quite clear.”
“I rather thought my language was sufficiently plain for any understanding,” said the clergyman.
“Oh, it was plain, and most beautiful besides,” said the parishioner. “But, Father, what I want to know is this : Do you mane to say thot on the Last Day whin Gabriel’s Trumpet blows iverybody thot iver lived in this world will be gathered togither at the wan place and the wan time?”
“That is my conception of the meaning of the Scriptures and the Gospels,” said the priest.
“Do you think now, f’rinstance, thot Cain and Abel ’ll be there, side be side ?”
“Beyond a doubt.”
“And thot little fella David and thot big slob Goliath — thim also, you think?”
“Surely.”
“And Brian Boru and Oliver Cromwell?”
“Of course, they will.”
“And the A.P.A.’s and the A. O.H.’s ?”
“Naturally.”
“Father,” said the parishioner, “there’ll be dom little judgin’ done the first day.
§ 50 Calling a Spade a Spade
A Christmas entertainment was being planned in a remote Nevada town. The affair was to take place at the church, and the local Sunday school superintendent, a mild and gentle man, with a tem¬ peramental Adam’s apple and an aggravated habit of wearing white string ties on week days, had charge. Up until the eleventh hour it looked as though the manager of the show must depend exclusively upon home talent in making up the bill. But late in the afternoon of Christmas eve, as though directed by Providence, a shabby stranger dropped off a passing freight train carrying a slender instru¬ ment case under his arm. He sought out the superintendent, intro¬ duced himself — modestly — as a distinguished musician on tour and volunteered to take part in the night’s program. Delighted at having enlisted a visiting star from out of the East, the superintendent assigned him the place of honor.
At the proper moment the pleased promoter in his role of master
46 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
of ceremonies, came forth upon the improvised stage and announced that he had a delightful surprise and a wonderful treat for the audience. Prof. Bilbus, a famous clarinet player direct from New York city and at present sojourning temporarily in their midst, would now favor the assembled citizens with a solo. He stepped to one side and from the wings issued the visitor, who bowed low, and then, lifting his instrument to his lips, emitted one of the sourest and most dismal of notes.
In his shock and disappointment a big miner at the back of the house forgot the proprieties.
“Well, the blanketty blank !” he exclaimed in a voice which reached beyond the footlights.
Quivering with indignation the introducer sprang forward again to the centre.
“Wait !” he called out. “Who called the clarinet player a blanketty blank ?”
From the audience a third voice was lifted :
“Who called the blanketty blank a clarinet player?”
§51 Poor Aim but Good Intent
After his retirement from the presidency Colonel Roosevelt was making one of his periodical trips through the Southwest, when word came to him in a town in New Mexico that one of his old Rough Riders, a cow hand, was in jail on a serious charge over in Arizona and craved that his beloved commander would come to see him and, if possible, aid him in his present troubles.
Promptly the Colonel crossed the line. In a small brick coop of a county prison he found the veteran. When greetings had been exchanged through the bars, Col. Roosevelt said :
“Jim, I’m certainly sorry to see you in this place.”
“Kernel,” stated the captive, “I’m sorry ’bout it myself. And I’m hopin’ you kin use your influence to git me out pronto. They really ain’t got no right to keep me locked up. My bein’ here is all due to a mistake anyway.”
“A mistake ?” echoed the Colonel. “Why, I understood you were charged with some serious offence — shooting somebody, wasn’t it?”
“Well,” said the prisoner, “it’s true I did shoot a lady in the eye. But it was an accident, Colonel.”
“An accident?”
“Yes suh, a pure accident. I wasn’t shootin’ at that lady at all I was shootin’ at my wife.”
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 47
§ 52 There Spake True Friendship
To a prosperous cloak and suit merchant on the lower East Side came an acquaintance of many years’ standing. The newcomer had made a failure of it as a pushcart huckster, and then as a dealer in castoff garments. But he was undismayed ; his ambition still soared. It seemed that now he aspired to open a regular store — on borrowed capital.
“But I don’t want I should ask my friends for the money,” he explained. “So this morning I go by that bank over yonder on the other side of the street and I talk with the bank president, a feller named Howard, about it. But what should I know about banks? Nothing, that’s what. He says to me I should make him a note with indorsements. I asks him what is a note, and what is this here indorsement? So he asks me who do I know in this neighborhood what has plenty money, and I says to him that I know you — that we came over together, greeners, on the same ship from Poland eighteen years ago. And then he fixes up this here piece of paper, and he says to me I should bring it over here and get you to sign your name on the back of it, and then I should bring it back to him and he would right away give me the two thousand dollars I need. So, here I am, Goldberg.”
Mr. Goldberg’s voice was husky with emotion as he answered:
“Moe,” he said, “honestly for you I am positively ashamed that you should do this thing. Ain’t always we been friends both in the old country and over here ? Ain’t always I loved you like a brother ? And now when you need some money do you come to me and ask for it, man to man? No, you go to a goy like that Howard. Oy! Oy ! for you I hang my head that you should do so !
“Listen : I am the one which is going to help you and not some feller in a bank. You get that Howard to sign his name on the back of this paper and then I give you the money!”
§ 53 The Tools Were Lacking
Two traveling men sat at breakfast in the hotel dining room of a South Carolina mill town. To them came a polite negro, soliciting their orders.
Said the first:
“Bring me grape fruit, coffee with hot milk, corn muffins, bacon and eggs.”
“Yassuh,” confirmed the waiter. He addressed the second patron:
48 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
“ Whut’s yourn goin’ be, Cap’n ?”
“I’ll take the same as my friend here, except that the eggs should be eliminated.”
At the sound of that last mysterious word the darky stiffened.
“Scuse me, suh — how’d you say you wanted ’em aigs?” he asked.
The white man caught the point. He was by way of being some¬ thing of a practical joker anyhow. He raised his voice slightly for added emphasis:
“I said I wanted them eliminated.”
The waiter blinked hard but recovered gallantly.
“Yas suh,” he said, and departed for the kitchen. Almost imme¬ diately there floated in through the swinging doors which separated kitchen from dining room, a medley of sounds betokening a violent debate between two persons of African antecedents. And then on the heels of this the waiter reappeared, perspiring freely, and re¬ turned to where the two white men sat.
“Cap’n,” he said, “wouldn’t you des’ ez soon have yore aigs fried ? Or mebbe scrambled? We also meks a mouty tasty om’let yere. Folks w’ich tries our om’lets speaks mos’ highly of ’em. Or T' mout - ”
The joker broke in on him :
“Say,” he demanded, “what’s the matter with you? I gave you my order once — told you what I wanted. Now, I’m on a diet. Under the doctor’s orders I must always have my eggs eliminated. And I’m going to have them that way here or else some nigger’s going to be looking for a job.”
“ ’Tain’t my fault, suh,” pleaded the waiter. “Hit’s de cook. I tells him jes’ ez plain. I sez, ‘Liminate a couple of fresh aigs fur a Naw’the’n genelman,’ I sez, an’ ’en he starts argufyin’. An’ he tel) me to come on back yere an’ suggest to you - ”
“Never mind that,” snapped the humorist, now seemingly in a highly indignant state. “You go tell that cook that I want him to fill my order according to instructions or there’ll be trouble.”
Once more the waiter sped away. Half a minute later he came through the swinging doors. With him was a large, coal black per¬ son in a greasy apron, and with a look of grave concern upon his face.
“Whar’s de gen’elman?” asked the newcomer.
“Thar he set,” said the waiter, pointing.
The cook presented himself at the table and bowed low.
“Boss,” he said, “I’se de cook yere an’ I strives to please. But you’ll please, suh, haf’ to ’scuse me reguardin’ yore desires ’is mawnin’ fur ’liminated aigs — an’ tha’s a fact.”
“Don’t you know how to eliminate an egg?” demanded the joker.
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 49
The cook favored him with a winning smile.
“Who, me? — w’y to be suttinly, I does. Any other time dem ’liminated aigs’d be settin’ right dar in front of you now, smokin’ hot. But to tell you de truth, boss, dey wuz a flighty nigger gal come foolin’ round de kitchen yistiddy w’ich she rightly didn’t have no business to be there neither ; an’ she drapped the ’liminator an’ bruk de handle off of it.”
§54 A Tribute to Moderation
It befell in the old days that a mob one night took a negro out of a county jail in southern Kentucky and carried him just across the line into Tennessee and there hanged him at the roadside. As he dangled they riddled him with bullets and then kindled a fire under him with intent to destroy the body.
By the light of the mounting flames somebody saw something stirring in a brush pile, close by the scene of execution. He kicked the brush away and dragged out an old colored man, who had been on his way home when he saw the lynchers coming. He had deemed it the part of prudence to take cover immediately. But as luck would have it, he had gone into retirement at the very spot where the mob halted to do its work.
Men poked big guns in his face and swore to take his life if ever he dared reveal what he had that night beheld. The old man pro¬ tested that the whole thing was purely an affair of the white folks, in which he had no concern nor interest. He was quite sure that by daybreak of the following morning all memories of the night would be gone from his mind.
The leader of the mob felt it incumbent to press the lesson home to the consciousness of the witness. Still casually cocking and un¬ cocking a long pistol, he flirted a thumb over his shoulder toward the gallows-tree and said :
“Well, you know that black scoundrel yonder got what he de¬ served, don’t you?”
The old man craned his neck about and gazed for a moment upon the grisly spectacle.
“Boss,” he said fervently, “it looks lak to me he got off mighty light.”
§ 55 The Instantaneous Diagnosis
The traveling man had occasion to pass through the colored com¬ partment of the train on his way to the baggage car, where he wished
50 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
to open one of his trunks. He took note of a large black person who slept audibly, with his head lolled back against the seat, his mouth agape and his tongue hanging down on his chest like a pink plush necktie.
Now the traveling man was by way of being a practical joker. Also he had in his waistcoat pocket a number of five-grain quinine capsules.
When he returned from the baggage car he held in his hand one of those capsules, with its top removed. Along the furry surface of that pendant tongue he gently sifted the crystals of quinine. The sleeper stirred but did not waken.
The wag halted at the rear door of the Jim Crow section to await results. Presently a fly lit on the nose of the slumbering one, and he sucked his tongue back inside of his mouth. Instantly he was wide awake. He spat violently, then arose with a look of deep concern on his face and headed for the back platform.
At the door he encountered the traveling man. “Mister,” he de¬ manded, anxiously, “does you know ef dey’s a doctor on dis yere train ?”
“Who needs a doctor?” countered the white man.
“I does, tha’s who.”
“Are you sick?”
“I shore is. An’ whut’s more I knows whut ails me, an’ I knows I needs to git to a doctor right away.”
“Well, what does ail you?”
“Boss, my gall’s busted!”
