Humor Books

"Same Old Bill, Eh Mable!" Dere Mable: Were in sunny France at last. I cant tell you much about it yet on account of its havin been so foggy since we got here. We didnt deboat in Paris as I was expectin. We sailed up a river to a town with a wall around it and got off there. I dont know what the wall was for unless to keep people in. They certinly wouldnt need one to keep anybody out of that... more...

THE PLEASANTRIES OF COGIA NASR EDDIN EFENDI ‘A breeze, which pleasant stories bears,Relicks of long departed years.’ The story goes, one of the stories of a hundred, that Cogia Nasr Eddin Efendi one day ascending into the pulpit to preach, said, ‘O believers, do ye not know what I am going to say to you?’  The congregation answered, ‘Dear Cogia Efendi, we do not know.’  Then said the... more...

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION. As I sat, one evening, idly musing on memories of roers and Boers, and contemplating the horns of a weendigo I had shot in Labrador and the head of a Moo Cow from Canada, I was roused by a ring at the door bell. A literary friend to whom I have shown your MS. says a weendigo is Ojibbeway for a cannibal. And why do you shoot poor Moo Cows?—Publisher. Mere slip of the pen.... more...

Times has changed, says Maw to herself, says she. Things ain't like what they used to be. Time was when I worked from sunup to sundown, and we didn't have no daylight-saving contraptions on the old clock, neither. The girls was too little then, and I done all the work myself—cooking, sweeping, washing and ironing, suchlike. I never got to church Sundays because I had to stay home and get... more...

LETTER I SHANGHAI, 18—. DEAR CHING-FOO: It is all settled, and I am to leave my oppressed and overburdened native land and cross the sea to that noble realm where all are free and all equal, and none reviled or abused—America! America, whose precious privilege it is to call herself the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. We and all that are about us here look over the waves longingly,... more...

Never rains where Jim is—People kickin', whinin';He goes round insistin',—"Sun is almost shinin'!" Never's hot where Jim is—When the town is sweatin';He jes' sets and answers,—"Well, I ain't a-frettin'!" Never's cold where Jim is—None of us misdoubt it,Seein' we're nigh frozen! He "ain't thought about... more...

CHAPTER I. WHY HE CHEWSES A PERFESSHUN.—HYFALUTIN PROLOG, WITH SUMBARE POSSIBILITIES.—PROSPECTUS OF THE "DAILY BUSTER." Mister Diry: I've been intending ever since I got home from Yourope, to begin ritin' in a diry, but I ain't had no time, cos my chum Jimmy and me has been puttin' in our days havin' fun. I've got to give all that sorter thing up now, cos... more...

The Author of this little work cannot allow a second edition of it to go forth to the world, unaccompanied by a few words of apology, he being desirous of imitating, in every respect, the example of distinguished writers. He begs that so much as the consciousness of being answerable for a great deal of nonsense, usually prompts a man to say, in the hope of disarming criticism, may be considered to have... more...

MELONS BY BRET HARTE As I do not suppose the most gentle of readers will believe that anybody's sponsors in baptism ever wilfully assumed the responsibility of such a name, I may as well state that I have reason to infer that Melons was simply the nickname of a small boy I once knew. If he had any other, I never knew it. Various theories were often projected by me to account for this strange... more...

INTRODUCTION Between 1710 and 1729 Anthony Collins was lampooned, satirized, and gravely denounced from pulpit and press as England’s most insidious defiler of church and state. Yet within a year of his death he became the model of a proper country gentleman, ... he had an opulent Fortune, descended to him from his Ancestors, which he left behind him unimpair’d: He lived on his own Estate in the... more...