PATIENT (angrily)—"The size of your bill makes my blood boil."
DOCTOR—"Then that will be $20 more for sterilizing your system."
Great collection of short jokes. All about short jokes, best jokes ever, very short jokes, free short jokes, free jokes.
PATIENT (angrily)—"The size of your bill makes my blood boil."
DOCTOR—"Then that will be $20 more for sterilizing your system."
Farmer Gray kept summer boarders. One of these, a schoolteacher, hired him to drive her to the various points of interest around the country. He pointed out this one and that, at the same time giving such items of information as he possessed.
The school-teacher, pursing her lips, remarked, "It will not be necessary for you to talk."
When her bill was presented, there was a five-dollar charge marked "Extra."
"What is this?" she asked, pointing to the item.
"That," replied the farmer, "is for sass. I don't often take it, but when I do I charge for it."—E. Egbert.
YOUNG DOCTOR—"Why do you always ask your patients what they have for dinner?"
OLD DOCTOR—"It's a most important question, for according to their menus I make out my bills."
Two old cronies went into a drug store in the downtown part of New York City, and, addressing the proprietor by his first name, one of them said:
"Dr. Charley, we have made a bet of the ice-cream sodas. We will have them now and when the bet is decided the loser will drop in and pay for them."
As the two old fellows were departing after enjoying their temperance beverage, the druggist asked them what the wager was.
"Well," said one of them, "our friend George bets that when the tower of the Singer Building falls, it will topple over toward the North River, and I bet that it won't."
The officers' mess was discussing rifle shooting.
"I'll bet anyone here," said one young lieutenant, "that I can fire twenty shots at two hundred yards and call each shot correctly without waiting for the marker. I'll stake a box of cigars that I can."
"Done!" cried a major.
The whole mess was on hand early next morning to see the experiment tried.
The lieutenant fired.
"Miss," he calmly announced.
A second shot.
"Miss," he repeated.
A third shot.
"Miss."
"Here, there! Hold on!" protested the major. "What are you trying to do? You're not shooting for the target at all."
"Of course not," admitted the lieutenant. "I'm firing for those cigars." And he got them.
MILLIONAIRE (to ragged beggar)—"You ask alms and do not even take your hat off. Is that the proper way to beg?"
BEGGAR—"Pardon me, sir. A policeman is looking at us from across the street. If I take my hat off he'll arrest me for begging; as it is, he naturally takes us for old friends."
MAN—"Is there any reason why I should give you five cents?"
BOY—"Well, if I had a nice high hat like yours I wouldn't want it soaked with snowballs."
THE "ANGEL" (about to give a beggar a dime)—"Poor man! And are you married?"
BEGGAR—"Pardon me, madam! D'ye think I'd be relyin' on total strangers for support if I had a wife?"
TEACHER—"Tommy, do you know 'How Doth the Little Busy Bee'?"
TOMMY—"No; I only know he doth it!"
A western politician tells the following story as illustrating the inconveniences attached to campaigning in certain sections of the country.
Upon his arrival at one of the small towns in South Dakota, where he was to make a speech the following day, he found that the so-called hotel was crowded to the doors. Not having telegraphed for accommodations, the politician discovered that he would have to make shift as best he could. Accordingly, he was obliged for that night to sleep on a wire cot which had only some blankets and a sheet on it. As the politician is an extremely fat man, he found his improvised bed anything but comfortable.
"How did you sleep?" asked a friend in the morning.
"Fairly well," answered the fat man, "but I looked like a waffle when I got up."
"What a homely woman!"
"Sir, that is my wife. I'll have you understand it is a woman's privilege to be homely."
"Gee, then she abused the privilege."
MOTHER (to inquisitive child)—"Stand aside. Don't you see the gentleman wants to take the lady's picture?"
"Why does he want to?"—Life.
In the negro car of a railway train in one of the gulf states a bridal couple were riding—a very light, rather good looking colored girl and a typical full blooded negro of possibly a reverted type, with receding forehead, protruding eyes, broad, flat nose very thick lips and almost no chin. He was positively and aggressively ugly.
