IN LIGHTER VEIN

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 12484, 21 April 1906, Page 7

IN LIGHTER VEIN

Youth: "Fhat do I havo to pay for a marriage license?" Clerk: "Well, you get it on the instalment- plan."' Youth: "How's that?" Clerk: "One dollar down and your entire salary each month for the rest of your life."

Little Sanford had been very naughty (reports "Harper's Magazine"), and was being put to bed unusually early by an ominously silent, unresponsive mother. After several ineffectual attempts to engage her in conversation, ho begain warningly:—"All right then, jus' put mc to lied. An' I'll jus' die, right into the middle of the night, an' then you won't have any little boy. An' when you come in tho mornin' I'll jus' In? dead, "cause I'm goin' to die right into the middle of the night." Still his mother was silent, and he fell to gloating over the picture he had painted, when suddenly he hnr.«.t out in a terrified tone, "But don't yen bury mc, though!"

j Mr Briant, of the London County j Council, at. the dinner of the Lambeth | guardians and officers told the story of a hoy whose school teacher questioned him about his father's Christian name. "What's, your name?" tho teacher asked. "Jones," the boy replied. "Your j father's name?" "Jones/ "And his other name?'' '"Mr Jones." "No. What ! does your mother call Ifim?" "Old fatj head."

j An English cleric confessed recently that as a boy, when told to pray into his hat before taking his seat in church i—a piece of ceremonial now obsolete— 'he always used the following formula: : —'"Lincoln. Bennett, and Co. Hat | makers to Her Majesty the Queen, extra i quality. Sackrille street, Piccadilly, ' London. Honi soit gui mal y pense. i Dieu et men droit. Amen."'

"I am so sorry you weren't able to I come to mc last autumn," paid a peeress Ito a bashful youth whom she dimly ] remembered having invited to her couni try house. "Oh. hut I did," was his disconcerting reply. "I stayed a week." In another house the guests were frequently puzzled a.s to the identity of lan elderly and unobtrusive gentleman thry occasionally met on the stairs or 'in the grounds.' When questioned on I the subject, the hostess airily replied, "Oh, that's my husliand. Poor dear, ho hates my parties, and will never join , them."—"Tatler."