mother."--_Punch_.


Yes, life's like poker sure enough. It pays to know just when to
bluff.


Half-way up the steep hill the stage-coach stopped. For the seventh
time the driver climbed down from his seat and opened and slammed the
rear door.

"What do you do that for?" asked a passenger, whose curiosity had got
the better of him.

"Sh-h; spake aisy. Don't let th' mare 'ear yer," cautioned the driver.
"Every toime she 'ears th' door shut she thinks some one has got down,
and it starrts 'er up quicker loike."


Ollie James is a big man personally and politically. He is a United
States senator from Kentucky, and he weighs a trifle more than three
hundred and fifty pounds.

On one occasion, in traveling from New York to Washington, he barely
caught the midnight train, and discovered that the only berth left was
an upper. Having learned from experience that the process of coiling
up his three hundred and fifty pounds and his six feet three inches in
an upper berth was tough stuff, he was indignant. He was particularly
enraged when he noticed that the lower directly under his berth was
occupied by a small man who tipped the scales at not more than a