The Funny Bone: Short Stories and Amusing Anecdotes for a Dull Hour

by Dornford Yates

  "That's my white elephant," said Spoopendyke. "I always walk round itand keep my distance. When I was first married and before I knew therules of the house, I sat down on the side of the bed to take off myshoes--once. I've never done that since. Say--that's a mighty fine bed,ain't it? For one thing, it always tells me when I'm sick. If I lay downon that bed in the day-time, and pull the white cover over me, and mywife doesn't say nothing--then I know I'm a sick man, and the doctor'llbe there in twenty minutes."

  "Say ----" continued Spoopendyke, growing quite confidential, "I had aqueer experience the other night. My wife she says I snore. Well, mebbyI do. Most men do. But women snore, too, and you can't never get 'em toconfess it. Well, I was lying wide awake thinking of some bills I had topay--and had no money to pay 'em with--and beside me lay my wife snoringlike all creation. She got higher and louder and louder and higher, tillshe waked herself up with a tremendous whoop. Then she kickedme--thinking it was me that was making the racket. I said nothing, andshe sailed in again--up, up, up she went, higher and higher till shewoke up again at the top and said, 'Nick--stop your blame snoring.' Isaid nothing, and she went to work at once again blowing her bugle-horntill she waked up again. This time she was mad. She got up and saidsomething about 'getting the fire-extinguisher and turning it loose onhim,' and went off to bed in the next room. I lay still listening andlaughing, as I heard her blowing the fog-horn again. I laughed till Iforgot all about those bills and went to sleep. And the next morning atthe breakfast table when she told me how I kept her awake all night withmy awful snoring--and how even in the next room she couldn't sleep forthe racket I kept up--I just laughed. Tell her? Not a bit of it. What'sthe use? She wouldn't believe me, and I couldn't prove it."

  TOO YOUNG

  "Say, Isaacstein, don't you vant to git married?"

  "For vy shall I hitch me fast mit a wife?"

  "Well, here's an unusually good chance, a clean snap if you look sharp.You know Levy the banker? Well, he has three daughters, the youngest iseighteen years old, the next twenty-five and the next thirty. I havejust learned that he will give $10,000 to the man that marries theyoungest, $15,000 to the man that marries the next one, and $20,000 withthe oldest. Why don't you sail in, old man?"

  "Dey are all too young fer me. I vill vait till dey get older. I vantone about fifty."

  A POOR BUSINESS LOCATION

  "How iss business?" "Very poor. Noding's doing." "Vell--vy don't you?""Mein himmel, how kin I--mit a fire-goompany on von side, afire-goompany on de odder side, undt a schwmmin-school on top? I shallhaf to move."

  A TALE OF A SAUSAGE

  On the way to attend a funeral a country parson stopped to make a callon one of his members who had the day before done some butchering, afterthe old fashion. Before he took his leave the good woman of the housemade him a present of some three yards of newly made sausage, which,when he came to the church where the service was to be held, he bestowedfor safe-keeping in the pocket of his long-tailed coat. While he wasreading the burial service at the grave, a good-for-nothing dog,scenting the savory meat, made repeated efforts to dislodge thetreasure, and the preacher was obliged in a very awkward and undignifiedmanner to punctuate his reading of the service with sundry and numerouskicks to the rear to save his bacon and chase the dog away.

  After the interment there was a full service in the church, the ministerpreaching the sermon in one of those old-fashioned pulpits, stuckagainst the wall like a swallow's nest, the approach to the pulpit beingby a corkscrew staircase winding solemnly upward from the chancel. Herethe minister was safe from the assaults of that miserable dog. At leasthe thought he was. But--at the conclusion of the service, while he wasstanding in the pulpit and looking another way, one of his deacons,wishing him to make an announcement, quietly and softly tiptoed acrossthe chancel and slipped up the winding stairway and pulled the parson'scoat-tail to attract his attention. He, supposing it was the dog afterhis sausage again, let fly a most vigorous kick, which caught the poordeacon in the middle of the forehead and knocked him rattling down intothe chancel, the preacher, still looking the other way, and saying, "Myfriends, I am sorry for this disturbance, but--I have some sausage in mypocket and that miserable dog has been following me all this morningtrying to steal it!"

