Best Short Stories

"Great Scot! Look at Skinny, usin' his iron all the way round!"

THE DIGNITIES OF OFFICE

This story--which is perhaps true and perhaps not--is being told in many Italian messrooms. On one of his royal tours, King Victor Emmanuel spent the night in a small country town, where the people showed themselves unusually eager in caring for his comfort. So when he had gone to bed, he was surprised to be wakened by a servant who wanted to put clean sheets on his bed. However, he waited good-naturedly while it was done, and wished the servant good-night. He had dozed off to sleep, when he was roused for the second time by a rap on the door; and the servant reappeared, asking to change the sheets again.

Naturally, the King asked why the change was made so often. The servant answered reverently, "For oneself, one changes the sheets every week; for an honored friend, every day; but for a king, every hour."

FAME

A Long Island teacher was recounting the story of Red Riding Hood. After describing the woods and the wild animals that flourished therein, she added:

"Suddenly Red Riding Hood heard a great noise. She turned about, and what do you suppose she saw standing there, gazing at her and showing all its sharp, white teeth?"

"Teddy Roosevelt!" volunteered one of the boys.

NO PEACE FOR HIM

Willie was out walking with his mother, when she thought she saw a boy on the other side of the street making faces at her darling.

"Willie," asked mother, "is that horrid boy making faces at you?"

"He is," replied Willie, giving his coat a tug. "Now, mother, don't start any peace talk--you just hold my coat for about five minutes."

BOILED

Not long ago the editor of an English paper ordered a story of a certain length, but when the story arrived he discovered that the author had written several hundred words too many.

The paper was already late in going to press so there was no alternative--the story must be condensed to fit the allotted space. Therefore the last few paragraphs were cut down to a single sentence. It read thus:

"The Earl took a Scotch high-ball, his hat, his departure, no notice of his pursuers, a revolver out of his hip pocket, and finally, his life."

FORCED INTO IT

Even the excessive politeness of some men may be explained on purely practical grounds. Of a certain suburbanite, a friend said:

"I heard him speaking most beautifully of his wife to another lady on the train just now. Rather unusual in a man these days."

"Not under the circumstances," said the other man. "That was a new cook he was escorting out."

HOODOOED

Appealing to a lady for aid, an old darky told her that through the Dayton flood he had lost everything he had in the world, including his wife and six children.

"Why," said the lady, "I have seen you before and I have helped you. Were you not the colored man who told me you had lost your wife and six children by the sinking of the Titanic?"

"Yeth, ma'am, dat wuz me. Mos' unfort'nit man dat eber wuz. Kain't keep a fam'ly nohow."

SAFE DEPOSIT

An old lady, who was sitting on the porch of a hotel at Asheville, North Carolina, where also there were a number of youngsters, was approached by one of them with this query:

"Can you crack nuts?"

The old lady smiled and said: "No, my dear, I can't. I lost all my teeth years ago."

"Then," said the boy, extending two hands full of walnuts, "please hold these while I go and get some more."

THE MATTER WITH KANSAS

Governor Capper, of Kansas, recently pointed out what he deemed to be the "matter with Kansas." The average Kansan, he said, gets up in the morning in a house made in Michigan, at the sound of an alarm clock made in Illinois; puts on his Missouri overalls; washes his hands with Cincinnati soap in a Pennsylvania basin; sits down to a Grand Rapids table; eats Battle Creek breakfast food and Chicago bacon cooked on a Michigan range; puts New York harness on a span of Missouri mules and hitches them to a South Bend wagon, or starts up his Illinois tractor with a Moline plow attached. After the day's work he rides down town in a Detroit automobile, buys a box of St. Louis candy for his wife, and spins back home, where he listens to music "canned" in New Jersey.

THE BETTER WAY

Charles M. Schwab, congratulated in Pittsburgh on a large war order contract which he had just received from one of the warring nations, said:

"Some people call it luck, but they are mistaken. Whatever success I have is due to hard work and not to luck.

"I remember a New York business man who crossed the ocean with me one winter when the whole country was suffering from hard times.

