DEGREES

  "You college men seem to take life pretty easy."   "Yes; even when we graduate we do it by degrees."

  --_Boston Transcript_.

Our British cousins seem to think we have peculiar ways of getting our D.D.'s over here. A London newspaper relates how the congregation of a Southern church, being desirous of honoring their pastor, wrote to the dean of a certain faculty: "We want to get our beloved pastor a D.D. We enclose all the money we can raise at present. Be good enough to send one D. now. We hope to raise sufficient for the other D. by and by."

DEMAGOG

"Father," said the small boy, "what is a demagog?"

"A demagog, my son, is a man who can rock the boat himself and persuade everybody that there's a terrible storm at sea."

DEMOCRACY

ADKINS--"Well, the world is at last safe for democracy."

WATKINS--"Just what is democracy, anyway?"

"A democracy is a form of government where one party doesn't do things as they ought to be done, and the other party tells how much better they would be done if it were in power."

In his first lecture in New York the visiting English writer and wit, G.K. Chesterton, protested against prohibition and other limitations on American freedom. He quoted the phrase from Patrick Henry's address, "Give me liberty or give me death." Then he said:

"If Patrick Henry could arise from the dead and revisit the land of the living and see the vast system and social organization and social science which now controls, he would probably simplify his observation and say: 'Give me death!'"

Democracy means not "I am as good as you are," but "you are as good as I am."--_Theodore Parker_.

DENTISTS

"Pardon me for a moment, please," said the dentist to the victim, "but before beginning this work I must have my drill."

"Good heavens, man!" exclaimed the patient irritably. "Can't you pull a tooth without a rehearsal?"

Dinah had been troubled with a toothache for some time before she got up enough courage to go to a dentist. The moment he touched her tooth she screamed.

"What are you making such a noise for?" he demanded. "Don't you know I'm a 'painless dentist'?"

"Well, sah," retorted Dinah, "mebbe yo' is painless, but Ah isn't."

DENTIST--"Open wider, please--wider."

PATIENT--"A--A--A--Ah."

DENTIST (inserting rubber gag, towel, and sponge)--"How's your family?"

A young man who needed false teeth wrote to a dentist ordering a set as follows:

"My mouth is three inches acrost, five-eighths inches threw the jaw. Some hummocky on the edge. Shaped like a hoss-shew, toe forward. If you want me to be more particular, I shall have to come thar."

Dentist, speaking to patient about to have a tooth extracted--"Have you heard the latest song hit?"

Patient--"No. What is the title of it?"

Dentist--"The Yanks are Coming."

Returning home from the dentist's, where he had gone to have a loose tooth drawn, little Raymond reported as follows:

"The doctor told me 'fore he began that if I cried or screamed it would cost me a dollar, but if I was a good boy it would be only fifty cents."

"Did you scream?" his mother asked.

"How could I?" answered Raymond. "You only gave me fifty cents."

Mr. Harkins had taken his boy, aged ten, to have an offending molar tooth drawn. When the job had been accomplished, the dentist said: "I am sorry, sir, but I shall have to charge you five dollars for pulling that tooth."

"Five dollars!" exclaimed Mr. Harkins, in dismay. "Why, I understood you to say that you charged only one dollar for such work!"

"Yes," replied the dentist, "but this youngster yelled so terribly that he scared four other patients out of the office."--_Harper's_.

DEPARTMENT STORES

"I want some shoe-strings, some hairpins, a pair of gloves, and a tooth-brush," the woman said. "I have to catch a train, and have but a few minutes."

"Yes, madam!" the floorwalker replied briskly. "That's the beauty of a department store-get anything you want, right under the one roof! Take elevator to eleventh floor, shoe department, eight aisles to the right from the main passageway, for shoe-strings; hairpins in notions department, east side of basement, three aisles beyond hardware; gloves in women's wear, fifth floor of annex, reached by passageway over street; toothbrush in drugs and toilet-articles department, on balcony, reached by moving stairway, which you will find on your right as you pass the fountain in the florist shop in the center of the main floor."

DESTINATION

  Where'er I go, in this far land,   The people wish to understand   Where I am going. If I knew   They would not think my answer true;   And if I said I did not know   They would advise me not to go.

The new guard was not familiar with a certain railway run in Wales. Came to a station which rejoiced in the name Llanfairfechanpwllgogerych. For a few minutes he stood looking at the signboard in mute helplessness. Then pointing to the board, and waving his other arm toward the carriages, he called, "If there's anybody there for here, this is it!"

DETECTIVES

HOKUS--"How does Sleuthpup rank as a detective?"

POKUS--"Great. You know, he used to work in the repair department of an umbrella factory."

"What has that got to do with being a detective?"

"Why, that fellow can recover an umbrella that has never been stolen."

DETERMINATION

"Thirty years ago," said the man who had traveled to the end of the earth and most of the way back, "I started out, alone, unaided, without friends to help me along, with the intention of making the world pay me the living that it owes me. My only allies were a dollar bill and a determination to make a million more. Today (and he threw out his chest proudly) I still have the determination and fifty cents in change."

  When hope seems dim     And the worst's in sight,   When you've lost your vim,     Just hang on tight;   Give blow for a blow,     And don't give in,   Till you've let 'em all know     That you tried to win.