§ 56 In Fact, a Positive Fad
Not long ago a very wise literary critic suggested in my presence the attractiveness of the idea of compiling a funny book about hang¬ ings. He pointed out that there were scores of yarns, all dealing more or less humorously with the unhumorous subject of hangings, legal and otherwise. He thought that a suitable beginning for the volume might be found in the ancient anecdote of the shipwrecked mariner who, after drifting for days on an improvised raft, was carried by a friendly current within sight of a strange land. As he drew nearer he saw some men on the shore erecting a gallows, and, falling upon his knees, cried out: “Thank Heaven, I have reached a Christian country!”
I do not know whether my friend will carry out his threat of compiling such a work, but if he ever does I claim the collection will
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY $1
be incomplete unless in his pages he includes the narrative pertaining to that colored person who was condemned to death on the scaffold, and who was unable to readjust himself to the prospect. The nearer the date of execution came the greater became the reluctance on his part, until toward the end it amounted with him to what might be called a positive diffidence.
On the night before the fatal day a clergyman sat with the prisoner striving by counsel and admonition to prepare him for the ordeal.
“My brother, my poor brother,” said the minister, soothingly, “try to face the fate which confronts you on the morrow with cour¬ age and resolution. Remember that thousands and thousands before you all through the ages, some justly condemned and some unjustly, have suffered this same punishment with fortitude. Even the early Christian martyrs died much as you must die.”
“Yas, suh, I knows,” quavered the condemned, “but — but it wuz a hobby wid them.”
§ 57 Something Like a Wampus, Probably
They were holding an examination of aspirants for the position of principal of a colored grade school in Louisville. One of the most promising candidates for the vacancy was a small yellow man, who wore shiny, gold-rimmed spectacles, and bore himself with that air of assurance which learning sometimes imparts.
The superintendent of the public school system was sounding the qualifications of this person. The subject was syntax. The in¬ quisitor would choose a word at random from the lexicon and the applicant would give his conception of its proper definition.
Out of a clear sky, so to speak, the superintendent sped this one :
“Jeopardy.”
The candidate froze stiff. His eyes rolled in his head as he re¬ coiled from the shock.
“Which?” he inquired softly.
“Jeopardy.”
“I believe you said ‘jeopardy,’ didn’t you, suh?” said the little yellow man, still sparring for time.
“Certainly, ‘jeopardy.’ You know the word, don’t you?”
“Oh, yas, suh, fluently.”
“Well, then, since you are familiar with it, what is your under¬ standing of its meaning?”
Like a man preparing to dive from a great height into vasty depths the candidate took a deep breath. Then gallantly he leaped headlong.
52 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
“Well, suh,” he stated, “in reply to the question just propounded I should say that ‘jeopardy’ would properly refer to any act com¬ mitted by 2 jeopard.”
He got the job on the spot.
§ 58 An Education in Peril
The original of my fiction character of “Judge Priest” was a cer¬ tain Judge William Bishop, now deceased. He was a wonderful old man — shrewd, simple, kindly, witty, gentle.
One time the old Judge was acting as chairman of a committee of three lawyers who sat to examine a gangling young man from the country who sought a license to practice at the local bar. The candidate had started out to be a blacksmith, but he had decided that wearing a frock coat and making speeches to juries would be easier than bending mule shoes and shrinking wagon tires.
Judge Bishop opened the inquiry.
“Henry, my son,” he began in his usual benignant fashion, “I suppose you have done a course of reading with a view to acquiring the rudiments of this calling of ours and thereby fitting yourself for your new career?”
“Well, Jedge, I done some readin’ but not so very much,” con¬ fessed Henry. “I aims to do the most of my readin’ after I opens an office.”
“Well, let’s see just what reading you have done,” pursued Judge Bishop. “I assume naturally that you have read Blackstone?”
“Black which, Jedge?”
“Blackstone, author of great textbooks on the practice and prin¬ ciple of the law.”
The candidate shook his head.
“I ain’t never heared of him,” he confessed.
“Well, how about Coke?”
“I don’t know ez I ever heared tell of him, neither.”
“Well, surely then you have studied the Constitution of the United States of America and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights of the State of Kentucky?”
“To tell you the truth, Jedge, I ain’t got round to them yit,” admitted the aspiring blacksmith.
“Henry,” pressed Judge Bishop, “suppose you tell us just what books — what authorities — you have studied since you became seized with the desire to be a member of our bar?”
Henry poudered a moment Then his face brightened.
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 53
“I tell you, Jedge,” he said, “I read one big book called ‘Revised Statutes of the State of Kintucky’ mighty nigh through, an’ I kin remember part of what it says.”
“My son,” stated Judge Bishop, “the trouble with you is that the next Legislature is liable to meet and repeal every damn thing you know.”
§59 A Lover of Statistics
There was a seance on — a regular seance, with a trance medium and a black cheesecloth cabinet and a mysterious table rapper and a ghostly guitar picker and everything orthodox, like that. The medium was a stout lady whose controls took those liberties with the English language which seemingly is permitted in a realm where there is neither space nor time — nor grammar. The audience was of fairish size. Amid the throng sat a half-grown youth from about five miles out on R. F. D. No. 3. He was attending his first spir¬ itualistic seance. As manifestation succeeded manifestation, his eyes popped and his ears twitched.
Presently the medium’s husband, who acted, so to speak, as ring¬ master, desired to know whether there was yet another present desirous of having speech with some dear departed one. If so, Madame would undertake to establish liaison.
This was the cue for the yokel. He mustered courage to stutter an embarrassed plea. He wished to hear from the shade of his late father.
After a proper wait there were sounds in the cabinet and through the darkness there spoke the tones of one of seeming hoary age.
“Is that you, my son?” asked the voice.
“Yes, paw, this here is me,” answered the youth.
“Was there any questions you wished to ast me concernin’ my present state?” continued the accommodating voice.
The boy thought a moment. Then :
“Where air you. Paw?” he inquired with simple directness.
“Heaven, my son.”
“Air you an angel, Paw?”
“Oh, yes, my son.”
“An angel with wings and a harp and everything?”
The answer was somewhat muffled but seemingly in the affirmative. The son considered a moment.
“Say, Paw,” he demanded eagerly, “whut do you measure frum tip to tip?”
54 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
§ 6o History in the Un-Making
There used to be a character in George Creel’s town in Missouri a transplanted Kentuckian and a veteran of Shelby’s command, whc was a born orator and an inspired romancer.
One sunny afternoon he was holding forth to an attentive audience upon the part he had played in the war between the States. It was rather to be inferred that he was one of the main reasons why the Confederacy endured, against odds, for four years. He progressed to where he was enriching history with an account of the first engagement in which he had participated.
“Gentlemen,” he proclaimed, “envisage the scene. There we stand, a little group, armed for the most part with nondescript weapons, with flint lock muskets, with scythes, with axes, even with cudgels. We are underfed, half shod and ragged, yet inspired by the dauntless resolution and splendid valor which sustained the Southern heart. Over the slope and straight against our line come pouring the Northern hordes, those relentless invaders of our beloved Southland, lusty and strong and equipped with every appliance for conducting warfare that modem science can provide.
“We are outnumbered three to one; we are weak from hunger while they are lusty with bacon and beef. But none among us quails. A righteous belief in our sacred cause inspires us, every one. Each one feels himself a giant. And what is the result? Suddenly we leap forward in the charge. We grapple with them, we fight like demons. And, gentlemen, such is the impetuosity of our attack, such the ferocity of our blows that soon the blue lines break and in mad disorder routed the enemy flees, unable to face that irresistible torrent of Southern manhood.”
From the audience spoke up a gray bearded listener.
“Say, looky here, Kurnel,” he said. “I was in that there fight myself and whut really happened wuz that them plegged Yanks give us a fust rate lickin’ and run us ten miles acrost country.”
With a magnificent gesture of surrender the Colonel rose to his feet.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “another instance of a good story spoiled by a damn eyewitness!”
§ 6l Solving a Dark Mystery
Achmed Abdullah, the novelist, is an Afghan, a descendant of an old and noble family of Afghanistan and a son of a former Governo?
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 55
of Kabul. He was educated in Europe, and he has lived and adven¬ tured pretty much all over the world. Being a natural linguist, he
has picked up tongues as he went.
With the rank of captain he was on recruiting service once for the British army in Cairo. To him came an Egyptian officer of police to ask his aid. Two native constables had picked up in the bazaars a black man whose nationality was unknown and whose purposes were unfathomable, seeing that he could not be made to understand the questions put to him by his captors.
It seemed that for several days before his arrest the prisoner had been lurking about the bazaars, a butt for gamins and the despair of those who sought to interrogate him. As much for his own protection as for any other motive the police had locked him up. Now the assistance of Capt. Abdullah as translator was solicited.
Abdullah accompanied the puzzled functionary to the prison. In a corner of a cell crouched a huge black man staring with appre¬ hensive sullen eyes at the newcomers. It was evident that he was of some African stock; also it was plain that he was in a badly frightened state. He was clad in a nondescript costume of tatters which he had picked up somewhere— the sandals of an Arabian, a Turkish fez and the ragged remains of a donkey driver’s robe.
Being admitted to the cell, the volunteer interpreter proceeded to fire simple questions at the captive, first in French, then in Afg an, and then in Ashantee, in Turkish, in Tibetan, in Greek, in Chinese, in Persian and in Batu. There was no response ; the black merely continued to glower at him dumbly. So then Abdullah tried him in some of the tongues of the Sahara Desert and in the clucking dia¬ lects of one or two Congo tribes and finally in Zuluese, with which he was also more or less familiar. Still the hunched-up figure gave
no sign of understanding. . , . , ,
In despair Abdullah gave it up. “I wonder, he said aloud
himself in English, “what in thunder you are, anyway
With a bellow of thanksgiving the prisoner leaped to his teet. “Boss,” he whooped, “I’se a Free Will Baptist!”
And so he was— a country darky from Alabama who had shipped on a tramp steamer out of New Orleans, had deserted off the African coast swimming ashore naked, and had for days past been dodging about the native quarters, growing hourly more bewildered and more desperate in these strange surroundings.
$6 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
§ 62 Enough of a Good Thing
In September of 1918 Col. Bozeman Bulger, in charge of the press bureau of the A. E. F., was driving in his car up toward the front on the afternoon of a day when there had been hard fighting with the stubborn Germans. Limping down the high road on the way from the forward trenches to rest billets came a company of infantry, or what was left of it, just relieved after more than a week of practically continuous service under fire.
The officer in command was a lanky youth of perhaps twenty-two whose face was gray with exhaustion. He hailed Bulger, asking for something to smoke. He had been without tobacco, he said, for four days — without food, too, for most of that time.
Bulger left his car and he and the youth sat down together in a convenient shell hole to pass the time of day. Between long, grateful puffs on a cigarette the youth discoursed of his recent experiences in the slow drawl of a Southwesterner.
