"Good-morning, gentlemen."

   The old farmer and his wife visited the menagerie. When they halted before the hippopotamus cage, he remarked admiringly:

   "Darn'd curi's fish, ain't it, ma?"

   "That ain't a fish," the wife announced. "That's a rep-tile."

   It was thus that the argument began. It progressed to a point of such violence that the old lady began belaboring the husband with her umbrella. The old man dodged and ran, with the wife in pursuit. The trainer had just opened the door of the lions' cage, and the farmer popped in. He crowded in behind the largest lion and peered over its shoulder fearfully at his wife, who, on the other side of the bars, shook her umbrella furiously.

   "Coward!" she shouted. "Coward!"

   The colored man, passing through the market, saw a turtle for the first time, and surveyed it with great interest. The creature's head was withdrawn, but as the investigator fumbled about the shell, it shot forward and nipped his finger. With a howl of pain he stuck his finger in his mouth, and sucked it.

   "What's the matter?" the fishmonger asked with a grin.

   "Nothin'—jest nothin' a tall," the colored man answered thickly. "Ah was only wonderin' whether Ah had been bit or stung."

   The child came to his mother in tears.

   "Oh, mama," he confessed, "I broke a tile in the hearth."

   "Never mind, dear," the mother consoled. "But how ever did you come to do it?"

   "I was pounding it with father's watch?"

   One foot in the grave, and the other slipping.

   On Tuesday, a colored maid asked her mistress for permission to be absent on the coming Friday. She

   explained that she wished to attend the funeral of her fiancé. The mistress gave the required permission sympathetically.

   "But you're not wearing mourning, Jenny," she remarked.

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