After-Dinner Stories

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 72, 18 December 1928, Page 54 (Supplement)

After-Dinner Stories

A Christmas Entertainment.

Exclusive to The Dominion

Scene: A Dining Room. Time about 0.15 p.m.

(The air is blue with tobacco smoke and the lights are dim. The outline of a dining table is faintly perceived, and here and there through the fog one catches glimpses of coffee cups and decanters. Round the table are seated Messrs. Smith, Jones, Robinson, anc Brown, all in varying attb tudes expressive of ease and satisfaction. There is, in fact, an air of geniality and good cheer. A sprig of holly decorates the candelabra, and there is, in all probability, misletoe over the door. As the curtain rises, Mr. Robinson is quoting in a mellow voice).

Robinson: So when I saw the waiter take out his handkerchief and start wiping the plate with it, I said to him, “Hi, is that your handkerchief you’re using?” And he leant over and said in a confidential tone, "It won’t hurt, sir; it’s not a clean one!” Jones: That reminds me, I must tell yov one against my wife, though as a matter of fact she’s never been able to see it yet. Site ms sewing a button on my coat, and suddenly she turned to me and said, “It’s a disgrace the way your tailor sews on buttons. Why, this is the third time I’ve sewn on this very button myself!” Smith (meditatively): I remember the very best advice I was ever given was bv a very great friend of mine. He said to me, “My boy, it pays to go straight. Think of the corkscrews in the U.S.A They weren’t straight, and now they're out of work!” (He relapses into a gentle melancholy). Brown (very enthusiastically) : I must tell you a story about my little girl; that one about America reminded me. She was reading her geography book, and suddenly asked the wife, “Ma, what is a state M matrimony?” But the wife was too quick for her, “That’s one of the united states.” said she.

Jones: Old Doctor Jacobs tolc me a funny thing that happened to him once Iu had to treat an Irishman, and one day he asked him: “Did you take the box of pills, as I ordered?”

“Oi did.” “And how are you feeling?” “Well, oi can feel the lid even now 1 Smith (unexpectedly) : Funny thing happened to me the other evening. I d been having dinuc at the Williams, and my brother and I' were driving back together in his cai Suddenly we came to a corner and nearly went oft' the road. At the same moment we each said to the other. “For goodness sake drive a little slower or we shall be drilled outright!” Robinson: Did you ever meet that editor fellow who was staying with me a little time back? Good fellow, but

worked himself to death nearly. Anyway, he went into a chemist’s shop one day and asked for some morphine. The assistant objected, and asked for a prescription. “Why?” said my friend. “Do I look like a man who would kill himself?” “I don't know,” said the assistant. “If I looked like yon I should be tempted!” Brown: You all know my little boy, don’t you? Stout little fellow, but not always very quick in the uptake. The other day he was fishing in a stream

“My husband is going to give me a lot of things for Christmas.” “How do you know?” “I’ve bought most of them already.”

when a man came up to him and said, “Don’t fish here.” “I don’t know,” said the kiddy, brightly. “Do they?” Jones: There’s rather a quaint limerick going round at the club just now; stop me if any of you have heard it: “There was an old lady of Essen Who’d a passion for delicatessen: She reared seventeen sons On eclairs and cream buns, She said it would teach them a lesson !” Smith: Talking about lessons, 1 had one the other day that I’m not likely

to forget. I had the most awful bore staying with me, and we thought that he would never go. At last I thought I’d got an idea for getting rid of him. “Don’t you think your wife and family must be getting tired of being separated from you?” I asked him.

“It never occurred to me,” he replied. “But now you put it so nicely, I’ll wire for them to come dow.. and join us.”

Robinson: It really is extraordinary how mean some people are. I was having a chat with my chemist the other day, when a man came in and asked for some sulphur, for which the chemist charged sixpence. “Sixpence,” said the man; “I won’t have it! Why, I can go to the drug department of and get the same amount for fourpencehalfpenny.”