“Major,” he said, “we’ve had it pretty toler’ble tough these last few days — tire Heinies shelling us day and night, communication interrupted and liaison broken, no chow to speak of, no makin’s, no nothing except mud and wet and the chances of being blown into little scraps.
“As a matter of fact, I’ve had pretty rough sledding ever since I got over here, and that’s more than a year ago. I haven’t had any leave — they seem to have overlooked me when they were passing out the trips to Paris — and I’ve been working my head off when I wasn’t in the line on active duty. And now finally, to top off with, we have this week up front.”
“Where are you from?” asked Bulger.
“Texas,” replied the youth. “Yes, sir, I was teaching school down there when we got into this war. I had a mother dependent on me, and while I wanted to go and do my bit I thought it better on my mother’s account that I should wait until the draft took me. But while I was trying to decide Senator Morris Sheppard came to our town and made a recruiting speech. He said it was high time we were satisfying our national honor. Well, sir, that phrase hit me right where I lived. The next day I went in as a volunteer, and after a spell I got a commission — and here I am.
“Major, I don’t regret having done what I did do. If it was to do over again I reckon I wouldn’t hesitate. But, Major, as I look back on what I’ve gone through with ever since I landed, I don’t mind
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 57
telling you, in strict confidence, that my national honor is dern near satisfied !”
§ 63 Absolutely Bored by the Whole Thing
A youth in southeastern Missouri became involved in legal pro¬ ceedings as the result of the mysterious disappearance of a neigh¬ bor’s mare and the upshot was that a jury went so far as to find him guilty of horse-stealing and the judge gave him a sentence of five years at hard labor. A friend of mine defended him at his trial.
Some months after his late client had been taken away to begin serving his sentence this friend was sitting one morning in his office when the door opened and there entered the father of the youth, an elderly bearded hillsman.
“Hal,” began the newcomer, “I come to see you to git you to do somethin’ ’bout my boy Wesley Junior.”
“Well, Uncle Wes,” said the lawyer, “I don’t believe there is any¬ thing I can do. You remember how hard I worked for him at his trial — how I sweated down two or three collars over yonder in that courthouse and how I wasted all the oratory I had in my system and how I snapped both my suspenders. But in spite of all I could say, you know as well as I do what happened. The case went against us and the Judge gave Wesley five years in the State penitentiary and there he is!”
“Yas, suh, Hal,” said the father. “Wesley Junior, is up thar in that there penitentiary and that’s jest the p’int! I got a letter frum him this mawnin’. And he told me to come to see you 'md to tell you to git him out of that place right-a-way — he’s plum dissatisfied.”
§ 64 The Question Categorical
There is a certain young actor in New York, a player of romantic swashbuckler parts who, when he is sober, is one of the gentlest and most companionable of men. But when he indulges in strong water his nature changes. He becomes dogmatic, disputatious, and occa¬ sionally quarrelsome. Such times he delights to corner some in¬ offensive acquaintance and pin him down to a definite position on this subject or that and then debate the point for hours on end.
One night, being in one of these alcoholically promoted moods, he trapped a friend against the bar of a certain club. The latter wished not to argue with any one on any topic whatsoever. But the actor would not have it so.
58 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWA^
“You go ’round saying you know so mush, don’t you?” he de* manded belligerently. “You go ’round saying you know so many people in this town, don’t you ? Thatsh kinda fellow you are, ain’t you — huh ?”
“Not at all,” protested the hapless friend, “I never - ”
“Pleash don’t contradict me,” said the actor; “thatsh no way to carry on argument between gen’men. Lemme get through stating my side and then I’ll lisshen to you. You go ’round saying you know more people in this club than I know, don’t you? Just answer me that !”
“Why, I never said any such - ”
“Kin’ly lemme get word in edgeways, if you please,” said the actor with elaborate politeness. “You say you know more members of thish club ’en I do — more than anybody knows? A’right, then, you answer me thish: Do you know Jerome Lawrence — he’sh mem¬ ber here?”
“Certainly, I know him,” said the badgered one, thinking he saw a loophole. “As it happens, I also know his brother, Oscar, who looks so much like him.”
“Ah, hah !” exulted the intoxicated one, with the air of having led an unwilling witness into a damaging admission. “You say you know Jerome Lawrence and you say you know his brother Oscar that looks so mush like him? Well, then, if you know so mush, you tell me thish: Whish one of ’em looks the most alike?”
Before or After Taking*?
A well-dressed party, who was far overtaken in alcoholic stimulant, stumbled into a restaurant, slumped into a handy chair at a table and gave unmistakable evidence that he was about to enjoy a refreshing slumber. A waitress shook him by the arm.
“What is it you want?” she asked.
“Dearie,” he said drowsily, “what have you?”
“Almost anything in the food line.”
“Ver’ well, then,” he said, “bring me almost anything in the food line.”
“How about a nice salad?” she asked, on a venture.
“That’d be lovely, dearie,” he assented. “Glad you thought of it — shows you got a good mind — quick thinker, everything like that. Bring me nice salad.”
“What sort of a salad?”
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 59
“That, dearie, I leave to your superior judgment,” he said. “You been here longer than I have.”
The girl went away, returning presently with a bowl of hearts of lettuce and sliced tomatoes, with an abundance of Russian dressing poured over the combination. The patron was now sound asleep. She slipped the order past his elbow and left it there where his eyes would fall upon it when he opened them.
Presently he did open his eyes. As though spell-bound he con¬ templated that which confronted him. He took a fork and gently he stirred the contents of the bowl. Then with his free hand he beckoned the young woman to his side.
“Dearie,” he said, “drunk or sober or drinking, as is the case at present, my aim is ever to be a gen’man. Far be it from me to do anythin’ which would bring reproach upon me as a gen’man or upon the fair and unsullied name of thish noble ’stablishment. But, dearie, in justish to all concerned, it becomes nes’ary for me to ash you a queshun.”
“What’s your question?” she said snappily.
“Well,” he said, “I drift off in slumber. I wake up, and right here under my nose I find thish.” And again with his fork he daintily agitated a frond of dressing-soaked lettuce. “So, therefore, dearie, the queshun is as follows: Do I eat this — or DID I?”
§66 A Time for All Things
It was an irate Iowa farmer of the old-fashioned type who sat him down, pen in hand, and wrote an indignant letter to a concern which made a specialty of selling plumbing supplies to rural patrons.
“I have got a kick to make,” — thus the farmer wrote. “Early last spring your agent came through this district taking orders for your patent porcelain bath tub. Some of the neighbors give him their names and so nothing would do but that my wife and daughter should have one for our house and they kept after me until I give your man my name too and told him to send me one of his tubs.
“Well, that was in the early part of April. April passed and also May and no sign of that bath tub. So I wrote to you telling you to hurry on up and deliver me that there tub. Nothing was done and so June went by and July and then August.
“And now here, when it’s the middle of September and the bathing season practically over for the year, you people are trying to make me take that dern tub.”
6o A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
§ 67 Tuesday Would Be Just Like Sunday
On the occasion of a local election in a small Tennessee town an old colored man was the only member of his race who voted the Democratic ticket. It was felt that this devotion to the cause of the Caucasian — as it prevailed in that vicinity — was deserving of recognition.
Accordingly the incoming administration promptly created a de¬ partment of street cleaning — something of which the municipality had never seriously felt the need before. This department was to consist of two members, namely, a foreman or superintendent and a staff of one. Naturally, to a white man went the job of foreman but upon the worthy old black man was conferred the honor of being the staff.
Now he had the idea, which is not uncommon among other po¬ litical appointees, that holding a public office meant regular wages and considerable glory and no appreciable amount of manual ex¬ ertion. Nevertheless on the Monday morning when he reported for duty, as a concession to the conventionalities, he did bring a shovel along with him.
But the white man who had been selected as superintendent had a very different idea of the obligations which he owed the munici¬ pality. No sooner had the old negro shoveled up one of the accu¬ mulated piles of vintage rubbish of the years from the public thoroughfare than the vigilant eye of the boss spied out at least half a dozen more similar mounds which to his way of thinking seemed to require immediate attention.
As a consequence it was 4 o’clock in the afternoon before the surprised and chagrined and pained old man had time to blow on the plump, new formed blisters in the palm of his hands or to rub the cricks out of his back. Finally in a lull in the operations he straightened his spine with an almost audible creak, and as he wrung the dew of unwonted toil from his forehead he inquired of his superior :
“Look here, mister, ain’t you got nothin’ to do ’ceptin’ jes’ to think up things fur me to do?”
“Yep,” said the white man briskly, “that’s all my job — just to keep you busy.”
“Well, suh,” said the old man softly, “in dat case you’ll prob’ly be pleased to know dat you ain’t goin’ be workin’ tomorrer.”
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 6l
§ 68 A Sort of Circulating Medium, as It Were
An auctioneer’s man had been sent to a household to list its con. tents. Nothing of especial interest, either to himself or to others, marked the course of his labors until he had progressed so far as the dining room. Here, following his routine, he proceeded to enumerate the furnishings in proper order, item by item.
In his flowing professional script he set down the tally in his book:
One mahogany dining room table.
Six mahogany dining chairs.
One mahogany sideboard.
One bottle Scotch whiskey, full.
Seemingly, then, ensued a period when the appraiser was other¬ wise engaged and made no entries whatsoever. Then, in a some¬ what struggling and uncertain handwriting, he scratched out the last item and concluded his labors for the day with the following notations :
One bottle Scotch whiskey, partially full.
One revolving Turkish rug.
§69 A Service to the Whole Land
In the early summer of 1918 three of us made a long trip by auto¬ mobile to pay a visit to a colored regiment at the front in France. The results more than repaid us for the time and trouble. One of the main compensations was First Class Private Cooksey, who, because he had been an elevator attendant in a Harlem apartment house, gave his occupation in his enlistment blank as “indoor chauf¬ feur.” It was to First Class Private Cooksey that the Colonel of the regiment, seeing the expression on the others’ faces when a shell from a German mortar fell near by on the day the command moved up to the front, put this question :
“Cooksey, if one of those things drops right here alongside of us and goes off, are you going to stay by me?”
“Kurnel,” stated Cooksey with sincerity, “I ain’t aimin’ to tell you no lie. Ef one of them things busts dost to me I’ll jest natchelly be obliged to go away frum here. But please, suh, don’t you set me down as no deserter. Jest put it in de book as ‘Absent without leave,’ ’cause I’ll be back jest ez soon ez I kin git my brakes to work.”
“But what if the enemy suddenly appears in force without any preliminary bombardment?” pressed the Colonel. “What do you think you and the rest of the boys will do then?”
62 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
“Kumel,” said Cooksey, earnestly, “we may not stick by you, but we’ll shore render one service, anyway: we’ll spread de news all over France ’at de Germans is cornin’ !”
