TEACHING

About the most hopeful element in any human being's character I should reckon to be teachableness.

Wherever you meet a man who knows--and knows he knows--and wards off any proof of reasoning of yours with the impenetrable shield of a superior smile or the dull hostility of a determined eye, you feel that between you and him there can be no real dealings.

The wisest minds I find are the most teachable. The wider one's experience, the more thorough his study, the braver his heart, and the stronger his intelligence, the more willing he is to hear what you or any man may have to offer.

Stubbornness is usually the instinctive self-defense of conscious weakness. When one can do nothing else to show his strength he imitates the mule--the most despised of animals.

Spinoza's maxim was that the two great banes of humanity are self-conceit and the laziness coming from self-conceit.--_Dr. Frank Crane_.

TEARS

_See_ Woman.

TELEGRAPH

"Why did you strike the telegraph operator?" asked the magistrate of the man who was summoned for assault.

"Well, sir, I gives him a telegram to send to my gal, and he starts readin' it. So, of course, I ups and gives him one."

"Pap," said the colored youth, "Ah'd like you to expatiate on de way dat de telegraph works."

"Dat's easy 'nuf, Rastus," said the old man. "Hit am like dis. Ef dere was a dawg big 'nuf so his head could be in Bosting an' his tail in New Yo'k, den ef you tromp on his tail in New Yo'k he'd bark in Bosting. Understan', Rastus?"

"Yes, pap! But how am de wireless telegraph?"

For a moment the old man was stumped. Then he answered easily: "Jess prezactly de same, Rastus, wid de exception dat de dawg am 'maginary."

An Irishman and a Scot were arguing as to the merits of their respective countries.

"Ah, weel," said Sandy, "they tore down an auld castle in Scotland and found many wires under it, which shows that the telegraph was knoon there hoondreds o' years ago."

"Well," said Pat, "they tore down an ould castle in Oireland, and there was no wires found undher it, which shows that they knew all about wireless telegraphy in Oireland hundreds av years ago."

Soon after the instalment of the telegraph in Fredericksburg, Virginia, a little darky, the son of my father's mammy, saw a piece of newspaper that had blown up on one of the telegraph wires and caught there. Running to my grandmother in a great state of excitement, he cried, "Miss Liza, come quick! Dem wires done buss and done let all the news out!"

<< Previous    1...   3  4  [5]  6  7  ...13    Next >>