e wid it! 'An' so
I jined."

BASEBALL

The teacher directed the class to write a brief account of a baseball
game. All the pupils were busy during the allotted time, except one
little boy, who sat motionless, and wrote never a word. The teacher gave
him an additional five minutes, calling them off one by one. The fifth
minute had almost elapsed when the youngster awoke to life, and scrawled
a sentence. It ran thus:

"Rain--no game."

BATTLE

_Teacher:_ "In which of his battles was King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden
slain?"

_Pupil:_ "I'm pretty sure it was the last one."

BEARS

The old trapper was chased by a grizzly. When he had thrown away
everything he carried, and found, nevertheless, that the bear was
gaining rapidly, he determined to make a stand. As he came into a small
clearing, he faced about with his back to a stump, and got out and
opened his clasp-knife. The bear halted a rod away, and sat on its
haunches, surveying its victim gloatingly. The trapper, though not
usually given to praying, now improved the interval to offer a petition.

"O God," he said aloud, with his eyes on the bear, "if you're on my
side, let my knife git 'im quick in 'is vitals, an' if you're on 'is
side, let 'im finish me fust off. But, O God, if you're nootral, you
jist sit thar on that stump, an' you'll see the darndest bear fight you
ever hearn tell on!"

* * *

The guide introduced a tourist in the Rocky Mountains to an old hunter
who was reputed to have slain some hundreds of bears.

"This feller," the guide explained to the hunter, "would like to hear
about some of the narrer escapes you've had from bears."

The old mountaineer regarded the tourist with a disapproving stare.

"Young man," he said, "if there's been any narrer escapes, the bears had
'em."

BEER

The father of a school boy in New York City wrote to the boy's teacher a
letter of complaint. Possibly he welcomed the advent of
prohibition--possibly not! Anyhow, the letter was as follows:

"Sir: Will you please for the future give my boy some eesier somes to do
at nites. This is what he brought home to me three nites ago. If fore
gallins of bere will fill thirty to pint bottles, how many pint and half
bottles will nine gallins fill? Well, we tried and could make nothing of
it all, and my boy cried and said he wouldn't go back to school without
doing it. So, I had to go and buy a nine gallin' keg of bere