§ 70 Deportment Taught by Wire
There was a so-called financial wizard who advertised to givd lessons by mail which would enable patrons to prosper in their speculations.
A subscriber down in the Southwest found himself in difficulties as a result of following the directions for playing the grain market as laid down by the expert. He wrote a letter to this effect:
“You told me if I got into trouble I was to communicate with you and you would tell me how to act. Well, I done just what you said about buying winter wheat and I am now busted. How shall I act ? Please wire.”
By wire promptly came back the answer:
“Act like you are busted!”
§71 Speaking of Carrier Pigeons
Speaking of carrier pigeons — although no one has done so — re¬ minds me of a yarn that was related at the front in 1918. A half company of a regiment in the Rainbow Division, on going forward early one morning in a heavy fog for a raid across No Man’s Land, carried along with the rest of the customary equipment a homing pigeon. The pigeon in its wicker cage swung on the arm of a private, who likewise was burdened with his rifle, his extra rounds of ammunition, his trenching tool, his pair of wire cutters, his steel helmet, his gas mask, his emergency ration and quite a number of other more or less cumbersome items.
It was to be a surprise attack behind a cloak of the fog, so there was no artillery preparation as the squads climbed over the top and advanced into the mist-hidden beyond. Behind, in the posts of observation and in the post of command, the Colonel and his aides and his intelligence officers waited for the sound of firing. When after some minutes the distant rattle of the rifle fire came to their ears they began calculating how long reasonably it might be before word reached them by one or another medium of communication touching on the results of the foray. But the ground telephone
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 63
remained mute, and no runner returned through the fog with tidings. The suspense increased as time passed.
Suddenly a pigeon sped into view, flying close to the earth. While eager eyes followed it in its course the winged messenger circled until it located its portable cote just behind the Colonel’s position and fluttering down it entered its familiar shelter.
An athletic member of the staff hustled up the ladder. In half a minute he was tumbling down again, clutching in one hand the little scroll of paper that he had found fastened about the pigeon’s leg. With fingers that trembled in anxiety the Colonel unrolled the paper and read aloud what was written upon it.
What he read, in the hurried chirography of a kid private, was the following succinct statement: “I’m tired of carrying this damn
bird.”
Total Loss!
§72
For the first time in the history of the State — it was a Southern State — an electrocution took place within the walls of the State prison. The Legislature, keeping step with the march of progress and civilization, had ordered the installation of an electric chair to take the honored place of the old-fashioned slip-noose under the left ears of the fathers.
A negro “trusty” was an unwilling witness to the first perform¬ ance under the new arrangement. The warden had detailed him as helper to the paid executioner. He issued forth from the lethal chamber with popped eyes and ashen face.
A group of his fellow convicts knotted about him, anxious to hear the grisly details. He proceeded to elucidate:
“Well, suhs,” he said, with a shiver, “they teks an’ strops you down, hand an’ foot, in a big cheer. An’ den they clamps some lil’ things onto yo’ haid an’ yo’ laigs. An’ den one of de w’ite men he step over to whar they’s a little jigger set in de wall an’ he give it a lil* yank — *zzz — like dat!”
Here he paused and fetched a deep breath.
“Whut den? whut den?” came the chorus.
“Nothin’ but ruin — jes’ absolute ruin!”
§73
With All Good Wishes
The colonel of one of our negro regiments serving in France dur¬ ing the world war impressed it upon the rank and file of his com-
64 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
mand that in the field a soldier addressing his superior officer in¬ variably should have regard for correct military procedure and for correct military language. The lesson must have gone home, be¬ cause now among the treasured possessions of that colonel is a certain document sent by runner from a forward trench to company headquarters back of the second line of defense.
On a scrap of paper, with a stub of pencil, the author of the communication, a much-harried black corporal then undergoing his baptism of shelling, wrote as follows :
“To Lieutenant Seth B. McClintock,
“Commanding Company F. — Blank Regimen'
“Blank Division, A. E. F., U. S. A.
“Dear Sir — I am being fired on heavny from the left. I await your instructions.
“Trusting these few lines will find you the same, I remain,
“Yours truly,
“James Jordon.”
§74 A Start from Humble Beginnings
Mr. Campbell, who was a lawyer, felt somewhat irritated on reaching his office at 8 :3c) in the morning to find the fire in the grate unkindled and the floor unswept and the place generally in a state of disorder. It was nearly 9 o’clock before Ike, his black office servant, appeared.
“Good Lord, Ike,” said Mr. Campbell petulantly. “What’s de¬ tained you?”
“Mist’ Campbell,” apologized Ike, “you must please, suh, ’scuse me fur bein’ late dis one time. I sort of overslept myse’f. De truth of de matter is dat I wuz kept up de best part of de night on ’count of j’inin’ a lodge.”
“It surely didn’t take you all night to join a lodge, did it?”
“Naw, suh, not perzac’ly. De fust part of de evenin’ they wuz ’niciatin’ me into de membership an’ de rest of de time dey wuz ’onductin’ me into office.”
“Isn’t it rather unusual to confer an office on a member imme¬ diately after taking him in?”
“Naw suh, dat’s de standin’ rule in dat lodge — jes’ soon ez you is 'niciated you gits a office.”
“What office did they confer upon you?”
“Imperial Supreme King.”
“What?”
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 65
“Dat’s whut dey calls it — Imperial Supreme King of de Universe/’
“Isn’t that rather a high office for a brand new member?”
“Why, naw, suh, Mist’ Campbell, dat’s de lowes’ office dey is in dat lodge. W’en I’s been in a spell longer dey is goin’ give me somethin’ really wuth while.”
§ 75 The Confusing Geography of Jersey
Years ago, when I earned my daily bread and occasional beer on Park Row, one Andy Horn ran a cozy bar in the shadow of Brooklyn Bridge. A grubby person known as Smitty was a fixture at Andy’s. He cut up food for the free lunch counter, did odd jobs and in rush hours helped to serve the trade.
He had been born on Cherry Hill, right around the corner ; he had been reared on the Bowery and he had never ranged farther than Coney Island or Far Rockaway. Greater New York city was all the world he knew or cared to know.
His sister married a market gardener over in New Jersey, and when his summertime vacation came Smitty went to visit her for two weeks. His new brother-in-law had bought a car and had promised to tour Smitty about the State and show him the sights.
At the end of a week Smitty was back at work. One of the regular patrons hailed him:
“Hey, Smitty, I thought you were going to stay longer. Didn’t you care for country life?”
“Nix on dat stuff fur me,” said Smitty. “I’m offen it fur Kfe. Say, dat Joisey soitinly is one funny place. Why, all dem towns over there is got different names!”
§ 76 With Credit to S. Blythe
Sam Blythe claims this is a true one. Maybe he is right; Sam generally is.
He says a Washington wholesaler wished to learn the relative qualities of two brands of mucilage. He handed one bottle of each brand to his negro janitor.
“Henry,” he said, “take these and test them and see which one is the stickier.”
Hours passed before Henry reappeared. Wearing a somewhat unhappy, not to say distressed, expression, he entered his employer’s office and placed the two bottles on the latter’s desk.
“Well, Henry,” said the jobber, “what’s the result of your experiments ?”
66 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
“Boss,” stated Henry, “it’s lak dis : Dis yere one gummed up my mouth the most ; but dis yere other one, the taste lasted the longest.”
§ 77 When the H. C. of L. Came Down
As I heard the tale it had to do with a small community in Texas where the railroad ran through the main street and on either side of the track stood a short order restaurant owned and operated by a colored man.
One night the official bad man of the vicinity came lurching into one of these rival establishments. The visitor was under the influ¬ ence of strong drink — a circumstance calculated to make him slightly more dangerous than rattlesnakes.
While the uneasy proprietor made pretense at being glad to see him the bully flopped his long frame into a chair and demanded :
“Nigger, have you got a nice tender sirloin steak here?”
“Yas, suh!”
“All right, then ; you cook it fur me and don’t you cook it too long else I’ll cook you. And along with it you better bring me some fried onions and fried potatoes and some celery and a mess of hot biscuits and green peas and roasting ears and pie and coffee and anything else tasty that you’ve got around this dump. Now jump before I start jumpin’ you.”
The black man jumped. In a miraculously short time, considering the magnitude of the order, he staggered in from his cubbyhole of a kitchen at the rear bearing a waiter tray piled high with dishes. He ranged the array of food in a half moon effect before his patron and then fluttered back a few paces.
When the bad man had eaten he leaned back in his chair, drew a spring-back dirk knife out of his pocket, flipped its five-inch blade out with a nudge of a practiced thumb and leisurely picked his teeth with its needlelike point. His caterer watched him as a fascinated bird watches a coiled serpent.
Suddenly he spoke and the negro jumped.
“What sort of a dump does that other nigger over acrost the tracks run?” he asked.
“Oh, you wouldn’t lak dat place a-tall,” stated the colored man. “Dat nigger natchelly thinks a fly is somethin’ you cooks wid. He ain’t sanitatious, lak I aims to be.”
“Yes,” said the bully, “and whut’s more, he’s a robber — he’s a regular pirate.”
“Is dat so, suh?”
“Well, judge for yourself. Last night I went into that nigger’s
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY O7
joint and ordered just about what I’ve had here to-night — maybe a little more, maybe a little less. When I got through I asked him what the damage was and, do you know, that black scoundrel had the gall to ask me for a dollar and a quarter? Of course I oughter killed him. In fact, I got up intendin’ to kill him. But something sort of stayed my hand. All I done to him was just to cut off both his ears with this here frog-sticker and feed ’em to him. By the way, what do I owe you for this mess of vittles?”
“Boss,” said the darky, “I reckon a dime would be ample.v
§ 78 How to Beat the System
The late “Tiny” Maxwell was a sporting writer in Philadelphia. He was called “Tiny” because he weighed nearly three hundred pounds. He had a ready wit.
Because he was an expert at football and also because back in his college days he was a gridiron star of magnitude, Mr. Maxwell frequently was called upon to referee games along the Eastern Sea¬ board.
One afternoon he was officiating at a match between Georgetown, which, as everybody knows, is a Catholic institution, and a team representing a Southern university. In an interval one of the Southern players limped up to Maxwell.
“Mr. Referee,” he said, “I want to make a protest. There’s one of those Georgetown men that seems to have a private grudge against me. Every time we two get in a scrimmage together he bites me. Yes, sir, he just hauls off and bites me. I don’t want to start any rough house stuff, but I’m getting good and tired of having that big Irishman biting on me. What had I better do?”
“I should advise,” said Maxwell, “that you play him only on Fridays.”
§ 79 An Echo from 1865
I rather guess they have been telling this one ever since the War between the States. Indeed, for all I know to the contrary it may date back as far as the first and second Punic wars. For a good story never really dies. It merely goes into retirement for a season or a decade or a century and rises up again when occasion suits, with its youth miraculously restored.