They had been married just before boarding the train and, like a good many of their white brothers and sisters, were very much interested in each other, regardless of the amusement of their neighbors. After various "billings and cooings" the man sank down in the seat and, resting his head on the lady's shoulder, looked soulfully up into her eyes.
She looked fondly down upon him and after a few minutes murmured gently, "Laws, honey, ain't yo' shamed to be so han'some?"
ARTHUR—"They say dear, that people who live together get to look alike."
KATE—"Then you must consider my refusal as final."
Pat, thinking to enliven the party, stated, with watch in hand: "I'll presint a box of candy to the loidy that makes the homeliest face within the next three minutes."
The time expired, Pat announced: "Ah, Mrs. McGuire, you get the prize."
"But," protested Mrs. McGuire, "go way wid ye! I wasn't playin' at all."
The senator and the major were walking up the avenue. The senator was more than middle-aged and considerably more than fat, and, dearly as the major loved him, he also loved his joke.
The senator turned with a pleased expression on his benign countenance and said, "Major, did you see that pretty girl smile at me?"
"Oh, that's nothing," replied his friend. "The first time I saw you I laughed out loud!"—Harper's Magazine.
A farmer returning home late at night, found a man standing beside the house with a lighted lantern in his hand. "What are you doing here?" he asked, savagely, suspecting he had caught a criminal. For answer came a chuckle, and—"It's only mee, zur."
The farmer recognized John, his shepherd.
"It's you, John, is it? What on earth are you doing here this time o' night?"
Another chuckle. "I'm a-coortin' Ann, zur."
"And so you've come courting with a lantern, you fool. Why I never took a lantern when I courted your mistress."
"No, zur, you didn't, zur," John chuckled. "We can all zee you didn't, zur."
"Shine yer boots, sir?"
"No," snapped the man.
"Shine 'em so's yer can see yer face in 'em?" urged the bootblack.
"No, I tell you!"
"Coward," hissed the bootblack.
There was an old man with a beard,
Who said, "It is just as I feared!—
Two owls and a hen,
Four larks and a wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard."
Once upon a time a deacon who did not favor church bazars was going along a dark street when a footpad suddenly appeared, and, pointing his pistol, began to relieve his victim of his money.
The thief, however, apparently suffered some pangs of remorse. "It's pretty rough to be gone through like this, ain't it, sir?" he inquired.
"Oh, that's all right, my man," the "held-up" one answered cheerfully. "I was on my way to a bazar. You're first, and there's an end of it."
RURAL CONSTABLE-"Now then, come out o' that. Bathing's not allowed 'ere after 8 a.m."
THE FACE IN THE WATER-"Excuse me, Sergeant, I'm not bathing; I'm only drowning."—Punch.
The only unoccupied room in the hotel—one with a private bath in connection with it—was given to the stranger from Kansas. The next morning the clerk was approached by the guest when the latter was ready to check out.
"Well, did you have a good night's rest?" the clerk asked.
"No, I didn't," replied the Kansan. "The room was all right, and the bed was pretty good, but I couldn't sleep very much for I was afraid some one would want to take a bath, and the only door to it was through my room."
When Miss Cheney, one of the popular teachers in the Swarthmore schools, had to deal with a boy who played "hookey," she failed to impress him with the evil of his ways.
"Don't you know what becomes of little boys who stay away from school to play baseball?" asked Miss Cheney.
"Yessum," replied the lad promptly. "Some of 'em gets to be good players and pitch in the big leagues."
"Plague take that girl!"
"My friend, that is the most beautiful girl in this town."
"That may be. But she obstructs my view of second base."
"My wife and myself are trying to get up a list of club magazines. By taking three you get a discount."
"How are you making out?"
"Well, we can get one that I don't want, and one that she doesn't want, and one that neither wants for $2.25."
MANAGER (five-and-ten-cent store)—"What did the lady who just went out want?"
SHOPGIRL—"She inquired if we had a shoe department."
A revival was being held at a small colored Baptist church in southern Georgia. At one of the meetings the evangelist, after an earnest but fruitless exhortation, requested all of the congregation who wanted their souls washed white as snow to stand up. One old darky remained sitting.
"Don' yo' want y' soul washed w'ite as snow, Brudder Jones?"
