More Toasts. Various
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MORE TOASTS
ABSENT-MINDEDNESS
This story is told of an absent-minded professor at Drew Theological Seminary. One evening while studying he had need of a book-mark. Seeing nothing else handy, he used his wife's scissors, which lay on the sewing-table. A few minutes later the wife wanted the scissors, but a diligent search failed to reveal them.
The next day the professor appeared before his class and opened his book. There lay the scissors. He picked them up and, holding them above his head, shouted:
"Here they are, dear!"
Yes, the class got it.
Deep in a ponderous calculation, the professor leaned over his desk. One hand held his massive brow; the other guided the pencil.
Suddenly the library door was flung open, and a nurse entered, smiling broadly.
"There's a little stranger upstairs, professor," she announced, of course referring to the very latest arrival.
"Eh?" grunted the man of learning, poring deeply over his problem.
"It's a little boy," remarked the nurse, still smiling.
"Little boy," mused the professor. "Little boy-eh? Well ask him what he wants."
A story is current concerning a professor who is reputed to be slightly absent-minded. The learned man had arranged to escort his wife one evening to the theater. "I don't like the tie you have on. I wish you would go up and put on another," said his wife.
The professor tranquilly obeyed. Moment after moment elapsed, until finally the impatient wife went upstairs to learn the cause of the delay. In his room she found her husband undressed and getting into bed.
"How will you have your roast beef?" asked the waiter.
"Well done, good and faithful servant," murmured the clerical-looking diner absent-mindedly.
See also Habit; Memory.
ACCIDENTS
Hearing a crash of glassware one morning, Mrs. Blank called to her maid in the adjoining room, "Norah, what on earth are you doing?"
"I ain't doin' nothin', mum," replied Norah; "it's done."
A big Irishman, while carrying a ladder through a crowded street had the misfortune to break a plate-glass window in a store. He immediately dropped his ladder and broke into a run, but he had been seen by the shopkeeper, who dashed after him in company with several salesmen, and was soon caught.
"Here you big loafer!" shouted the angry shopkeeper, when he had regained his breath. "You have broken my window!"
"I sure have," admitted the Celt, "and didn't you see me running home to get the money to pay for it?"
There was a man who fancied that by driving good and fast
He'd get his car across the track before the train came past;
He'd miss the engine by an inch, and make the train-hands sore.
There was a man who fancied this; there isn't any more.
ACCURACY
In one of the industrial towns in South Wales a workman met with a serious accident. The doctor was sent for, and came and examined him, had him bandaged and carried home on a stretcher, seemingly unconscious.
After he was put to bed the doctor told his wife to give him sixpennyworth of brandy when he came to himself. After the doctor had left the wife told the daughter to run and fetch threepennyworth of brandy for her father.
The old chap opened his eyes and said, in a loud voice: "Sixpenn'orth, the doctor said."
An editor had a notice stuck up above his desk on which was printed: "Accuracy! Accuracy! Accuracy!" and this notice he always pointed out to the new reporters.
One day the youngest member of the staff came in with his report of a public meeting. The editor read it through and came to the sentence: "Three thousand nine hundred ninety-nine eyes were fixed upon the speaker."
"What do you mean by making a silly blunder like that?" he demanded, wrathfully.
"But it's not a blunder," protested the youngster. "There was a one-eyed man in the audience!"
ACTORS AND ACTRESSES
FIRST ACTRESS (behind the scenes)—"Did you hear the way the public wept during my death scene?"
SECOND ACTRESS—"Yes, it must have been because they realized that it was only acted!"
"These love scenes are rotten. Can't the leading man act as if he were in love with the star?"
"Can't act at all," said the director. "Trouble is, he is in love with her."
The teacher was giving the class a natural history lecture on Australia. "There is one animal," she said, "none of you have mentioned. It does not stand up on its legs all the time. It does not walk like other animals, but takes funny little skips. What is it?" And the class yelled with one voice, "Charlie Chaplin!"
Eight-year-old Robert had been ill for nearly a month with tonsilitis, and nothing kept him contented but pictures of his favorite, Charlie Chaplin, clipped from the pages of the motion-picture pictorials.
One morning, as his mother sat beside his bed, he studied earnestly a full-page drawing of the million-dollar comedian.
"Mother," he asked, "will Charlie Chaplin go to heaven?"
"Why, yes—I hope so," answered the somewhat astonished parent.
"Gee! won't the Lord have some fun then!" was Robert's comment.
Sweeping his long hair back with an impressive gesture the visitor faced the proprietor of the film studio. "I would like to secure a place in your moving-picture company," he said.
"You are an actor?" asked the film man.
"Yes."
"Had any experience acting without audiences?"
A flicker of sadness shone in the visitor's eyes as he replied:
"Acting without audiences is what brought me here!"
It was a death-bed scene, but the director was not satisfied with the hero's acting.
"Come on!" he cried. "Put more life in your dying!"
"Pa, what's an actor?"
"An actor, my boy, is a person who can walk to the side of a stage, peer into the wings at a group of other actors waiting for their cues, a number of bored stage hands and a lot of theatrical odds and ends and exclaim, 'What a lovely view there is from this window!'"
"There were two actresses in an early play of mine," said an author, "both very beautiful; but the leading actress was thin. She quarreled one day at rehearsal with the other lady, and she ended the quarrel