The narrative runs that in the last days of the war a ragged, wornout, hungry, half-crippled, half-dead Confederate straggler was
68 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
limping along a Virginia highway striving to catch up with his command. Where there was a puddle in the ruts he stopped to bathe his bruised and bleeding feet. As he sat at the roadside dabbling his swollen toes in the water a Union skirmisher, well fed and lusty, stepped from behind a tree with his musket raised to his shoulder and yelled out exultantly :
“Now I got you !”
“Yas,” drawled the Southerner, “an’ a hell of a git you got!”
§ 8o There’ d Be a Popular Uprising
The revivalist was the mouthpiece of a new cult. In his inter¬ pretations of the Scriptures he saw no possible hope for any member of the human family who refused to accept his particular brand of religion.
Before an awe-struck congregation he was describing what would come to pass with regard to those stiff-necked and perverse non¬ believers who were found outside the fold on the day of judgment.
“My brethren,” he clarioned, “there is no middle course. By the word of the Holy Writ I have proved to you that mankind either must take the true doctrine as it has been expounded here or accept the awful consequences. I can close my eyes and see the picture right now.
“Over there in shining robes stand the little group of the elect and the saved. And down below in the fiery pits of perdition millions of the unregenerate are roasting in the undying fires through all eternity while the minions of the Devil heap hot coals upon their heads and give them molten lead when they beg for water to cool their parched tongues. That, my brethren, is what will come to pass.”
From the body of the house a small elderly gentleman rose up.
“Excuse me for interruptin’,” he said, “but there ain’t no chance fur sich a thing to happen. Why, the people jest natchelly wouldn’t stand fur it.”
§ 81 From the Book of Moses
Mose Morris used to live near Frankfort, Ky. He was a small, meek person of color who cultivated a truck patch for a living, and was generally liked by the white population. He remained a bach¬ elor until he was nearing middle age.
Then, in an unthoughted hour, he suffered himself to be shackled
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY ( jg
in the holy bonds of wedlock with a large, truculent, overbearing black woman nearly twice his size. He led his bride away to his little house seven miles from town.
Within two weeks’ time he came driving into Frankfort in a two- mule wagon, which was piled high with household effects. As he crossed the bridge over the Kentucky River a white gentleman hailed
him.
“Why, hello, Mose ! Where are you going with all that plunder?”
“Pse movin’, Mist’ Bob,” answered Mose.
“Movin’ where?”
“Movin’ into town — done rented a lil’ house down back behint de L. and N. depot.”
“Why, I thought you liked the country?” said the white man.
“I used to lak it,” said Mose. “I used to lak it powerful. But my wife she don’t lak the country. An’ yere lately I’ve tuck notice. Mist’ Bob, dat w’en my wife don't lak a thing I jest natchelly hates it.”
§ 82 Almost Startling, Really
In the days when Frank A. Munsey was in active editorial charge of his various publications he had a serious-minded office boy who took things literally — and with due deliberation.
One day Congressman Thomas B. Reed, then Speaker of the House, came from Washington to New York and dropped into the office of Munsey’s Magazine to see its proprietor. Between the famous publisher and the famous statesman a close bond of friend¬ ship existed — they were both sons of Maine, and they had been intimate associates for years.
The bulky Reed stepped into the anteroom and without giving his name said he wished to see Mr. Munsey. The office boy told him Mr. Munsey was in conference and invited the caller to have a seat. More than half an hour passed before the caller was admitted to the inner room. Then he told Mr. Munsey how he had been kept waiting.
Indignantly the latter issued forth and descended upon the youthful keeper of the outer gates.
“Do you know who that gentleman is that you’ve kept dawdling about here ?” he demanded. “That is the Hon. Thomas B. Reed of Maine !”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Munsey,” said the youth. “I thought all the time it was Dr. John Hall.”
“But don’t you know that Dr. Hall is dead ?” said Mr. Munsey.
70 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
“Yes, sir,” said Truthful James, “that was what made it seem so strange to me that he should be calling.”
§83 A Violent Indisposition
A colored man, on appearing for work one morning, wore a countenance so battered that almost one might have been pardoned for assuming that its owner had made a more or less successful effort to run it through a meat chopper. The white man for whom the scarred and bruised victim worked took one look at that dis¬ figured face and threw up both hands in horror and sympathy.
“Great heavens, boy,” he cried, “what have you been doing to yourself ?”
“Me? I ain’t been doin’ nothin’ to myse’f,” explained the darky. “But somethin’ is done been did to me, Mr. Watkins. It’s lak dis, suh : Yistiddy evenin’ I got into a kind of an argymint wid another nigger an’ one word led to another, ez it will. An’ purty soon I up an’ hauled off an’ hit at him wid my fist.
ftWell, seemed lak that irritated him. So he took an’ split my lip wide open wid a pair of brass knucks, an’ he blacked dis eye of mine clear down to my armpit an’ he tore one ear moughty nigh loose frum de side of my haid, an’ den, to cap all, he knocked me down and stomped up an’ down ’pun my stomach wid his feet. . . . Honest to Gawd, Mr. Watkins, I never did git so sick of a nigger in all my life!”
§ 84 The Simplest of Remedies
In Owen county, Ky., there formerly resided a self-ordained oracle on all questions pertaining to subjects of farming, horse raising and hog guessing. To him one day, as he sat on a horse block facing the public square at Owenton, came a pestered young husbandman from the knobs along the Kentucky River with this question :
“Uncle Hamp, how am I going to get shet of sassafras sprouts? The pesky dern things have jest about took an old field of mine. I’ve tried choppin’ em out and plowin’ ’em under and burnin’ ’em over, but they keep on gittin’ thicker and thicker all the time. It seems I can’t git rid of ’em noway. Whut would you advise?”
“My son,” said the wise man, “I don’t want to brag, but I reckon you ain’t made no mistake in cornin’ to me — you’ve struck on to one man that’s fitten to advise you in this here matter ef anybody on this earth is. Man and boy, I’ve been givin’ the subject of sassafras
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 71
sprouts my earnest attention fur goin’ on sixty years. And it’s my deliberatic judgment that when sassafras sprouts starts to takin’ a farm the only way you kin git rid of ’em is jest to pack up and move off and leave ’em.”
§ 85 Proving There’s Something in a Name
I once knew a colored child called “Exey” for short, whose real name was Eczema. The mother of the pickaninny had found the word in a patent medicine almanac and had fallen in love with its poetic sound. I also included in my acquaintance at one time a negro youth who answered to the title of Hallowed Harris.
“Yas, suh,” stated his father on being pressed for his reason for choosing so unusual a baptismal prefix for his offspring, “I got dat name outen de Holy Bible. Don’t you ’member, boss, whar it say in de Lawd’s Prayer, ‘Hallowed be Thy name’?”
But the Testamental name which struck me as being most interest¬ ing of all was worn by a dog — a mangy appearing, breedless, non¬ descript rabbit dog which trailed an old darky on a road in the piny woods of South Georgia. The dog ranged off into the thickets and his owner ordered him back.
“Did I hear you calling that dog ‘Rover,’ Uncle?” asked a white man.
“Naw, suh, I called him ‘Over,’ w’ich is short for ‘Mo’over,’ w’ich it is de dawg’s right name.”
“Where did you get that name and why?”
“Fur good reasons, boss,” said the old man, with a chuckle. “W’en I gits dat dawg he’s jest little scabby pup an’ alluz ’nointin’ of his- se’f wid his tongue. So I ’members whar de Good Book say, ‘An’ de dawg, Mo’over, licked his sores.’ So I knowed den I had done hit on de right name fur dat pup of mine.”
§ 86 Question: How Far Did George Go?
The white man was named Ferguson. He owned a string of two-room frame cottages and his tenants exclusively were colored. Very great was his chagrin when a negro man in a fit of pique cut a woman’s throat in one of his houses so that she bled to death, leaving a large dark stain on the floor, because immediately the word spread among the black population that the building was haunted and thereafter nobody would rent it, even at reduced rates. For months
72 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
the cottage stood empty. Then the owner had a bright idea. He went one evening and hunted up a large dark individual named George, upon whom, by way of beginning, he conferred a drink out of a bottle of corn spirits.
“George,” said he, “these darkies tell me you know quite a lot about h’ants and ghosts and such things?”
“Well, suh, Mist’ Ferguson,” replied George modestly, “I does know a right smart ’bout sich.”
“That’s good,” said the wily white man. “I’m rather an authority myself on such matters. Now, then, speaking as one expert to another, I wrant to tell you that shack of mine out here on Clay street, where that woman was killed, is not haunted. She died in a state of grace and her spirit rests in peace.
“But the trouble is that these colored people around this town don’t know it and they’ve given the place a bad name. What I want to do is to prove to them that it’s not ha’nted. And here’s the way we’re going to do it — you and me. I’m going to hire you to spend to-night in the room where the killing took place. Then, when you come out to-morrow morning and tell your people that nothing happened there during the night, I’ll be able to rent the house again. I’m going to give you the rest of this bottle of liquor now and a fresh bottle besides. And to-morrow morning I’ll hand you a ten- dollar bill. How about it?”
That slug of corn whisky already was working. It made George valiant. Besides, a white man had appealed to him for professional aid. He consented — after another lusty pull at the flask.
The crafty Ferguson took no chances. He escorted his newly enlisted aid to the house of tragedy, provided him with a pallet on the floor and left him there in the gathering darkness. But before departing he took the precaution of barring the two windows from the outside and securely locking the front and rear doors.
Next morning bright and early he came to release his brother expert. The windows still were shuttered, the doors still fastened tight ; but the house was empty. Also it was in a damaged state. At one side the thin clapboards were burst through, as though a blunt projectile traveling at great speed had struck them with terrific force from within. The shattered ends of planking stood forth, encircling the jagged aperture in a sort of sunburst effect.
Upon a splintered tip of one of the boards was a wisp of kinky wool. Upon a paling of the yard fence was a rag, evidently ripped from a shirt sleeve. Otherwise there were no signs of George. He was utterly gone, with only that yawning orifice in the cottage wall to give a clue as to the manner of his departure.
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 73
Mr. Ferguson waited all through the day for the missing one to turn up. On the second day the white man gave the alarm. A search party was organized — men on horseback with dogs. Blood¬ hounds took the trail. They followed it from early morning until late that evening.
Just before dusk, in a swamp thirty miles away the lead-dog bayed exultantly. The pursuing posse, with Ferguson in the lead, spurred forward.
Here came the missing George. His face was set toward home. It was a face streaked with dust and dried sweat, torn by briers, wet, drawn, gray with fatigue. His garments were in shreds ; his hat was gone. His weary legs tottered under him as he dragged one sore foot after the other.