"Mah soul done been washed w'ite as snow, pahson."
"Whah wuz yo' soul washed w'ite as snow, Brudder Jones?"
"Over yander to the Methodis' chu'ch acrost de railroad."
"Brudder Jones, yo' soul wa'n't washed—hit were dry-cleaned."—Life.
An old colored man first joined the Episcopal Church, then the Methodist and next the Baptist, where he remained. Questioned as to the reason for his church travels he responded:
"Well, suh, hit's this way: de 'Piscopals is gemmen, suh, but I couldn't keep up wid de answerin' back in dey church. De Methodis', dey always holdin' inquiry meetin', and I don't like too much inquirin' into. But de Baptis', suh, dey jes' dip and are done wid hit."
FRIEND—"So you're going to make it hot for that fellow who held up the bank, shot the cashier, and got away with the ten thousand?"
BANKER—"Yes, indeed. He was entirely too fresh. There's a decent way to do that, you know. If he wanted to get the money, why didn't he come into the bank and work his way up the way the rest of us did?"—Puck.
She advanced to the paying teller's window and, handing in a check for fifty dollars, stated that it was a birthday present from her husband and asked for payment. The teller informed her that she must first endorse it.
"I don't know what you mean," she said hesitatingly.
"Why, you see," he explained, "you must write your name on the back, so that when we return the check to your husband, he will know we have paid you the money."
"Oh, is that all?" she said, relieved.... One minute elapses.
Thus the "endorsement": "Many thanks, dear, I've got the money. Your loving wife, Evelyn."
During a financial panic, a German farmer went to a bank for some money. He was told that the bank was not paying out money, but was using cashier's checks. He could not understand this, and insisted on money.
The officers took him in hand, one after another, with little effect. At last the president tried his hand, and after long and minute explanation, some inkling of the situation seemed to be dawning on the farmer's mind. Much encouraged, the president said: "You understand now how it is, don't you, Mr.. Schmidt?"
"I t'ink I do," admitted Mr. Schmidt. "It's like dis, aindt it? Ven my baby vakes up at night and vants some milk, I gif him a milk ticket."
United States Senator Ollie James, of Kentucky, is bald.
"Does being bald bother you much?" a candid friend asked him once.
"Yes, a little," answered the truthful James.
"I suppose you feel the cold severely in winter," went on the friend.
"No; it's not that so much," said the Senator. "The main bother is when I'm washing myself—unless I keep my hat on I don't know where my face stops."
The costumer came forward to attend to the nervous old beau who was mopping his bald and shining poll with a big silk handkerchief.
"And what can I do for you?" he asked.
"I want a little help in the way of a suggestion," said the old fellow. "I intend going to the French Students' masquerade ball to-night, and I want a distinctly original costume—something I may be sure no one else will wear. What would you suggest?"
The costumer looked him over attentively, bestowing special notice on the gleaming knob.
"Well, I'll tell you," he said then, thoughtfully: "why don't you sugar your head and go as a pill?"—Frank X. Finnegan.
"O, Mother, why are the men in the front baldheaded?"
"They bought their tickets from scalpers, my child."
Congressman Longworth is not gifted with much hair, his head being about as shiny as a billiard ball.
One day ex-president Taft, then Secretary of War, and Congressman Longworth sallied into a barbershop.
"Hair cut?" asked the barber of Longworth.
"Yes," answered the Congressman.
"Oh, no, Nick," commented the Secretary of War from the next chair, "you don't want a hair cut; you want a shine."
"Were any of your boyish ambitions ever realized?" asked the sentimentalist.
"Yes," replied the practical person. "When my mother used to cut my hair I often wished I might be bald-headed."
One mother who still considers Marcel waves as the most fashionable way of dressing the hair was at work on the job.
Her little eight-year-old girl was crouched on her father's lap, watching her mother. Every once in a while the baby fingers would slide over the smooth and glossy pate which is Father's.
"No waves for you, Father," remarked the little one. "You're all beach."
Two doctors met in the hall of the hospital.
"Well," said the first, "what's new this morning?"
"I've got a most curious case. Woman, cross-eyed; in fact, so cross-eyed that when she cries the tears run down her back."