"'And you. Mr. Schwab,' the New Yorker said, 'are, like the rest of us, I suppose, hoping for better things?'

"'No, my friend,' I replied. 'No, I am not hoping for better things. I've got my sleeves rolled up and I'm working for them.'"

A HORSE PSYCHOLOGIST

Twice as the horse-bus slowly wended its way up the steep hill the door at the rear opened and slammed. At first those inside paid little heed, but the third time they demanded to know why they should be disturbed in this fashion.

"Whist!" cautioned the driver. "Don't spake so loud. He'll overhear us."

"Who?"

"The hoss. Spake low. Shure Oo'm desavin' the crayture. Every toime he 'ears th' door close he thinks wan o' yez is gettin' down ter walk up th' hill, an' that sort o' raises 'is sperrits."

STILL NOT SATISFIED

Mrs. Higgins was an incurable grumbler. She grumbled at everything and everyone. But at last the vicar thought he had found something about which she could make no complaint; the old lady's crop of potatoes was certainly the finest for miles round.

"Ah, for once you must be well pleased," he said, with a beaming smile, as he met her in the village street. "Everyone's saying how splendid your potatoes are this year."

The old lady glowered at him as she answered:

"They're not so poor. But where's the bad ones for the pigs?"

A COAXER

The latest American church device for "raising the wind" is what a religious paper describes as "some collection-box." The inventor hails from Oklahoma. If a member of the congregation drops in a twenty-five cent piece or a coin of larger value, there is silence. If it is a ten-cent piece a bell rings, a five-cent piece sounds a whistle, and a cent fires a blank cartridge. If any one pretends to be asleep when the box passes, it awakens him with a watchman's rattle, and a kodak takes his portrait.

AUTOMATIC "EFFICIENCY"

A young lady telephone operator recently attended a watch-night service and fell asleep during the sermon. At the close the preacher said, "We will now sing hymn number three forty-one--three forty-one."

The young lady, just waking in time to hear the number, yawned and said, "The line is busy."

THE WINNER

While Chopin probably did not time his "Minute Waltz" to exactly sixty seconds, some auditors insist that it lives up to its name. Mme. Theodora Surkow-Ryder on one of her tours played the "Minute Waltz" as an encore, first telling her audience what it was. Thereupon a huge man in a large riding suit took out an immense silver watch, held it open almost under her nose, and gravely proceeded to time her. The pianist's fingers flew along the keys, and her anxiety was rewarded when the man closed the watch with a loud slap and said in a booming voice: "Gosh! She's done it."

TAXED TO CAPACITY

A friendly American who has just arrived in London brings a story of Edison. The great inventor was present at a dinner in New York to which Count Bernstorff had also found his way. The Count spoke of the number of new ships which Germany had built since the war began. He was listened to respectfully enough, although a little coldly, because the sympathies of the party were not with him or Germany.

When he had stopped, Edison looked up and said in a still, small voice, and with a serious face:

"Must not the Kiel Canal be very crowded, your Excellency?"

GASTRONOMICAL

A man and a woman entered a café.

"Do you want oysters, Louise?" asked the man, as he glanced over the bill of fare.

"Yes, George," answered the woman, "and I want a hassock, too."

George nodded, and as he handed the waiter his written order, he said:

"Bring a hassock for the lady."

"Yes, sir," answered the waiter, "one hassock."

A moment later the waiter, apparently puzzled, approached the man, and leaning over him, said:

"Excuse me, sir, but I have only been here two days and do not want to make any mistakes. Will the lady have the hassock broiled or fried?"

A LITERAL CENSOR

Joe T. Marshall, formerly of Kansas, recently became the father of an eight-pound boy, and wished to cable the news to his family in America.

The censor refused to allow the message to go through.

"What's the matter?" Marshall asked indignantly.

"We aren't permitted to announce the arrival of Americans in France!"

UP TO HIM

David Belasco was smiling at the extravagant attentions that are lavished by the rich upon pet dogs. He spoke of the canine operations for appendicitis, the canine tooth crownings, the canine wardrobes, and then he said:

"How servants hate these pampered curs! At a house where I was calling one cold day the fat and pompous butler entered the drawing-room and said:

"'Did you ring, madam?'

