WIT AND HUMOUR.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 167, 20 April 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

WIT AND HUMOUR.

Brown, Jones, and Smith, respectiMly legal, divinity and medical students, were discussing the merits of their future professions.

" \\ o punish the rogues, ' said Brown, "and give honest men their own. "Yes," observed Jones; "but we show people the way to go to heaven." " We're the best, after all," remarked Smith, "for we send people there."

It happened l the other day in one of the officers' wards, says the 'Gazette of the 3rd London General Hospital, that at tiie moment when a patient was just recovering consciousness on his return to bed from the operating theatre our Wesleyan minister and two clerical friends came walking to pay a visit. The patient started up and stared at the trio of black coats. "Groat Scot!" he exclaimed. "The undertakers!"

They met by chance in the waitingroom of a railway-station. " My friend," began the man with the bag full of tracts, persuasively, "have you ever reflected on the shortness or life, the uncertainty of all things here below, and the fact that death is inevitable?"

"Have 1?" raplied l the man in the shaggy overcoat, cheerfully. "Well, I should say so. I'm a life-insurance agent!"

" German musicians at the beginning of the war," said John Philip Sousa, at his recent birthday celebration, "were busy, all over Germany, composing marches of victory. Every week three or four marches of victory made their appearance. But of late the output has stopped."

"Output stopped, eh?" said tne reporter. "1 wonder, then, what the Gorman musicians are composing now?"

Mr. Sousa smiled. "Peace overtures, most likely, he said.

A man took his wife to a doctor, who put a thermometer into her mouth and told her to keep her mouth shut for two or three minutes. When departing the man tappeci the doctor on the shoulder and said: —

"Doctor, what will you take for that thing? I never saw my wife keep her mouth shut so long hefore."

It was at a breach of promise case, an dthe rustic defendant was under cross-examination.

"Now, tell me, please, said the counsel, sternly, "on the evening of the sixteenth when you hade her hood-bye, did she suffer you to kiss her?" "'Well," said the witness, slowly, "I reckon now I did give her a kiss or two; but there worn't much sufferin' about it as I could see."

"Lunatics frequently return amusing answers," says the superintendent of a great insane asylum. "One day a keeper was out walking with a number of harmless inmates, and the party met a pedestrian not far from the railway line. With a nod towards the line, the traveller asksed one of the lunatics :

" 'Where does this railway go to?' " The lunatic surveyed him scornfully for a moment, and then replied : " 'Nowhere. We keep it here to run trains on.' "

Farmer Cloverseed had come up to London for a few days. Before he started he had promised to bring his daughter a present, so he went into a jeweller's shop and said to the assistant : ' r l want a pair of earrings, cheap but purty. They be fur a present." "Yes, sir," said the jeweller. "You want something a trifle loud, I suppose?" "Well, I don't mind if one of them is a little loud," replied the farmer. "My girl is deaf in one ear."

"Sixtane sliillun's a da' did they charge me for my room at the hotel in Lunnon!" said Sandy, indignantly, on his return to Croburgh Burghs from a sight-seeing expedition. "On, aye. it wasna cheap," agreed his father; "hue ye must 'a' had a gey fine time seein' the siohts."

"Seein' the sichts!' cried Sandy. "I didna see a sicht a' tho time I was in Lunnon. Mon, mon, ye dinna suppose I was going to he stuck that muchjor a room, an' then no get tho proper use o't!" Sir George Birdwood, who has. just passed his eighty-fourth birthday, entered the literary arena at tho n~e of nine, writing and inventing puzzles and problems for the "Fireside Page" of the 'Family Herald.' Lieutenant-Commander Thomas Holman, who has just died, rose from the ranks. Ho joined the Navy as a secondclass hoy and put in over forty-four years' service. «j - ■-■»