unlucky, and so he got married three
times inside of a year. He was convicted and sentenced for four years.
He seemed greatly relieved. As the expiration of his term grew near, he
wrote from the penitentiary to his lawyer, with the plaintive query:

"Will it be safe for me to come out?"

BIRTH

The little girl in the zooelogical park tossed bits of a bun to the
stork, which gobbled them greedily, and bobbed its head toward her for
more.

"What kind of a bird is it, mamma?" the child asked.

The mother read the placard, and answered that it was a stork.

"O-o-o-h!" the little girl cried, as her eyes rounded. "Of course, it
recognized me!"

BLESSING

The philosopher, on being interrupted in his thoughts by the violent
cackling of a hen that had just laid an egg, was led to express his
appreciation of a kind Providence by which a fish while laying a million
eggs to a hen's one, does so in a perfectly quiet and ladylike manner.

BLIND

A shopkeeper with no conscience put by his door a box with a slit in the
cover and a label reading, "For the Blind." A month later, the box
disappeared. When some one inquired concerning it, the shopkeeper
chuckled, and pointed to the window.

"I collected enough," he explained. "There's the new blind."

BLINDNESS

The sympathetic and inquisitive old lady at the seashore was delighted
and thrilled by an old sailor's narrative of how he was washed overboard
during a gale and was only rescued after having sunk for the third time.

"And, of course," she commented brightly, "after you sank the third
time, your whole past life passed before your eyes."

"I presoom as how it did, mum," the sailor agreed. "But bein' as I had
my eyes shut, I missed it."

BLOCKHEAD

The recruit complained to the sergeant that he'd got a splinter in his
finger.

"Ye should have more sinse," was the harsh comment, "than to scratch
your head."

BONE OF CONTENTION

The crowd in the car was packed suffocatingly close. The timid passenger
thought of pickpockets, and thrust his hand into his pocket
protectingly. He was startled to encounter the fist of a fat
fellow-passenger.

"I caught you that time!" the fat man hissed.

"Thief yourself!" snorted the timid passenger. "Leggo!"

"Scoundrel!" shouted the fat man.

"Help! Stop thief!" the little fellow spluttered, trying to wrench his
hand from the other's clasp. As the car halted, the tall man next the
two disputants spoke sharpl