Yet in the heart of Mr. Ferguson indignation was stronger than compassion. He rode up alongside the spent and wavering pedes¬ trian.
“Well, by heck, you certainly are the most unreliable nigger in this State !” he said. “Here night before last I make a contract with you for a certain job. I leave you in one of my houses. I come there the next morning and not only are you gone without leaving any word, but one side of my house is busted out. And then I have to leave my business to come hunting for you. And after riding all over the country I find you here, thirty miles from home, in a swamp. Where in thunder have you been since I last saw you, forty-eight hours ago?”
“Boss,” said George, “I’ve been cornin’ back.”
Natural Proof
When the weather gets unseasonably warm I deem the time suit¬ able for reviving a story which I first heard at the Republican National Convention in Chicago in 1920. As may be recalled by those who attended that convention, the entire country from coast to coast sweltered through the week under a blanket of terrific heat.
A delegate from California, in a half fluid state, fell off of a transcontinental train. A Chicago friend met him at the station.
“Say, old man,” said the friend when greetings had been ex¬ changed, “is it as hot out West as it is here on the lake?”
“Is it as hot out West?” repeated the newly arrived one. “Say, don’t make me laugh. You people here in the Corn Belt don’t know what heat it. Listen, I’ll illustrate to you just how hot it is on the other side of the Rockies. Coming across the Arizona desert day
74 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
before yesterday I looked out of the car window and I saw a coyote chasing a jack rabbit — and they were both walking!”
§88 A Domicile for All Eternity
One of the surest tests of the excellence of a story is whether or not it speedily reaches the stage. Some stories no doubt originate there — born in the minds of patter-comedians or monologists ; but the majority I think are built up on a foundation of fact elsewhere and then by adoption go into the theater.
Here is a sample. It had to do with a couple of darkies in Memphis.
One of them, who posed as bad, had just announced his intention of breaking into a chitterling supper where his presence was not desired. His companion followed him to the door.
“I’ll be waitin’ fur you outside yere,” he stated.
“Ef you ain’t gwine in wid me tain’t no use fur you to be hangin’ ’bout,” said the truculent one.
“Oh, yas, dey is,” said the friend. “I’ll wait ’round to carry you to yo’ home after dem niggers in dere gits through wukkin’ on you.”
“Not a chancet !” proclaimed the first negro, vaingloriously ; “ ’sides w’ich I ain’t got no home.”
“Oh, dat’s all right,” murmured his friend softly. “I’m gwine dig you one.”
§ 89 The Man Who Was Thursday
Two men, strangers to each other, but having something in com¬ mon in that they had been indulging in potent home brews, fell into a hiccoughy conversation on the back platform of a suburban trolley car whizzing across the New Jersey landscape.
“Shay,” inquired Number One, “whuz time is it?”
Number Two with difficulty extracted from his fob pocket & watch ; but a temporary defect of vision prevented him from making out the position of the two hands. Nevertheless he did his best to oblige.
“It’s izactly Thurshday afternoon,” he said.
Number One gave a start.
“Iz tha’s so?” he murmured in surprised tones. “Well, then, thish is where I hafter get off.”
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 75
§ 90 The Least of His Worries
Down in southern Alabama a person of color was fetched mto court to be arraigned for his preliminary hearing on a charge of wilful murder.
“Mose Tupper,” said the judge, “you are accused here of one of the most serious crimes known to our laws — to wit, the taking of a human life. Are you properly represented by counsel?”
“Naw, suh,” said the darky cheerfully.
“Well, have you talked to any one about your defense since your arrest ?”
“I told de sheruff ’bout de shootin’ when he come to my cabin to bring me heah,” said the prisoner.
“And have you taken no steps whatever to engage a lawyer?”
“Naw, suh,” said Mose. “I ain’t got no money to be wastin’ on lawyers. Dey tell me lawyers is mighty costive.”
“If you have no funds,” insisted the judge, “it lies within the power of the court to appoint an attorney to represent you without expense on your part.”
“You needn’t be botherin’ yo’se’f, jedge,” answered Mose.
“Well, what do you propose to do about this case?” demanded his Honor. “You must be properly defended — the law so provides.”
“Jedge,” said Mose, “ez fur ez I’se concerned you kin jest let de matter drap!”
§91 This One Stood the Test of Time
Here is one which at intervals I have been hearing for years. It seems to me it gets better with each time of telling. I wonder if the reader will agree with me that its antiquity does not affect its excellence.
The thing is supposed to have happened in a remote court house of Missouri. A resident of the Ozark Mountains whose reputation was none the best, had been on trial on the charge of horse stealing. The jury returned a verdict of guilty. Taking into consideration the past record of the offender, his Honor on the bench said:
“It is my intention to sentence you to at least eight years at hard labor in State’s prison. Now, then, before sentence is formally pro¬ nounced, I shall listen to anything you may have to say in your behalf.”
After a moment of consideration the offender spoke*.
76 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
“Well,” he said, “I don’t know ez I’ve got ary thing to say only this — it strikes me that you folks ’round this here cote house air purty toler’ble dam’ liberal with other people’s time.”
§ 92 The Prudent Bride
A comely colored girl was preparing for her marriage. Before the ceremony she hoarded her wages ; but immediately after the wed¬ ding she hunted up her mistress and asked her to take charge of the fund.
“I’ll take it, of course,” said the puzzled lady ; “but, Mandy, won’t you be needing your money to spend on your honeymoon ?”
“Miss May,” said the bride, “does you think I’se goin’ to trust myse’f wid a strange nigger an’ all dat money on me?”
§93 As a Favor to the Railroad
A New Yorker had a bad attack of grippe and went South to recuperate. He stopped a few days in a small town in South Caro¬ lina. When he got ready to leave for the North he found the official bus had vanished; probably the driver had gone joy riding. There was no conveyance, public or private, to be had; in order to catch his train the Northerner was compelled to labor afoot over a mile and a half of dusty road, with a valise in either hand.
When he staggered up to the tiny station there was no one in sight except an old darky who was sitting on the platform.
“Uncle,” inquired the New Yorker, “why in the name of goodness did they build this depot so far from town?”
The old man scratched his head.
“I don’t know, boss,” he said — “onless it wuz because dey wanted to git it closer to de railroad.
§ 94 Where the Real Fault Lay
The tourist was one of that type which for some mysterious reason are more numerously encountered abroad than at home. He was doing the cathedral towns of England, not because he particularly was interested in English towns, or in cathedrals either, but because the guide book advised him to do so.
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 77
Near the close of a glorious spring afternoon he stood on the greensward facing Canterbury cathedral with his legs planted far apart, his cap on the back of his head, his hands rammed deep into his trousers pockets, his cigar stuck into one corner of his mouth, and on his face an expression betokening profound boredom.
The celebrated Canterbury chimes were ringing for vespers, filling all the air with silver melody, when a side door of the cathedral opened and there issued forth a little, plump, pink -cheeked, benevo¬ lent clergyman. He approached the visiting stranger and in cultured tones said to him:
“I take it, sir, that you are a stranger?”
“Hey?” inquired the American, cupping one hand about his ear.
The clergyman raised his voice :
“I assume, sir, that you are not a resident of these parts?”
“Nope,” said the American. “I hail from Wyoming. It’s durned good State, too — best in the Union. You ought to come out there some time. Elder, and give us the once-over.”
“Eh — quite so,” said the reverend gentleman. “Then,” he con¬ tinued, “since you are newly-come to this place it must seem to you, even as it does to those of us who dwell in these cloistered and holy precincts, that the music of our glorious bells comes floating down to one almost like the voice of the Almighty Himself, seeking through the medium of their old brazen throats to communicate the message of peace on earth, goodwill to man, to us His children here below.”
“Which?” inquired the visitor, inclining his head somewhat.
“Er — what I meant to say,” stated the clergyman, “was that one must carry away from here, after hearing our chimes, the conviction in his soul that really he has been in communication with Deity itself — that the voices of the angels have cried out to him. Er — is it not so, my friend?”
The American shook his head.
“I’m sorry, parson,” he said regretfully, “but them damn bells is makin’ so much noise I can’t hear a word you say!”
§ 95 An Appeal to the Senses
The editor of a New York evening newspaper has a little niece who, on her sixth birthday, received as presents a wrist-watch and a large bottle of perfumery. Having strapped on the watch, and copiously scented herself, the youngster spent the entire day proudly parading the apartment directing the attention of all and sundry to
78 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
her new possessions. Eventually she became somewhat of a bore. For the evening some friends of her parents were coming in.
“Honey,” said her mother, “I can understand why you should be proud of your birthday gifts, but grown people are not interested in such things. You may come to dinner to-night on condition that you do not once mention your wrist-watch or your bottle of per¬ fumery.”
The little one promised. At the table she sat, saying not a word, but from time to time sniffing audibly, and at frequent intervals raising her left wrist to her ear to catch the sound of the ticking. These tactics failed to attract attention. Toward the end of the meal, in a lull in the conversation, little Miss Helen spoke :
“Listen, everybody,” she said. “If anybody hears anything or smells anything, it’s me.”
§ 96 The Truth from the Inside
The dining car waiter was one of those persons who feel a sense of personal proprietorship in the institutions they serve — a type not at all uncommon among members of his race. His manner, his voice, all about him, subtly conveyed the idea that here was one who took a deep pride in the undertaking of feeding people on a trans¬ continental train, and was determined that no blot ever should be¬ smirch the fair name of the system.
So when the gentleman who was going to California gave a break¬ fast order of grapefruit, toast, coffee and soft-boiled eggs, he bent over the patron and in confidential tones whispered:
“Boss, I would not keer to reccermend the aigs this mawnin’ ! Naw, suh, I would suggest you tuck somethin’ else on the bill.”
“What’s the matter with the eggs — aren’t they fresh?” asked the customer.
The waiter’s voice sank still lower.
“I don’t know ef they’s fresh or ef they ain’t,” he said ; “but to tell you the truth, we ain’t got none.”
§ 97 The Fate of the Saloon
In the last months of the fighting in 1918, a draft regiment of colored troops from the Gulf States went in near the Flanders line, where the British held, to help mop up the retreating Germans. One morning three of my fellow-correspondents borrowed a staff
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 79
car and rode up to an abandoned village where there had been sharp fighting, seeking for a forward dressing-station with intent to get stories from wounded men.
At an entrance to an improvised hospital in a dugout one of the group came upon a coal-black infantryman who, while not seriously injured, bore unmistakable signs of having come into abrupt contact with some form of high and violent explosive. He was wearing, for the moment, his belt and his boots and a part of his collar. The correspondent said to him:
“Soldier, how did you get hurt?”
“Well, mister,” stated the victim, “it ain’t altogether clear in my own mind yit, but I could mebbe tell you some of de things w’ich hez occurred.”
