ACCIDENTS

The late Dr. Henry Thayer, founder of Thayer's Laboratory in Cambridge, was walking along a street one winter morning. The sidewalk was sheeted with ice and the doctor was making his way carefully, as was also a woman going in the opposite direction. In seeking to avoid each other, both slipped and they came down in a heap. The polite doctor was overwhelmed and his embarrassment paralyzed his speech, but the woman was equal to the occasion.
"Doctor, if you will be kind enough to rise and pick out your legs, I will take what remains," she said cheerfully.

"Help! Help!" cried an Italian laborer near the mud flats of the Harlem river.
"What's the matter there?" came a voice from the construction shanty.
"Queek! Bringa da shov'! Bringa da peek! Giovanni's stuck in da mud."
"How far in?"
"Up to hees knees."
"Oh, let him walk out."
"No, no! He no canna walk! He wronga end up!"

There once was a lady from Guam,
Who said, "Now the sea is so calm
I will swim, for a lark";
But she met with a shark.
Let us now sing the ninetieth psalm.

BRICKLAYER (to mate, who had just had a hodful of bricks fall on his feet)—"Dropt 'em on yer toe! That's nothin'. Why, I seen a bloke get killed stone dead, an' 'e never made such a bloomin' fuss as you're doin'."

A preacher had ordered a load of hay from one of his parishioners. About noon, the parishioner's little son came to the house crying lustily. On being asked what the matter was, he said that the load of hay had tipped over in the street. The preacher, a kindly man, assured the little fellow that it was nothing serious, and asked him in to dinner.
"Pa wouldn't like it," said the boy.
But the preacher assured him that he would fix it all right with his father, and urged him to take dinner before going for the hay. After dinner the boy was asked if he were not glad that he had stayed.
"Pa won't like it," he persisted.
The preacher, unable to understand, asked the boy what made him think his father would object.
"Why, you see, pa's under the hay," explained the boy.

There was an old Miss from Antrim,
Who looked for the leak with a glim.
Alack and alas!
The cause was the gas.
We will now sing the fifty-fourth hymn.
—Gilbert K. Chesterton.

There was a young lady named Hannah,
Who slipped on a peel of banana.
More stars she espied
As she lay on her side
Than are found in the Star Spangled Banner.
A gentleman sprang to assist her;
He picked up her glove and her wrister;
"Did you fall, Ma'am?" he cried;
"Did you think," she replied,
"I sat down for the fun of it, Mister?"

At first laying down, as a fact fundamental,
That nothing with God can be accidental.
—Longfellow.


In a North of England town recently a company of local amateurs produced Hamlet, and the following account of the proceedings appeared in the local paper next morning:
"Last night all the fashionables and elite of our town gathered to witness a performance of Hamlet at the Town Hall. There has been considerable discussion in the press as to whether the play was written by Shakespeare or Bacon. All doubt can be now set at rest. Let their graves be opened; the one who turned over last night is the author."

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature.—Shakespeare.

To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart;
To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold,
Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold—
For this the tragic muse first trod the stage.
—Pope.