STAMMERING

They were going home from school.

"Teacher said that that that that that girl used was superfluous."

"Here's the first pupil for my stammering school," said the business man as he introduced himself.

STAMPS

At the post-office a little girl deposited a dime in front of the clerk and said: "Please, I forgot the name of the stamp mama told me to get, but it's the kind that makes a letter hurry up."

STATISTICS

"If a man had put a hundred dollars in a savings bank twenty years ago," said the statistician after dinner, "it would amount to over two hundred now, and he could buy almost as much for it now as he could have got for the original hundred at the time he began to save."

STENOGRAPHERS

"How many stenographers have you?"

"Two."

"I've seen only one of them."

"Well, I've got a worse looking one to show my wife."

"I met your husband today and he was telling me that he is in love with his work."

"Was he, indeed? I must take a look in at the office."

             _A Long-Merited Toast_

  I used to toast the royal queens     And queens of beauty rare;   I drained my glass to lovely lass     And to her eyes and hair;   But in these day of sober drinks     There's one whose health to me   Means vastly more than beauty or     The blood of royalty:

  Here's to my stenographer!     Long faithful to her duty.   She'd win no prize for vampish eyes;     Her freckles mar her beauty.   Here's to her! Her specs! Her brain!     I pledge her health in water!   Cool, sober, staid, a precious maid;     I love her--like a daughter!

  She keeps my creditors at bay,     Admitting only debtors;   Collects the rent when she is sent,     Or writes dry business letters;   She always puts her fingers on     The paper I require;   Sums I can't add she's always glad     To do, and doesn't tire.

  Here's to her bonny, busy hands!     They never are erratic.   I hope that they will type away     For years, nor grow rheumatic!   Here's to her modest salary!     (I'd blush if I should tell it!)   But for her grit I'd have to quit     My business--couldn't sell it.

  _--Stanley R. Hofflund_.

A Chicago banker dictating a letter to his stenographer. "Tell Mr. Soandso," he ordered, "that I will meet him in Schenectady."

"How do you spell Schenectady?" asked the stenographer.

"S-c, S-c--er--er--er--- Tell him I'll meet him in Albany."

Stenographers can nod sometimes, even with the accuracy of the dictating machine. Recently a merchant dictating into one of these machines said:

"The gentleman in question has sold our products in Hayti for a period of over two years, and we have always found him satisfactory in every detail."

All came out all right in the transcription except one word, and that word was the change from Hayti to Hades! And the letter, being "dictated but not read," went!

"I seem to remember that girl. Who is she?"

"She was my typewriter last year."

"She's charming! Why did she leave you?"

"She was too conscientious for me. One day I proposed marriage to her, and what do you think she did? She took all that I said down in shorthand and brought it, nicely type-written, for me to sign!"

STOCK EXCHANGE

AUNT JANE (at the Stock Exchange)--"With seats selling at $60,000, no wonder they are all standing up."

FOOTLIGHT--"I see another seat at the Stock Exchange has been sold for $55,000."

Miss SUE BEETTE--"Wouldn't it be awful if the man who paid for it found it was right behind a post!"

STRATEGY

WILLIE WILLIS--"Pa, what's strategy?"

PAPA WILLIS--"Usually darn poor judgment that happens to work out all right."

A young lady took down the receiver and discovered that the telephone was in use. "I just put on a pan of beans for dinner," she heard one woman complacently informing another.

She hung up the receiver, and waited. Three times she waited, and then, exasperated, she broke into the conversation.

"Madam, I smell your beans burning," she announced crisply. A horrified scream greeted the remark, and the young lady was able to put in her call.

A lady entered a railroad-car and took a seat in front of a newly married couple. She was hardly seated before they began making remarks about her.

Her last year's bonnet and coat were fully criticised with more or less giggling on the bride's part, and there is no telling what might have come next if the lady had not put a sudden stop to the conversation by a bit of strategy.

She turned her head, noticed that the bride was considerably older than the groom, and, in the smoothest of tones, said:

"Madam, will you please ask your son to close the window?"

The "son" closed his mouth, and the bride no longer giggled.

"Fore!" shouted the golfer, ready to play.

But the woman on the course paid no attention.

"Fore!" he repeated, with not a bit more effect than the first time.

"Try her with 'Three ninety-eight,'" suggested his partner. "She may be one of those bargain-counter fiends."

Hans and Fritz, two small boys, had gone to the rink to skate. Hans's overcoat hampered him and he wanted to get rid of it. The German coat-room person does not check your coat unless you pay your fee. The fee was only a penny, but Hans did not have the penny. He was at a loss.

"Huh! it's dead easy," spoke up Fritz. "Give me your overcoat. I'll take it to the man at the checking place and say I found it. He'll put it away. When you are ready to go home you go to him and ask if anybody has turned a lost overcoat in to him. Then, of course, you'll get yours."

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