“I should be very pleased to hear them.”
“Well, suh, at daylight this mawnin’ we fell into one of these yera lil’ towns up yere jest ’bout the time dem Bush Germans wuz failin’ out of it. But even ef we did have de scoundrels on de run, dey didn’t fergit to shoot at us ez dey went away. Dem big shells wuz whistlin’ past over my haid, talkin’ to demselves, an’ ever’ now an’ then one of ’em would come by w’ich, it seemed lak, t’wuz speakin’ to me pussonally. I could hear it say jest ez plain : ‘You ain’t never gwine see-e-e-e-e-e yore home in Ala-BAM !’
“So I sez to myse’f, I sez : ‘Seein’ ez dese Germans is all daid an’ scattered an’ ever’thing, ’twon’t be any real harm ef I gets under cover myse’f !
“So I looks ’round fur a place to git at. ’Co’se, most of de houses in dat town hez done been shot down flat. But I sees one still standin’, wid de roof on it, too — a lil’ place called a Taverne. Dat’s whut a Frenchman say, boss, w’en he means saloon.
“Natchelly, dey ain’t nobody livin’ thar no mo’. So I walks up an’ I teks hold of de doorknob an’ I’se jest fixin’ to turn de knob an’ shove open de do’ an’ step in w’en BAM ! right ’long side of me one of dem German shells went off an’ tuk dat saloon right out of my hand !”
§ 98 What the Case Called For
Gabe Thompson was a person of unrelieved color, the color being black. Always, until he reached middle age he had enjoyed perfect health. Suddenly he was stricken down with what seemingly was a grievous affliction. His complexion turned the color of wet wood- ashes and he moaned with pain. His wife, in alarm, summoned a friend from a near-by cabin.
8o A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
“Gabe,” said the neighbor, “You ’pears lak to me that you is powerful porely. S’posin’ I hitches up an’ goes to town fur the doctor ?”
“All right,” said Gabe, “but let de doctor w’ich you gits be a hoss doctor.”
“Whu’ fur you wants a hoss doctor ?” asked the other in astonish¬ ment. “You ain’t no hoss. Chances is you ain’t got no hoss disease.”
“Nummine,” replied Gabe between gasps of agony, “you jest do lak I tells you. Ef I knowed whut ailed me ’twould be diffe’nt, but I ain’t knowin’.”
“Whut difTe’nce does dat make ?”
“I’ll tell you,” said Gabe. “Ef a regulation doctor comes to see you he kin talk wid you. He kin ax you whar de pain is an’ whut you been eatin’ an’ drinkin’ an’ you kin tell him. But a hoss doctor he can’t talk wid his patients kaze de patients can’t talk back. He’s jest natchelly ’bleedged to know whut ails ’em.
“Nigger, you go git me de bes’ hoss doctor you kin find!”
§ 99 The Light that Failed
An ambitious Chinaman secured a long time lease on a tiny island on the California coast. Here he built himself a simple shack and here he raised garden-truck. Because of the climate, which was generally damp, and because of the soil and most of all because of the tenant’s industry, the venture prospered. Naturally, when a gentleman in uniform came along one day and suggested him that he should vacate the property and turn it over to the government, the Oriental protested. He wanted to know why Uncle Sam should covet his tiny possession.
The visitor said to him :
“Well, you see, John, it’s like this: There’s a lot of fog along this coast and Uncle Sam wants to put up a lighthouse here for the benefit of ships. Savee ?”
The Chinaman shook his head.
“No glood,” he said. “Lighthouse no glood for flog.”
“What makes you think so?” asked the government agent.
“Listlen,” said the Chinaman, “ ’fore I dumb here I live long¬ time in Oakland, acloss Bay from San F’lisco. Muchee flog there. Uncle Slam plut up lighthouse and flog-whistle and flog-bell. Light¬ house he shine, flog-whistle he blow, flog-bell he ling — an’ damn flog he come just same !”
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 8 1
§100 He’d Have Preferred Union Hours
Being seized with the fever for modern improvement, the legis¬ lature of a certain state in the South some years ago voted for the installation of the electric chair. At the same time the lawgivers tacked on a provision to the effect that no newspaper might pub¬ lish the details of an electrocution but, on the contrary, should go no farther than to state that on such a date, at such and such an hour, the execution of the law was carried out upon the body of John Doe or Richard Roe, as the case might be, the purpose of this being to invest the entire proceeding with a mystery in the minds of those individuals most likely to come within the scope of its operations.
The first candidate for these lethal attentions in a remote county chanced to be a large, brawny negro. In passing sentence upon him the judge followed, in the main, the old and time-honored formula, merely altering it somewhat to conform to the new conditions. After reviewing the crime and the trial, His Honor spoke substan¬ tially as follows:
“It is the duty, therefore, of this court to charge that the warden of the state penitentiary shall closely hold you in confinement until the twenty-first day of August, next, when between the hours of sunrise and sunset he shall put you to death by the electric chair — • and may God have mercy on your soul! Mr. Sheriff, remove the prisoner.”
The sheriff took the condemned man away. Overnight, pending his removal to the place of execution, he was lodged in his old cell in the county jail. He sent a message to the commonwealth’s attorney who had prosecuted him, asking that he might see that official im¬ mediately. The commonwealth’s attorney went to the jail. The doomed darky was sitting on his cot with his face in his hands rocking himself back and forth while the tears trickled through his fingers.
“Mr. Corbett,” he said, “I craves to ax a dyin’ favor of you, please suh?”
“Well, Jake,” said the attorney, “I’d do anything in my power, almost, to ease your mind. But if you are after a pardon or a re¬ prieve I can’t see my way clear to helping you. You killed that man in cold blood and you had a fair trial and you’ve got to die and, what’s more, you’ve got to die on the date this judge has named.”
“ ’Tain’t dat, suh,” bewailed Jake, “I ain’t got no quarrel wid
82 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
de date. I kin git all my worldly affairs settled up ’twixt now an’ den an’ mek my peace wid de Lawd, lakwise. But, Mr. Corbett,” ■ — and here his voice broke sharply — “I p’intedly does hate to be settin’ in dat dere cheer f’um sunrise plum’ till sunset.”
§101 The Perils of Pranking
There was a homicide trial going on in the mountains of West Virginia. A lanky native took the stand to testify to the good character and peaceful disposition of the prisoner at the bar. When he had given the accused a glowing testimonial the prosecuting at¬ torney took him in hand for cross-examination.
“Look here,” he demanded: “isn’t that the mark of an old knife cut you’ve got across the lobe of your left ear?”
“Yas, suh ; it is.”
“Well, who inflicted that wound?”
“Bill, thar, he done it, one time.”
"By ‘Bill’ you mean the defendant here?”
“Yep.”
“I see you also have the scar of a bullet wound in your right cheek. Who made that?”
“Bill.”
“On still another occasion didn’t Bill, as you call him, gouge one of your eyes almost out?”
“That’s a fact, too.”
“Now, then, in view of the injuries you yourself admit having sustained at his hands, how do you reconcile your sworn statements of a minute ago that the defendant is an individual of peaceable gtnd law-abiding nature, and a good neighbor ?”
“Well, suh,” said the witness, “Bill is one of the nicest fellers ever you seen in your life; but I must say this — he’s a powerful onlikely pusson to prank with!”
§102 The Really Important Point
Among the writer’s aquaintances is a well-to-do person who spends his summers cruising about in a private yacht. One after¬ noon near Cape Cod he dropped anchor just off a village for the night. While he was sitting on deck puffing a cigar before retiring, he saw one native approach another who was perched upon the dock and heard the newcomer say, in excited tones :
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 83
“I walked in my house awhile ago and the first thing I noticed was some blood spots on the kitchen floor. And then I seen how everything was mussed up, so that give me a kind of a start, and I dropped everything and went on into the settin’-room, and there was my wife stretched out on the floor, plum’ unconscious, with a club layin’ alongside her where somebody had knocked her cold. It certainly was a terrible surprise. Here I come home, tired out
after fishin’ all day long - ”
“How was the fishin’?” inquired the friend.
§ 103 The Proper Remedy at Last
Possibly inspired by the missionary work of Pussyfoot Johnson, a Scotch Minister undertook a temperance crusade among the members of his flock. He announced that on a certain Sabbath he would deliver a sermon upon the evils of strong drink, with physical illustrations to prove his argument. Upon the appointed morning a congregation which crowded the kirk greeted him. The dominie lost no time in making his demonstration. Upon the pulpit he placed two glasses ; one containing whiskey and the other spring water. Then in an impressive silence he brought a small box from his coat pocket, opened the box and produced a long wriggling worm.
First he dipped the worm in the tumbler of water, where it coiled and twisted happily. Then he dropped it into the whiskey. In¬ stantly the hapless creature shriveled, and after a few feeble con¬ tortions became limp and lifeless. Hauling forth the dead thing and holding it in plain view of all present the minister said :
“Now then, my brethren, behold the effects of strong spirits upon this wee creature. In the water it took no harm; but the first contact with this foul stuff here instantly destroyed it. Need I say or do more to convince you of the effects of whiskey?”
From the body of the church there rose up a lantern-jawed person.
“Meenister,” he said, “might I ask where ye got the whusky in that tumbler?”
“I’m glad you put that question,” said the clergyman. “I pur¬ chased it at that den of iniquity, the public-house, which stands at the top of the street not a hundred yards from this place of worship.”
“Thank ye,” said the parishioner. “I’ll be goin’ there on the mor¬ row. I’ve been troubled with worms myself.”
84 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
§104 An Anniversary to Be Remembered
Differences of an acute nature arose in a crap game on the Nash¬ ville wharf. The dispute had to do with the ownership of a five dollar bill. For possession of it there were two claimants, — a resi¬ dent roustabout and a truculent-looking stranger from up St. Louis way.
The argument reached a crucial and critical stage. The right hand of the visiting nobleman stole slowly back toward his hip pocket,
“Nigger,” he inquired softly of his enemy, “whut date is dis?”
“I ain’t payin’ no heed to de dates,” said the Nashville darky.
“Well, you better do so,” said the stranger, “ ’cause jest twelve months frum to-day you’ll a’been daid perzackly one yeah.”
§105 The Handiwork of the Amateur
Back about 1905, in the Dark Ages of automobiling a veterinary surgeon in my town, whom I shall call Dr. Jones, bought a second¬ hand car. It already was beginning to shake itself to pieces be¬ fore it came into his possession. In fact, so loudly did it rattle, when in motion, that it was known affectionately throughout the county as Jones’ Patent Pea-Huller. When the tires wore out the owner, who was by way of being a mechanical genius, equipped it with ordinary buggy-wheels.
One day an automobile run to a near-by town was organized. Every proud proprietor of a car joined in. As the procession headed out past the corporate limits it was met by a farmer, from the Massac Creek section on his way to the warehouse with a wagon¬ load of tobacco. His half-grown son rode with him.