"'Yes, Harrison, I wish you to take Fido out walking for two hours.'

"Harrison frowned slightly. 'But Fido won't follow me, madam,' he said.

"'Then, Harrison, you must follow Fido.'"

NOT IN THE TACTICS

A company of very new soldiers were out on a wide heath, practising the art of taking cover. The officer in charge of them turned to one of the rawest of his men.

"Get down behind that hillock there," he ordered, sternly, "and mind, not a move or a sound!"

A few minutes later he looked around to see if they were all concealed, and, to his despair, observed something wriggling behind the small mound. Even as he watched the movements became more frantic.

"I say, you there!" he shouted, angrily, "do you know you are giving our position away to the enemy?"

"Yes, sir," said the recruit, in a voice of cool desperation, "and do you know that this is an anthill?"

A GUILTY CONSCIENCE

A young fellow who was the crack sprinter of his town--somewhere in the South--was unfortunate enough to have a very dilatory laundress. One evening, when he was out for a practice run in his rather airy and abbreviated track costume, he chanced to dash past the house of that dusky lady, who at the time was a couple of weeks in arrears with his washing.

He had scarcely reached home again when the bell rang furiously and an excited voice was wafted in from the porch:

"Foh de Lawd's sake! won't you-all tell Marse Bob please not to go out no moh till I kin git his clo'es round to him?'"

MAKING IT FIT

"Did you hear about the defacement of Mr. Skinner's tombstone?" asked Mr. Brown a few days after the funeral of that eminent captain of industry.

"No, what was it?" inquired his neighbor curiously.

"Someone added the word 'friends' to the epitaph."

"What was the epitaph?"

"'He did his best.'"

A LESSON IN MANNERS

This is the way the agent got a lesson in manners. He called at a business office, and saw nobody but a prepossessing though capable-appearing young woman.

"Where's the boss?" he asked abruptly.

"What is your business?" she asked politely.

"None of yours!" he snapped. "I got a proposition to lay before this firm, and I want to talk to somebody about it."

"And you would rather talk to a gentleman?"

"Yes."

"Well," answered the lady, smiling sweetly, "so would I. But it seems that it's impossible for either one of us to have our wish, so we'll have to make the best of it. State your business, please!"

AN UNFORTUNATE AFFAIR

"Look here," yelled the infuriated bridegroom of a day, dashing wildly into the editor's room of the country weekly; "what do you mean by such an infernal libel on me in your account of our wedding?"

"What's the matter?" asked the editor calmly. "Didn't we say that after your wedding tour you would make your home at the Old Manse?"

"Yes," howled the newly made benedict, "and just see how you've spelled it."

And the editor looked and read:

  After their wedding tour the newly married couple will   make their home at the Old Man's.

CURIOSITY

"Children," said the Sunday-school superintendent, "this picture illustrates to-day's lesson: Lot was warned to take his wife and daughters and flee out of Sodom. Here are Lot and his daughters, with his wife just behind them; and there is Sodom in the background. Now, has any girl or boy a question before we take up the study of the lesson? Well, Susie?"

"Pleathe, thir," lisped the latest graduate from the infant class, "where ith the flea?"

THE SIMPLE POLITICAL LIFE

The American characteristic which demands ornaments and "fixin's" to all ceremonies, as contrasted with genuine simplicity, is thus scored by Judge Pettingill of Chanute:

"My ambition in life," said the Judge, "is to be the organizer of a lodge without flub-dub, gold tassel uniforms, red tape ritual, a regiment of officers with high-sounding titles, a calisthenic drill of idiotic signs and grips, a goat, and members who call each other 'brother.' I would name the presiding officer 'it,' and its first by-law would provide for the expulsion of the member who advocated the wearing of a lodge pin."

PIGTAILS AND MOUSTACHES

When Wu Ting Fang was Minister to the United States from China, he visited Chicago. A native of the Windy City said to him at a reception:

"Mr. Wu, I see there is a movement in China to abolish the pigtails you wear. Why do you wear the foolish thing, anyhow?"

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