Page:Dave Porter and his Classmates.djvu/225

Rh mind of a story I once heard while traveling in Egypt with Noah, looking for a typewriter which was lost overboard from the ark. A little boy went to a hardware store for his dad and hung around waiting to be waited on. At last a clerk asked, 'Well, little boy, what do you want?' 'Oh,' says the little boy, 'I want a fire engine, an' a hobby horse, an' a automobile, an' a lot o' things, but papa he wants a bottle of glue, an' he says if it don't stick he'll stick you for it!' Now, that's the same boy who went to the courthouse to get courtplaster for his mother and then went down to the henhouse to look for egg plants."

There was considerable applause over this opening, and Shadow continued:

"That hand-clapping puts me in mind of another story. A would-be actor had joined a barnstorming company, and the company opened in a little place on Staten Island where the mosquitoes are manufactured by the ton, gross, or hogshead, just as you want 'em. Well, as soon as the play commenced, the would-be actor thought he heard a lot of applause. Says he to the scene-shifter: 'We've got 'em a-going, haven't we?' 'I don't know if you have or not,' answered the sceneshifter. 'I know the mosquitoes have some of 'em a-going, by the way they're slapping at 'em!' Well, that company busted up and the would-be actor had to come home on a trolley-car because he