A Jest or Two

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 732, 3 August 1929, Page 19

A Jest or Two

Not Widely Known. —Hector: “You know. I’ve always been a Society man.” Stella: “It must be a secret society.” Transports. —Highbrow: “Hoes a certain sublimated and objective altruism ever move you?” Lowbrow: “No: I usually take a tram.” Breaking It Gently.—Little Joyce had just got over a spell of crying that her mother knew nothing about. As the day wore on she became her usual cheery self. “Mummie,” she cried joyfully, “do you know what I am going to give you for your birthday?” “No, darling.” answered the other. “I am getting you a nice new butterdish,” said the little girl. “That will be lovely. But mamma’s got one already, Joyce.” “Oh, no, you haven’t, mummie! You used to have one, but I broke it this morning! ” * * * Naughty Man! —From Grandpa Perkins’s point of view the modern maiden was all wrong, and the old gentleman was not above telling his granddaughter some of his observations. “No, Nora,” he nodded sadly, “girls are not the same nowadays, unfortunately.” His granddaughter smiled. She had heard this so many times. “No,** went on the old man. "You never see a girl blush nowadays. When I was a young man it was different.” “Oh, granddad!” exclaimed the girl. “Whatever did you say to them?” From North to South. —With, scarcely a sound, the luxurious car pulled up before the seaside hotel, and an old grey-haired man descended. “My doctor advises mo to stay where the south wind blows continually,” he remarked to the manager. “Hoes it blow here?” “It does, sir.” returned the other. “You are very fortunate to have stopped at exactly the right place. The south wind always blows here.” The old man stuck a moistened finger in the air. “Always?” he repeated. “Are you sure? It appears to be coming from the north just now.” “You're right, of course, sir. It’s on its way back!”

Adaptable. —“ Every man can find work if he uses his brains,” asserted one who had travelled a good deal—“that is, if he has the ability to adapt himself, like the piano tuner I once met out in the West of America. ‘Why/ I said to him, for we were in a wild, unsettled country, ‘surely pianotuning can’t be very lucrative here. I shouldn’t imagine that pianos were very plentiful in this region. ‘No, sir, they’re not/ said the piano -tuner, ‘but I make a pretty fair income by tightening up barbed-wire fences!’”

Going to Extremes. —The wealthy merchant, who had taken his twenty - year-old son into his business, discovered that town pleasures were proving far more attractive to the young man than business activities. One day, when the son left the office ostensibly to keep a business appointment, the father decided to follow him. He found that his son headed straight toward a certain club, to which he belonged. After waiting a while outside, the father entered the club and found his son in the smok-ing-room with a bottle of whisky on his table. “Oh, but really, Had,” said the young man, “I must have my fling.” “H’m!” said the father, eyeing the bottle of Scotch. “But it needn’t be a Highland fling.”

Hair Preferred. —Father Vaughai when in an American hairdressin. saloon, was worried by assistants t< purchase a preparation that would re store the hair. Father Vaughan dis counted all the usual tall stories, bu such was the insistence of the mej that he consented to look at a botth "It will grow hairs on a billiard ball, said the assistant as ho produced florid bottle from the cupboard, very glaring label across the front bor the legend, "Hope for the bald.” Fatlie Vaughan waved it aside with a smi!"I have had hope all my life,” he said “it is the hair I want.”

A Compromise. —With & tremendous effort Bodson just managed to leap out of the way of his friend Watkin’s car in time. Watkin slowed up and turned to him. “Sorry, old man.” he said. “1 should just think so!” spluttered Hodson. “What on earth ar© you driving so fast for?” "Well,” smiled Watkin, “the magis trate fined me ten shillings for exceeding the limit this morning, and as he hadn’t change for a pound note he told me to go and speed the remainder out”

Daddy. —A new chaplain was approached one night at dinner in the officers’ mess by a vapid young subaltern who asked him if he would baptise two pups. The mess listened in silence, eager to see of what stuff the chaplain was made, and how he would take this insult. The chaplain said he would comply with his request if he might baptise the pups there and then. As the subaltern lifted up the pups, the chaplain inquired, in the conventional way, “Are you the father of these pups?” All Writers, Please Note.—Not so long ago bottles of gum issued by the Stationery Office bore the following instruction: “In ordinary use the best and most nearly immediate result is secured by using only such an amount of gum as will just uniformly moisten the surface without leaving an excess to delay drying. the condition aimed at being that of a gummed postage-stamp just moistened as ordinarily applied to a letter.” Now some sensible economist, callously indifferent to fine writing, has replaced this piece of unexampled prose with the terse paraphrase, “Apply thinly.” “Number, Please!'* —"Hello, Exchange. Now listen carefully to what I am about to say. I am touched, grieved, and otherwise perturbed about the fact that whenever I ask for a number, I am invariably asked, ‘What number, please?' No matter how distinctly I ask for a number, that is the answer I get, and I’m getting darned sick and tired of it. “Now, strange as it may seem to you, I am about to give you a number —in other words, I desire to be connected with a certain telephone number in order to talk with someone there. Simple, isn’t it? Nothing hard about it at all. Listen carefully for the figures—here it comes—Regent 7567!” “What number, please?” ...