  PUNISHMENT MADE SURE

  It is an old story, but a good one--that of the two Germans who wentinto Delmonico's to get something to eat. They ordered a very simplesupper. They had a good beefsteak, fried potatoes, bread and butter, andcoffee, and were astounded when the waiter handed them a bill for fourdollars and a half. They paid the bill, and when they reached the streetone of them began to swear at "Dot man Delmonico. He is a robber and athief." His companion, however, gently laying a hand on his shoulder,said, "Hermann, do not schwear. It iss wicked to schwear. Pesides, Gotthas ponished dat man Delmonico alretty." "Wie?" was the response. "Howhas Gott ponished him?" "Hermann," said the other with quiet assurance,"Gott has ponished him. I have my pockets full mit his spoons!"

  A BASHFUL BRIDEGROOM

  He was a clerk in a hardware store, and she was a chambermaid in ahotel. When they came to the parsonage one afternoon to be married, theywere very kindly received. The minister's wife took the bride upstairsto take off her things, and the minister took the groom into the parlor.

  The groom was very nervous--and suddenly asked the minister whether hecouldn't "marry him while the bride was upstairs, and then marry herwhen she came down?" But the minister assured him that it was necessarythat the bride should be present, and that they should both be marriedat the same time. And so they were married.

  Two hours later, while making a call at the hotel, he found the bride ather work, and when he asked her how that was, and whether her husbandhad also gone back to his work at the store, she replied:

  "Oh, bless you, no, sir; he's gone off on his honeymoon!"

  A KICKIN'

  A newspaper correspondent, writing to his paper from the mountain regionof Eastern Tennessee about twenty-five years ago, had the following tosay:

  "These mountain people have some occasional times of recreation. I wasat one recently. A few days ago I received an invitation to 'a Kickin'.'In this neighborhood every well-regulated family has a clumsy,old-fashioned loom to weave the wool of the mountain sheep into fabricsfor home consumption. Some of this material requires to be fulled, andto do this 'a Kickin'' is instituted, and it was to one of thesegatherings that your correspondent was invited. It was held at one ofthe houses, common in this section, with a big fireplace and no windows,located on the banks of the Spillcorn Branch. The envoy with theinvitation was diplomatic. 'Hev ye ever bin to a Kickin' afore?' queriedhe. I told him I had, and I had, too, in Pennsylvania at that, and theonly one I ever saw before. 'Would ye like to go to one of our Kickin'sdown yere?' I responded that it would certainly afford me greatpleasure. 'Then,' said the mountaineer, 'they're a-goin' to hev aKickin' over in Spillcorn to-night, an' you kin come over.'

  "Not wanting to miss the overture, I went early. The house was unusuallylarge and had one room, with a bed in each corner. Quite a number ofstrapping boys and girls had collected, and everything bore the aspectof a funeral. The Kickers were ranged around on chairs with that owlishsilence that goes with awkwardness and having nothing to say. Presentlyone of the girls whispered something to another girl near by her, andthey slipped out by the back door, and then every girl in the housebroke for the door like a lot of sheep going through a gap in the fence.Then the masculine tongue broke loose and Babel reigned, until a fewminutes later, when the girls came in, and the funeral was resumed. Isat in one corner with my chair tilted back, taking observations, whennot engaged in fighting off a human gad-fly who was pestering me withquestions of national politics.

  "Presently the old woman said they might as well begin. If there wassilence before, pandemonium broke loose now, and everybody waselectrified. The old man went out on the porch and rolled in a web ofcoarse woolen fab
ric, containing a hundred yards or more, and unrolledit in a loose pile on the floor. Then the boys and girls took off theirshoes and stockings. The boys rolled up their pantaloons as far as theycould get them, while they arranged fourteen chairs in a circle in themiddle of the floor, with the pile of goods in the center. The oldwoman, who looked for all the world like one of the witches in Macbeth,poured gourdfull after gourdfull of hot water on the material, until itwas soaking wet, and then daubed soft soap with a liberal hand over thewhole.

  "Then the Kickers sat down, boys and girls alternating. The girlsgathered up their skirts and sat down on them. They had a bed-cord, withthe ends tied so that when the Kickers were seated they could grasp thisrope, which was passed around from hand to hand, and hold on while theykicked.