As the head of the column loomed through the dust the farmer’s two mules, unused to the sight of automobiles, showed signs of skittishness. The boy leaped down from his seat and held the heads of the team, the mules flinching and trembling as the caval¬ cade roared past.
Seemingly, the last car had gone by. The youth was in the act of climbing back to his place alongside his father when in the distance there arose a terrific clattering sound and over the crest of the hill appeared Dr. Jones, seated at the wheel of his machine and striving valiantly to overtake the tail of the vanished parade. On he came, with his gears grinding, the tormented vitals of his
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 85
car shrieking, the wooden wheels clattering on the hard gravel of the turnpike and gusts of smoke issuing from beneath the body.
The astounded agriculturist caught one good look at the approach¬ ing apparition. Then as he set the brakes harder than ever and tightened his grasp on the lines he called out to the boy:
“Hold ’em, Wesley, for God’s sake, hold ’em! Here comes a home-made one!”
§ 106 The Forethoughted Widow
In an unthoughted moment a colored woman in a North Carolina town contracted a matrimonial alliance. But the honeymoon ended tragically. Just two weeks after the wedding ceremony the happy bridegroom was fooling about the railroad yards and a switch engine ran over him — on the bias — and he, being of a fleshy build, was distributed for a considerable distance along the right of way becoming, to all intents and purposes, a total loss.
Yet it was immediately to develop that in a deceased state, he had a financial standing which had been denied him in the flesh. For, with that desire to do justice speedily which ever marks the legal profession, a claim agent of the railroad got hold of the widow before any other lawyer could reach her and hurried her to his office and there showed her five hundred dollars in shiny new bills, which was more money that she thought there was in the world. With one eager hand she reached for this incredible fortune and with the other, using haste lest the beneficent white gentleman should re¬ cover from his impulses of generosity, she signed on the dotted line A of the quit claim.
Another colored woman who had come with her to witness this triumph and who was standing behind her, perfectly pop-eyed with envy and admiration, said:
“Clarissa, whut you reckin you goin’ do now, sence you had all dis luck?”
Before the widow answered she lifted a rustling twenty from off the top of the delectable heap and fanned herself with it and in¬ haled its fragrance; and then she said:
“I don’t know ez I shall do anything — fur a spell. I got to wait till time is healed my wounds an’ I’s spent dis yere money. Of co’se in the yeahs to come I may marry ag’in an’ then ag’in I may not — who kin tell ? But, gal, I tells you right now, ef ever I does marry ag’in my second husband is suttinly goin’ be a railroad man.”
86 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
§107 Bumpy Times for the Late Lamented
The late Mr. Donovan had had a very close call from being a dwarf. Indeed, there are dwarfs in circuses not many inches shorter than he was. Despite his diminutive bulk and the handi¬ cap of lack of height he nevertheless had succeeded in the con¬ tracting business and when he died he left a tidy estate and his widow mourned him properly.
On the day before the funeral, having finished the preparations for the wake, she sat in the parlor of her home when Mr. McKenna, an old friend of the family, was announced. Dressed in his Sun¬ day best Mr. McKenna entered and having shaken Mrs. Donovan’s hand stated that he would be unable to attend the ceremonies that evening owing to other engagements. He asked, therefore, if he might be permitted to take a last look at the deceased.
“Help yourself,” said the widow. “He’s laid out upstairs in the front room. Just you walk up, Mr. McKenna.”
So Mr. McKenna walked up. After the lapse of a few minutes he tiptoed down again, wiping away his tears.
The widow removed the handkerchief from her eyes.
“Did you think to close the hall door as you came down, Mr. McKenna ?” she asked.
“I think so, madam,” he said. “I was so overcome wit’ me grief I didn’t take much note. I think so, but I won’t be sure.”
“Would you make sure, thin,” she said. “It’s twice to-day al¬ ready the cat’s had him downstairs.”
§108 The Genesis of an Old Favorite
There are several variations of this yarn but a Scotch friend of mine insists that the one which follows is the correct one and, by that same token, the proper ancestor of all the crop of differ¬ ing versions. As he sets forth the original narrative it runs some¬ thing like this:
An Aberdonian on his first visit to London got off the train at Euston station. While proceeding afoot along Euston Road on his way to his hotel he suffered a terrific misfortune. He dropped a sixpence and it rolled out of sight. The desolated victim put down his luggage and began a vigorous search for the missing coin. Presently a friendly policeman came along and having learned from the grieved Scot what the trouble was, proceeded to aid him in the
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 87
hunt, but with no results, excepting the loss of fifteen minutes. Finally the Bobby said:
“You go along on your way and I’ll keep my eye open for your money. If it turns up I’ll have it for you, if you’ll come back this way this afternoon.”
All day the Scot was afflicted with distress. Promptly at four o’clock he was back on the spot where his sixpence had vanished. During the day the gas company had had a squad of men exca¬ vating in the street for new mains so that when the Aberdonian reappeared he found the paving torn up and a wide, deep trench extending from the house line to the middle of the road. He gazed at the scene for a moment and then remarked to himself : “Weel, I must admit one thing — they are verra thorough here.”
§109 “A Rose by Any Other Name . .
At a closely contested municipal election in New York the Tam¬ many ticket seemed in grave danger. Accordingly steps were taken. Scarcely had the polls opened when a group of trained and experi¬ enced repeaters marched into a down-town voting place.
“What name?” inquired the election clerk of the leader of the squad, who was red-haired and freckled and had a black eye. The young gangster glanced down at a slip of paper in his hand to refresh his memory.
“Isadore Mendelheim,” he said then.
“That’s not your real name, and you know it!” said a suspicious challenger for the reform ticket.
“It is me name,” said the repeater, “and I’m goin’ to vote under it — see ?”
From down the line came a voice :
“Don’t let that guy bluff you, Casey. Soitin’ly your name is Mendelheim !”
§110 A Detail of Figures
Grand Central Pete was a noted bunco-steerer of the old days, but could neither read nor write. Once he fell upon hard times, and he and a younger but equally luckless confidence man under¬ took to beat their way on a freight train to Washington. A brake- man kicked them off at Trenton.
It was getting late and neither of them had a cent. Across the
88 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
tracks from where they had landed was a hotel and right next door was an express office. Pete had an idea. He went into the express office, begged one of those large manila envelopes such as are used for transporting currency, filled the envelope with pieces of newspaper cut to the size of banknotes, and sealed it carefully.
“Now then,” he said to his partner, “you take your fountain pen and write on the back of that there envelope ‘$9,000.’ Then we’ll go over to that hotel and explain that we’ve lost our baggage, and I’ll hand this envelope to the clerk and ask him to lock it in the safe. He’ll look at the figures on the back — and he’ll take us for moneyed guys and give us rooms and grub until we can raise a stake.”
The scheme sounded good to the younger man. He got out his pen and obeyed orders. Grand Central Pete took the envelope back in his hands and examined it carefully.
“Does that say nine thousand dollars?” he demanded.
“Yep,” said his partner.
“Well, it don’t look big enough to me,” said Pete. “You’d better add on some more of them naughts.”
The younger man protested, but Pete would have his way and kept after him until the educated one had tacked on three more naughts, making the grand total $9,000,000.
Then Pete marched grandly over to the hotel, registered for him¬ self and his friend, passed the stuffed envelope across the desk to the clerk and called for the bridal suite.
The clerk took one look at the envelope, another look at the soiled faces and shabby apparel of the newcomers — and rang the bell for the bouncer. A minute later the discomfited pair were sitting on the sidewalk.
Grand Central Pete raised himself painfully and eyed his com¬ panion with a scornful, angry glance.
“There now, — dad-gum you !” he shouted ; “I told you you hadn’t wrote in enough of them naughts !”
§111 Provision for the Future
Nobody could tell a yarn of his own race better than the late Bert Williams could. I remember one story he used to tell. Hearing him tell it you felt, despite its gorgeous impossibility, that some¬ how it might have happened and that anyhow it should have hap¬ pened. To the best of my recollection his version, delivered in his wonderful Afric drawl ran something like this :
A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY 89
<rW’en I was a little boy I lived on the banks of a creek and I supported my whole family ketchin’ feesh and peddlin’ ’em off amongst the w’ite folks. Ever’ mawnin’ I’d ketch me a string of feesh and olf I’d go wid ’em. I forgot to say that this yere creek run at the foot of a mountain seven thousand feet high and most of the w’ite folks lived up on the mountain-side.
“One hot mawnin’ I ketches me a string of feesh and I teks ’em in my hand and I starts up the mountain. I comes to the fust house but they didn’t want no feesh there ; and I comes to the second house and it seems lak they don’t crave no feesh neither, and so I continues till I reaches the plum top of that mountain seven thou¬ sand feet high.
“Now, right on the plum top, in a little house, live a little white man and he’s standin’ at his do’ like he’s waitin’ fur me. I walks up to him and I bows low to him, ver’ polite, and I sez to him I sez: ‘Mister, does you want some fresh feesh?’ And he sez to me, he sez : ‘No, we don’t want no feesh to-day.’
“So I. starts back down that mountain, seven thousand feet high. And w’en I’m about a third of the way down I’m overtook by one of those yere landslides and under tons of rocks and dirt and soil and daybris and stuff and truck and things I’m carried plum to the foot of that mountain. So I digs my way out frum under all that there mess, still holdin’ to my little string of feesh, and I wipes the dust out of my eyes and I looks back up the mountain to see what the landslide has done. And, lo and behole ! The little man that lives in the little house on the plum top is standin’ at his do’ beck’nin’ to me. So I sez to myself : ‘Praise God, that w’ite man is done changed his mind.’
“So I climbs back ag’in up the mountain, seven thousand feet high, till i comes to the plum top and w’en I gits there the little w’ite man is still standin’ there waitin’ fur me. He waits till I’m right close to him befo’ he speaks. Then he clears his throat and he sez to me, he sez :
“ ‘And we don’t want none to-morrow, neither !’ ”
§112 The Life of the Party, as It Were
Three aged Scots were in the habit of meeting on Saturday eve¬ ning at the home of first one and then another of the group for social purposes. Their social demands were simple, just as their tastes were similar. All they craved was an opportunity to
90 A LAUGH A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY
sit by a fire with their pipes lit and their whiskey glasses handy, in silence.
One evening there had been an especially enjoyable session. Two quarts of liquor had been consumed and hardly a word had been spoken. At the approach of midnight the two guests stood up to go. One of them, with difficulty focusing his vision upon his host, who sat in the inglenook, remarked to the third member of the party in an undertone:
“What an awfu’ look Sandy has on his face.”
“Aye,” said his crony, “he’s dead.”
“How long has he been dead?” inquired the first speaker in shocked tones.