Humor Books

CHAPTER ONETHE JUDGES OF ENGLAND Mr. Justice Darling, whose witty remarks from the Bench are so much appreciated by his audiences in Court, and, it is rumoured, are not always received with approval by his brother judges, says, in his amusing book Scintillæ Juris: "It is a common error to suppose that our law has no sense of humour, because for the most part the judges who expound it have... more...

CHAPTER I I was down on the card to make a quick jump to Pittsburg a few nights ago, and I'm a lemon if I didn't draw an upper berth in the sleeping car thing! Say! I'll be one of a party of six to go before Congress and tell all I know about an upper berth. And I'd like to tell it right now while I'm good and hot around the collar. The upper berth in a sleeping car is the same... more...

PREFACE. Again it come to pass, in the fulness of time, that my companion, Josiah Allen, see me walk up and take my ink stand off of the manteltry piece, and carry it with a calm and majestick gait to the corner of the settin' room table devoted by me to literary pursuits. And he sez to me: "What are you goin' to tackle now, Samantha?" And sez I, with quite a good deal of dignity,... more...

On a grassy bank, beside a meandering stream, sat two gentlemen averaging forty years of age. The day was sultry, and, weary of casting their lines without effect, they had stuck their rods in the bank, and sought, in a well-filled basket of provisions and copious libations of bottled porter, to dissipate their disappointment. "Ain't this jolly? and don't you like a day's fishing,... more...

Biographical Edgar Wilson Nye was whole-souled, big-hearted and genial. Those who knew him lost sight of the humorist in the wholesome friend. He was born August 25, 1850, in Shirley, Piscataquis County, Maine. Poverty of resources drove the family to St. Croix Valley, Wisconsin, where they hoped to be able to live under conditions less severe. After receiving a meager schooling, he entered a... more...

It is agreed on all Hands, that Betty Ireland was a younger Daughter by a second Venter; let, at first, to run wild in the Woods, cloathed with Skins and fed with Acorns; till a famous Hunter took her in his Toils, and, liking her Countenance, gave her to a Son of his, a Lad, to bring up. The Girl was born to a good Estate, but ill tenanted, and run to waste. Her Farms neither meared or bounded, her... more...

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FOREWORDA SMALL phial, I doubt not, could contain the attar of the epigrammatic literature of all time. Few of the perfumes of this diminutive form of wit and satire have survived. Pretty and scented vaporings, most of the thousands and thousands of them, that have died on the air of the foibles of their day.Yet how the pungent ones can persist! The racy old odors, which are as new as now, that still... more...

GRAINS OF TRUTH BY BILL NYE A young friend has written to me as follows: "Could you tell me something of the location of the porcelain works in Sèvres, France, and what the process is of making those beautiful things which come from there? How is the name of the town pronounced? Can you tell me anything of the history of Mme. Pompadour? Who was the Dauphin? Did you learn anything of Louis XV... more...

Of the Rolling Stone Once upon a time in a small village in Bruce County, Province of Ontario, Dominion of Canada, there lived a man who was destined to establish a precedent. He was to prove to the world that a rolling stone is capable at times of gathering as much moss as a stationary one, and how it is possible for the rock with St. Vitus dance to become more coated than the one that is confined to... more...