  "Everybody now was talking at once, and the confusion was that of amadhouse. The gad-fly yelled at me that if 'Pennsylvany went Dimmycraticit was all gone to the dogs'--and the kicking began.

  "It will be seen that it required constant and vigorous attention tobusiness, pounding that sloppy mass of woolen with bare feet, untileverything rattled, to keep it from being kicked over on those who weredisposed to be slow. Twenty-eight naked feet would be kicking into thepile with all the rapidity and strength their owners possessed, whilethe soapsuds flew up to the rafters.

  "Everybody laughed, and yelled, and screamed, and kicked till theirfaces grew red and their eyes fairly stood out in their heads. The floorgrew as slippery as soap and water could make it, and every now andthen some chair would slip and its occupant sit down suddenly on thefloor, and, holding on to the rope, would pull the whole crowd over in afloundering, laughing, yelling pile.

  "Then everybody would pant and take a rest and sit down again. The girlswould hitch up their impedimenta to a safer distance, and theperformance would begin all over again, and thus with relays for twohours. Only one accident occurred. There was one big fat girl theycalled Loweezy, who looked like a human featherbed with a string tiedaround it. Louisa was doing her level best to kick the pile over on heropposite, and had gathered both feet and let fly like a pile-driver, andwas about to repeat the operation, when, at the critical moment, herchair shot out backward and Louisa sat down in a puddle of soapsuds,with what Augusta Evans in one of her novels calls a sound like thewreck of matter and the crash of worlds. What little breath was in herwas knocked out, and it was unknown for a brief space whether it wouldever get back. But she got up, and was duly escorted by her femalecompanions to the back porch for needed repairs. The old man threw a fewmore pine-knots on the fire, and Louisa returned and spread herselfbefore the cheerful blaze in a manner calculated to do the most good.Then when everybody was tired out the work was pronounced completed, thewreck was cleaned off the floor, and supper prepared."

  HE WARNED HER

  Last summer the congregation of a little kirk in the highlands ofScotland was greatly disturbed and mystified by the appearance in itsmidst of an old English lady, who made use of an ear trumpet during thesermon, such an instrument being entirely unknown in those simple parts.There was much discussion of the matter, and it was finally decided thatone of the elders, who had great local reputation as a man of parts,should be deputed to settle the question. On the next Sabbath theunconscious offender again made her appearance and again produced thetrumpet, whereupon the chosen elder rose from his seat and marched downthe aisle to where the old lady sat, and, entreating her with anupraised finger, said sternly: "The first toot an' ye're oot!"

  INCORRIGIBLE

  The teacher in a public school had an incorrigible girl to deal with,and for the twentieth time had taken her aside for a littleheart-to-heart talk on the subject of conduct, and was apparently makinga good impression on the child's mind, for she was attentive andobservant as she never had been before, not taking her eyes off theteacher's face while she was talking, so that the teacher was inwardlycongratulating herself, until the scholar broke in with:

  "Why, Miss Mary Jane, when you talk your upper jaw doesn't move a bit!"

  A DUTCH CONUNDRUM

  A number of gentlemen from different parts of the country were lodgingat one of the hotels in Atlantic City. It was their custom to amusethemselves at table by relating anecdotes and conundrums. One of themen, a Pennsylvania Dutchman, was always greatly delighted at thesejokes and laughed louder than the rest, but never related anythinghimself. He couldn't think of anything to say, and being so much ralliedfor his standing failure to contribute to the general fund, hedetermined that the next time he was called on he would have somethingto relate. So he went to one of the waiters and asked him if he knew anygood jokes or conundrums. The waiter said he did, and gave him thefollowing:

  "It is my father's child, and my mother's child, and yet it is not mysister or my brother," telling him at the same time that it was himself.

  Hans bore it well in mind, and the next day at dinner he suddenly burstout with, "I've got a conundrum for you!" "Let's have it!" exclaimed hiscompanions.

  "Vell--here it iss. It iss my fader's child, and it iss my mudder'schild, and yet it wass not my sister nor my brudder. Now, vat wass dot?"

  "Then it must be yourself," said one of the company. And they all saidthe same. But Hans laughed them all to scorn, saying, "Diss time Icotched you. I got you now. You wass all wrong. It wass der waiter."

