sent the new
nurse-maid upstairs to prepare little Alice and Mary for inspection and
went in to receive her visitors.

Everything was progressing finely, when all at once a clear, shrill
little voice came floating down the stairway--

"I don't care! company or no company, I will _not_ be washed in spit."

(Wanted: A Nurse-maid. Baptist preferred.)

* * * * *

Tom McRae is the leading lawyer of Prescott, Ark. Before the War the
McRaes were large slaveowners; and to this day if one of the colored
people gets into any trouble he immediately comes to "Mars' Tom" to help
him out. One day last summer the village barber, a big, sporty kind of a
young colored chap, came in to Tom's office and said,

"Mars' Tom, I reckons as how I'll have to have you get me a devose frum
dat wife of mine."

"A divorce? What are you talking about? If you ever get a divorce from
Caroline you will starve to death. You have got one of the best wives in
this town."

"No, suh, no, suh, Mars' Tom. Youall don't know dat woman. Dat woman is
de mos' 'stravigant woman in the whole State of Arkansas. Mo'nin', noon
an' night dat woman is pesterin' me fo' money. Dollar hyar--fo' bits
dere--two bits fo' dis and a dime fo' that. I don' dare go home no mo'.
No, suh, de only thing that is goin' do me no good is a devose."

"Well, I am astonished," said Tom. "I never dreamed Caroline was that
kind of a woman. What does she do with all this money?"

"God knows, Mars' Tom. I hain't never give her none yet."

* * * * *

We were playing in New York. Preceding us on the bill were the Martin
Brothers, playing for twenty-two minutes on Xylophones. After the show a
friend of ours from Hartford, Conn., joined us at lunch. We were
discussing the show and finally he said,

"Will, do you know I could live a long time, and be perfectly happy, if
I never heard one of those picket-fence soloists again."

* * * * *

My wife was drinking a glass of iced tea; he kept glancing at it and
finally he said,

"Do you know, I can understand anybody drinking that stuff _at home_;
or if somebody had given it to you. But the idea of anybody _buying_ it!
and _paying_ for it."

* * * * *

Solomon and David were merry kings of old,
About whose pleasant fancies full many a tale is told.
But when old age o'ertook them, with its many, many qual