"What are you doing for her?"
"Just now," was the answer, "we're treating her for bacteria."
PROUD FATHER—"Rick, my boy, if you live up to your oration you'll be an honor to the family."
VALEDICTORIAN-"I expect to do better than that, father. I am going to try to live up to the baccalaureate sermon."
"Are you an experienced aviator?"
"Well, sir, I have been at it six weeks and I am all here."
AVIATOR (to young assistant, who has begun to be frightened)—"Well, what do you want now?"
ASSISTANT (whimpering)—"I want the earth."—Abbie C. Dixon.
The aviator's wife was taking her first trip with her husband in his airship. "Wait a minute, George," she said. "I'm afraid we will have to go down again."
"What's wrong?" asked her husband.
"I believe I have dropped one of the pearl buttons off my jacket. I think I can see it glistening on the ground."
"Keep your seat, my dear," said the aviator, "that's Lake Erie."
"What makes you carry that horrible shriek machine for an automobile signal?"
"For humane reasons." replied Mr. Chugging. "If I can paralyze a person with fear he will keep still and I can run to one side of him."
The old lady from the country and her small son were driving to town when a huge automobile bore down upon them. The horse was badly frightened and began to prance, whereupon the old lady leaped down and waved wildly to the chauffeur, screaming at the top of her voice.
The chauffeur stopped the car and offered to help get the horse past.
"That's all right," said the boy, who remained composedly in the carriage, "I can manage the horse. You just lead Mother past."
"What you want to do is to have that mudhole in the road fixed," said the visitor.
"That goes to show," replied Farmer Corntassel, "how little you reformers understand local conditions. I've purty nigh paid off a mortgage with the money I made haulm' automobiles out o' that mud-hole."
"It was very romantic," says the friend. "He proposed to her in the automobile."
"Yes?" we murmur, encouragingly.
"And she accepted him in the hospital."
"Sorry, gentlemen," said the new constable, "but I'll hev to run ye in. We been keepin' tabs on ye sence ye left Huckleberry Corners."
"Why, that's nonsense!" said Dubbleigh. "It's taken us four hours to come twenty miles, thanks to a flabby tire. That's only five miles an hour."
"Sure!" said the new constable, "but the speed law round these here parts is ten mile an hour, and by Jehosophat I'm goin' to make you ottermobile fellers live up to it."
A little "Brush" chugged painfully up to the gate of a race track.
The gate-keeper, demanding the usual fee for automobiles, called:
"A dollar for the car!"
The owner looked up with a pathetic smile of relief and said:
"Sold!"
"Do you have much trouble with your automobile?"
"Trouble! Say, I couldn't have more if I was married to the blamed machine."
"What little boy can tell me the difference between the 'quick' and the 'dead?'" asked the Sunday-school teacher.
Willie waved his hand frantically.
"Well, Willie?"
"Please, ma'am, the 'quick' are the ones that get out of the way of automobiles; the ones that don't are the 'dead.'"
"What is the name of your automobile?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know? What do your folks call it?"
"Oh, as to that, father always says 'The Mortgage'; brother Tom calls it 'The Fake'; mother, 'My Limousine'; sister, 'Our Car'; grandma, 'That Peril'; the chauffeur, 'Some Freak,' and our neighbors, 'The Limit.'"—Life.
"How fast is your car, Jimpson?" asked Harkaway.
"Well," said Jimpson, "it keeps about six months ahead of my income generally."
TEACHER—"If a man saves $2 a week, how long will it take him to save a thousand?"
BOY—"He never would, ma'am. After he got $900 he'd buy a car."
"Tried to skin me, that scribbler did!"
"What did he want?"
"Wanted to get out a book jointly, he to write the book and I to write the advertisements. I turned him down. I wasn't going to do all the literary work."
William Dean Howells is the kindliest of critics, but now and then some popular novelist's conceit will cause him to bristle up a little.
"You know," said one, fishing for compliments, "I get richer and richer, but all the same I think my work is falling off. My new work is not so good as my old."
"Oh, nonsense!" said Mr. Howells. "You write just as well as you ever did. Your taste is improving, that's all."
"I dream my stories," said Hicks, the author.