  ROUGH ON THE DEACON

  The Reverend Dr. John was a country minister and was very fond ofhunting rabbits. One fall day he was out in a field along the publicroad at his favorite pastime, and had located a rabbit. Just then hespied one of his deacons coming down the road. Thinking to play a trickon the deacon, he pulled up the collar of the old coat he was wearing,drew down the rim of his slouch hat, humped together and made himself asunrecognizable as possible. He then turned his back to the road andbegan to take a very deliberate aim. The deacon was interested. Hestopped in the road. He walked over to the fence, and leaning on the toprail, he called out, "Give him h----l!" The Reverend gentleman shot therabbit, and then turned around--but the deacon was off on a run, norcould the minister get anywhere near him for six weeks.

  RABBITS ENOUGH

  The same Reverend Dr. John was fond of telling a good story about aneighboring minister who served a people living up "along the bluemountain." Rabbits were very plentiful up in that section, and in thefall of the year when this minister went on a round of pastoralvisitation amongst his people, they fed him on rabbits wherever he came.It was rabbits in the morning, rabbits at noon, rabbits at night--friedrabbit, stewed rabbit, roasted rabbit--till the poor parson was soutterly sick of the fare that he composed a special grace at table,which ran somewhat after this fashion:

  "Rabbits young and rabbits old, Rabbits hot and rabbits cold, Rabbits tender and rabbits tough-- I thank Thee, O Lord, I've had rabbits enough!"

  COLORED APOSTLES

  The darkey preacher and one of his deacons fell to discussing thecolor-line amongst the apostles. The deacon maintained that "all de'postles was cullud pussons, 'cause don't you see, Bruddah, dat de HolyLan' is 'bout de same latitude as Africa, an' dey all jist muss a bincullud." But the parson was of a contrary opinion, declaring that while"O' co'se some on 'em mout a bin cullud, dey wa'n't all dat a way. Dar,fer 'sample, was Saint Paul--he mout a bin cullud, but den dar war SaintPetah, he wa'n't. I know he wa'n't." "An' how you know dat, Bruddah?"queried the deacon. "Wa'll, deacon," said the preacher, "Saint Petahnevah was a cullud pusson, 'case if he had a bin cullud dat dar roosterwouldn't a crowed more'n onct."

  NEAR THE END OF HIS JOURNEY

  A distinguished lawyer and politician was traveling with a pass on atrain, when an Irish woman came into the car lugging along a big basketand a bundle, and sat down near him. When the conductor came in tocollect the fares, the woman paid her money, and the conductor passed bythe lawyer without collecting anything. The good woman looked at himand said, "An' faith, an' why is it that the conductor takes the moneyof a poor
Irishwoman, an' don't ask ye for anything, an' ye seem to be arich mon?" The lawyer replied, "My good woman, I am traveling on mybeauty." The woman looked at him more carefully for a moment, and said,"An' is that so? An' then, sure, you must be near your journey's end."

  BOO!

  A Virginia farmer was trying to train a small horse for a saddle-horsefor his daughter, and was riding the animal up and down the road past ahaystack. In order to accustom the horse to sudden fright, he directedhis son to hide behind the haystack and jump out as he rode by and say,"Boo!" The boy did so, and the horse reared and plunged till he hadthrown the rider on the roadside and ran away. The old man pickedhimself up, cut a switch from a handy hedge, and was about to chastisethe boy. When the boy expostulated, declaring that he had only done whathe had been directed to do, the old man said, "Yes, I know you did, butyou let out altogether too big a Boo for such a small horse!"

  A GREAT COUNTRY

  They tried hard, but they couldn't get the Yankee tourist to admit thathe saw anything in Europe that could beat things at home. When he passedfrom Italy to Switzerland, they asked him whether he had noticed themagnificence of the Alps, and he acknowledged, "Waal, now, come to thinkof it, I guess I did pass some risin' ground." And before this they hadshowed him Vesuvius, and asked him what he thought of that, and whetherthere was anything in his country could equal it. And he said, "Pooh!Why, we've got a waterfall in my country so big that if you had it hereand turned it into your burning mountain, it would put out all that firein just six seconds."