An Irishman with one side of his face badly swollen stepped into Dr. Wicten's office and inquired if the dentist was in. "I am the dentist," said the doctor.
"Well, then, I want ye to see what's the matter wid me tooth."
The doctor examined the offending molar, and explained: "The nerve is dead; that's what's the matter."
"Thin, be the powers," the Irishman exclaimed, "the other teeth must be houldin' a wake over it!"
Pat came to the office with his jaw very much swollen from a tooth he desired to have pulled. But when the suffering son of Erin got into the dentist's chair and saw the gleaming pair of forceps approaching his face, he positively refused to open his mouth.
The dentist quietly told his office boy to prick his patient with a pin, and when Pat opened his mouth to yell the dentist seized the tooth, and out it came.
"It didn't hurt as much as you expected it would, did it?" the dentist asked smiling.
"Well, no," replied Pat hesitatingly, as if doubting the truthfulness of his admission. "But," he added, placing his hand on the spot where the boy jabbed him with the pin, "begorra, little did I think the roots would reach down like that."
In China when the subscriber rings up exchange the operator may be expected to ask:
"What number does the honorable son of the moon and stars desire?"
"Hohi, two-three."
Silence. Then the exchange resumes.
"Will the honorable person graciously forgive the inadequacy of the insignificant service and permit this humbled slave of the wire to inform him that the never-to-be-sufficiently censured line is busy?"
New York Elks are having a lot of fun with a member of their lodge, a Fifteenth Street jeweler. The other day his wife was in the jewelry store when the 'phone rang. She answered it.
"I want to speak to Mr. H——," said a woman's voice.
"Who is this?' demanded the jeweler's wife.
"Elizabeth."
"Well, Elizabeth, this is his wife. Now, madam, what do you want?"
"I want to talk to Mr. H——."
"You'll talk to me."
"Please let me speak to Mr. H——."
The jeweler's wife grew angry. "Look here, young lady," she said, "who are you that calls my husband and insists on talking to him?"
"I'm the telephone operator at Elizabeth, N.J.," came the reply.
And now the Elks take turns calling the jeweler up and telling him it's Elizabeth.
In the Tennessee mountains a mountaineer preacher, who had declared colleges "the works of the devil," was preaching without previous meditation an inspirational sermon from the text, "The voice of the turtle shall be heard in the land." Not noting that the margin read "turtle-dove," he proceeded in this manner:
"This text, my hearers, strikes me as one of the most peculiar texts in the whole book, because we all know that a turtle ain't got no voice. But by the inward enlightenment I begin to see the meaning and will expose it to you. Down in the hollers by the streams and ponds you have gone in the springtime, my brethren, and observed the little turtles, a-sleeping on the logs. But at the sound of the approach of a human being, they went kerflop-kerplunk, down into the water. This I say, then, is the meaning of the prophet: he, speakinging figgeratively, referred to the kerflop of the turtle as the voice of the turtle, and hence we see that in those early times the prophet, looking down at the ages to come, clearly taught and prophesied the doctrine I have always preached to this congregation—that immersion is the only form of baptism."
"Say, old man," chattered the press-agent, who had cornered a producer of motion-picture plays, "I've got a grand idea for a film-drama. Listen to the impromptu scenario: Scene one, exterior of a Broadway theater, with the ticket-speculators getting the coin in handfuls, and—"
"You're out!" interrupted the producer. "Why, don't you know that the law don't permit us to show an actual robbery on the screen?"—P.H. Carey.
Senator "Bob" Taylor, of Tennessee, tells a story of how, when he was "Fiddling Bob," governor of that state, an old negress came to him and said:
"Massa Gov'na, we's mighty po' this winter, and Ah wish you would pardon mah old man. He is a fiddler same as you is, and he's in the pen'tentry."
"What was he put in for?" asked the governor.
"Stead of workin' fo' it that good-fo'-nothin' nigger done stole some bacon."
"If he is good for nothing what do you want him back for?"
"Well, yo' see, we's all out of bacon ag'in," said the old negress innocently.