"How you must dread going to bed!" exclaimed Cynicus.
"It took me nearly ten years to learn that I couldn't write stories."
"I suppose you gave it up then?"
"No, no. By that time I had a reputation."
George W. Cable, the southern writer, was visiting a western city where he was invited to inspect the new free library. The librarian conducted the famous writer through the building until they finally reached the department of books devoted to fiction.
"We have all your books, Mr. Cable," proudly said the librarian. "You see there they are—all of them on the shelves there: not one missing."
And Mr. Cable's hearty laugh was not for the reason that the librarian thought!
"So you have had a long siege of nervous prostration?" we say to the haggard author. "What caused it? Overwork?"
"In a way, yes," he answers weakly. "I tried to do a novel with a Robert W. Chambers hero and a Mary E. Wilkins heroine."—Life.
An ambitious young man called upon a publisher and stated that he had decided to write a book.
"May I venture to inquire as to the nature of the book you propose to write?" asked the publisher, very politely.
"Oh," came in an offhand way from the aspirant to literary fame, "I think of doing something on the line of 'Les Miserables,' only livelier, you know."
A lady who had arranged an authors' reading at her house succeeded in persuading her reluctant husband to stay home that evening to assist in receiving the guests. He stood the entertainment as long as he could—three authors, to be exact—and then made an excuse that he was going to open the front door to let in some fresh air. In the hall he found one of the servants asleep on a settee.
"Wake up!" he commanded, shaking the fellow roughly. "What does this mean, your being asleep out here? You must have been listening at the keyhole."
Oscar Wilde, upon hearing one of Whistler's bon mots exclaimed: "Oh, Jimmy; I wish I had said that!" "Never mind, dear Oscar," was the rejoinder, "you will!"
THE AUTHOR—"Would you advise me to get out a small edition?"
THE PUBLISHER—"Yes, the smaller the better. The more scarce a book is at the end of four or five centuries the more money you realize from it."
AMBITIOUS AUTHOR—"Hurray! Five dollars for my latest story, 'The Call of the Lure!'"
FAST FRIEND—"Who from?"
AMBITIOUS AUTHOR—"The express company. They lost it."
The supervisor of a school was trying to prove that children are lacking in observation.
To the children he said, "Now, children, tell me a number to put on the board."
Some child said, "Thirty-six." The supervisor wrote sixty-three.
He asked for another number, and seventy-six was given. He wrote sixty-seven.
When a third number was asked, a child who apparently had paid no attention called out:
"Theventy-theven. Change that you thucker!"
ARTIST—"I'd like to devote my last picture to a charitable purpose."
CRITIC—"Why not give it to an institution for the blind?"
"Wealth has its penalties." said the ready-made philosopher.
"Yes," replied Mr. Cumrox. "I'd rather be back at the dear old factory than learning to pronounce the names of the old masters in my picture-gallery."
CRITIC—"By George, old chap, when I look at one of your paintings I stand and wonder—"
ARTIST—"How I do it?"
CRITIC "No; why you do it."
The friend had dropped in to see D'Auber, the great animal painter, put the finishing touches on his latest painting. He was mystified, however, when D'Auber took some raw meat and rubbed it vigorously over the painted rabbit in the foreground.
"Why on earth did you do that?" he asked.
"Why you see," explained D'Auber, "Mrs Millions is coming to see this picture today. When she sees her pet poodle smell that rabbit, and get excited over it, she'll buy it on the spot."
On the occasion of the annual encampment of a western militia, one of the soldiers, a clerk who lived well at home, was experiencing much difficulty in disposing of his rations.
A fellow-sufferer nearby was watching with no little amusement the first soldier's attempts to Fletcherize a piece of meat. "Any trouble, Tom?" asked the second soldier sarcastically.
"None in particular," was the response. Then, after a sullen survey of the bit of beef he held in his hand, the amateur fighter observed:
"Bill, I now fully realize what people mean when they speak of the sinews of war."—Howard Morse.
The colonel of a volunteer regiment camping in Virginia came across a private on the outskirts of the camp, painfully munching on something. His face was wry and his lips seemed to move only with the greatest effort.
"What are you eating?" demanded the colonel.