“Yes,” retorted the chemist, “And you can go to another place, too, for all I care, and get as much sulphur as you like for nothing!” Brown: Reminds me of the time there was a flood down our way. A girl shouted out to her father one day, “Come quick, here’s a gentleman up to his ankles in mud.”

“Well,” said her father, “that’s nothing surprising. Let him walk out. “Oh, but father, it’s serious; his head is downwards and he’s down to - his ankles already. Robinson: I was out in the car the other day, miles from anywhere, and hopelessly lost, when a yokel came by. I stopped him, and asked where the road I was on led to. “I dunno.” “Which is the London road?” “I dunno.” “How many miles am I from Little Puddlington?” “I dunno.” “Which is the best way to the nearest tiWeT' “I flaw/’: J'PP nil hnox

anything?” “Well, I ain’t lost, anyway 1” Smith: Rather a runny thing happened at the office the other day. I was feeling pretty rotten, s.» I decided o go home early. My partner saw me going out, and said, “Where are you off to?” “Oh, the doctor’s. I’ve got a splitting headache aad feel pretty rotten.”

“When I get a headache my wife just strokes my forehead for about twenty minutes and all the pain is gone. Jolly nice treatment, too. Why don’t you try it?” “Sounds a capital idea,” said I. “I’d ill to try it. Is your wife at home now ?”

Robinson: You fellows know how absent minded old Professor Briggs is? Well the other day he was chatting with an old lady with grey hair. Suddenly she said, “Forty years ago you asked me to marry you!” The Professor was rather preoccupied. “And did you do as I requested?” he enquired. Jones: The other day I went to a dog show, and I was looking at a particularly fine Skye terrier, when two lads came up and stared at it in amazement. I’ll admit it had an amazing amount of hair, and looked rather like an vergrown doormat. At last one of these lads turned to the other and said: — “Bill, which lie its head and which be its tail?” “I'm blest if I know,” responded the other. “It’s a regular puzzler. But I'll soon find out. Let’s pick the brute with a pin and see which end he barks!” Smith: “My daughter Mary got married the other day.” Jones: “So all your daughters arc married now. It must be nice to get them all off your hands.” Smith: “Well, it’s nice enough to got your daughters off your hands; but what we don’t like is having to keep our sons-in-law on their feet.” Robinson: “I was having a round of golf with my wife this morning, when Brown (hurriedly) : “Which won?” Robinson: “What do you mean?” Brown: “Which won?” Robinson (thoroughly roused):

“Which one! How many wives do you think I have? I’m not a Turk!” Smith (hastily changing the subject, to Jones): Weren’t you upset when the bank went smash the other day?” Smith: A funny thing happened the last time I was in Ireland. I went to the theatre there, and in the last act the heroine was supposed to commit suicide by jumping out of the window into the river. Unfortunately they had forgotten to put the mattress under the window, so when she landed there was a loud bump. What was her horror when a voice from the gallery cried, “Och, be jabers, the water’s frozen!’ You can imagine the uproar in the house.” Brown: By Jove, do you know what the time is? All together: So it is—shall we join the ladies? (Curtain).

Professor Sudbury, who was extremely near-sighted, went to the barber’s, sat down in the barber's chair, took off his glasses, and allowed himself to be shaved. When the artist was done with him he did not move, and for a while nobody disturbed him. But other customers began to arrive and the chair was needed. The head barber, suspecting that his learned patron had fallen asleep, asked his boy to wake him. The professor overheard the order.

“No, my good man,” he said, “I am not asleep. The fact is I am frightfully near-sighted. When I took my glasses off just now I was no longer able to see myself in the mirror opposite. Naturally, I supposed I had alIQU.Si’

“A schoolboy’s eye will glisten at the thought of a big Christmas. pudding,” says a writer. And when he's had it there’ll be a distended pupil.

Tha man who said “Uxchans'd Is M, robbery” never got a half-crown Ha ns a present from his wife whfrfi gtyen her a mWu caak ‘