More Toasts
Chapter 89 : A park orator returning home flushed with his oratorical efforts, and also from other c

A park orator returning home flushed with his oratorical efforts, and also from other causes, found a mild curate seated opposite in the tram-car. "It may interest you to know," he said truculently, "that I don't believe in the existence of a 'eaven." The curate merely nodded, and went on reading his newspaper. "You don't quite realize," said the park orator, "what I'm trying to make clear. I want you to understand that I don't believe for a single, solitary moment that such a place as 'eaven exists." "All right, all right," answered the curate pleasantly, "go to h.e.l.l, only don't make quite so much fuss about it."

A Ma.s.sachusetts Senator was back home, looking after his political fences, and was asking the minister about some of his old acquaintances.

"How's old Mr. Jones?" he inquired. "Will I be likely to see him again?"

"You'll never see Mr. Jones again," said the minister. "Mr Jones has gone to heaven."

"Now, boys," said the teacher in the juvenile Sunday-school cla.s.s, "our lesson today teaches us that if we are good while here on earth, when we die we will go to a place of everlasting bliss. But suppose we are bad, then what will become of us?"

"We'll go to a place of everlasting blister," promptly answered the small boy at the pedal extremity of the cla.s.s.

"I wish, reverend father," said Curran to Father O'Leary, "that you were St. Peter, and had the keys of heaven, because then you could let me in."

"By my honor and conscience," replied O'Leary, "it would be better for you that I had the keys of the other place, for then I could let you out."

FUTURIST ART

_Futurist Art_

Which one might wors.h.i.+p--if he should wish--without breaking the second commandment because truly there is nothing like it "in the heavens above, in the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth."

A painter of the "impressionist" school is now confined in a lunatic asylum. To all persons who visit him he says, "Look here; this is the latest masterpiece of my composition." They look, and see nothing but an expanse of bare canvas. They ask, "What does that represent?"

"That? Why, that represents the pa.s.sage of the Jews through the Red Sea."

"Beg pardon, but where is the sea?"

"It has been driven back."

"And where are the Jews?"

"They have crossed over."

"And the Egyptians?"

"Will be here soon. That's the sort of painting I like; simple, suggestive, and unpretentious."

The artist dipped his brush in a bucket of paint and wiped it across the canvas several times horizontally. When he had done this he took his labor in hand and carefully placed it in an elaborate frame.

"What's the idea?" his boon companion inquired.

"Impressionistic study."

"Do you mean to tell me that is a finished painting?"

"Certainly."

"What are you going to call it?"

"A village street as seen from the rear seat of a motorcycle."

GAMBLING

"Look, mother," said Bobbie, exhibiting a handful of marbles, "I won all those from Willie Smith."

"Why, Bobbie!" exclaimed his mother; "don't you know it's wicked to play marbles for 'keeps'? Go right over to his house and give back every one."

"Yes, mother," said the boy obediently; "and shall I take that vase you won at Mrs. Jones' whist party, and give it back to her?"

"It's just as wrong to gamble when you win as when you lose."

"Ya.s.suh," a.s.serted Mr. Erastus Pinkley. "De immorality is jes' as great, but de inconvenience ain't."

PROFESSOR--"Now I put the number seven on the board. What number immediately comes into your mind?"

CLa.s.s (in unison)--"Eleven!"--_Burr_.

SAM--"Ah done heard dat dey fine' Columbus's bones."

EZRA--"Lawd! Ah never knew dat he wuz a gamblin' man."

GARAGES

"What do they sell in that last garage besides gasoline, father?"

"'Besides,' my son? You mean 'instead of.'"--_Life_.