"Persimmons, sir."
"Good Heavens! Haven't you got any more sense than to eat persimmons at this time of the year? They'll pucker the very stomach out of you."
"I know, sir. That's why I'm eatin' 'em. I'm tryin' to shrink me stomach to fit me rations."
The battle was going against him. The commander-in-chief, himself ruler of the South American republic, sent an aide to the rear, ordering General Blanco to bring up his regiment at once. Ten minutes passed; but it didn't come. Twenty, thirty, and an hour—still no regiment. The aide came tearing back hatless, breathless.
"My regiment! My regiment! Where is it? Where is it?" shrieked the commander.
"General," answered the excited aide, "Blanco started it all right, but there are a couple of drunken Americans down the road and they won't let it go by."
"Two old salts who had spent most of their lives on fishing smacks had an argument one day as to which was the better mathematician," said George C. Wiedenmayer the other day. "Finally the captain of their ship proposed the following problem which each would try to work out: 'If a fishing crew caught 500 pounds of cod and brought their catch to port and sold it at 6 cents a pound, how much would they receive for the fish?'
"Well, the two old fellows got to work, but neither seemed able to master the intricacies of the deal in fish, and they were unable to get any answer.
"At last old Bill turned to the captain and asked him to repeat the problem. The captain started off: 'If a fishing crew caught 500 pounds of cod and—.'
"'Wait a moment,' said Bill, 'is it codfish they caught?'
"'Yep,' said the captain.
"'Darn it all,' said Bill. 'No wonder I couldn't get an answer. Here I've been figuring on salmon all the time.'"
"He seems to be very clever."
"Yes, indeed, he can even do the problems that his children have to work out at school."
SONNY—"Aw, pop, I don't wanter study arithmetic."
POP—"What! a son of mine grow up and not he able to figure up baseball scores and batting averages? Never!"
TEACHER—"Now, Johnny, suppose I should borrow $100 from your father and should pay him $10 a month for ten months, how much would I then owe him?"
JOHNNY—"About $3 interest."
"See how I can count, mama," said Kitty. "There's my right foot. That's one. There's my left foot. That's two. Two and one make three. Three feet make a yard, and I want to go out and play in it!"
"Gerald," said the young wife, noticing how heartily he was eating, "do I cook as well as your mother did?"
Gerald put up his monocle, and stared at her through it.
"Once and for all, Agatha," he said, "I beg you will remember that although I may seem to be in reduced circumstances now, I come of an old and distinguished family. My mother was not a cook."
TOMMY—"My gran'pa wuz in th' civil war, an' he lost a leg or a arm in every battle he fit in!"
JOHNNY—"Gee! How many battles was he in?"
TOMMY—"About forty."
"Hubby," said the observant wife, "the janitor of these flats is a bachelor."
"What of it?"
"I really think he is becoming interested in our oldest daughter."
"There you go again with your pipe dreams! Last week it was a duke."
WILLIE—"Pa!"
PA—"Yes."
WILLIE—"Teacher says we're here to help others."
PA—"Of course we are."
WILLIE—"Well, what are the others here for?"
"Why don't you give your wife an allowance?"
"I did once, and she spent it before I could borrow it back."
"How old are you, Tommy?" asked a caller.
"Well, when I'm home I'm five, when I'm in school I'm six, and when I'm on the cars I'm four."
*****
"How effusively sweet that Mrs. Blondey is to you, Jonesy," said Witherell. "What's up? Any tender little romance there?"
"No, indeed—why, that woman hates me," said Jonesy.
"She doesn't show it," said Witherell.
"No; but she knows I know how old she is—we were both born on the same day," said Jonesy, "and she's afraid I'll tell somebody."
*****
THE PARSON (about to improve the golden hour)—"When a man reaches your age, Mr. Dodd, he cannot, in the nature of things, expect to live very much longer, and I—"
THE NONAGENARIAN—"I dunno, parson. I be stronger on my legs than I were when I started!"
*****
Great collection of funny short jokes
"Friend," said one immigrant to another, "this is a grand country to settle in. They don't hang you here for murder."
"What do they do to you?" the other immigrant asked.
"They kill you," was the reply, "with elocution."