Atchoo! Sneezes from a Hilarious Vaudevillian

"Begorra!" exclaimed his neighbor, sympathetically, "it can't be very pleasant for either of yez!"

Say, have you ever tried the Christian Science cure? It's simply great.

And the cost is so little, too.

Apparently there are some people though who can't see things in the right way.

They simply lack faith.

I remember when out in the country, I dropped in to see friend Wilkins, the editor of the local sheet.

He was endeavoring to give some medicine to his little chap, who writhed and twisted in contortions.

Of course it was a case of too many green apples, and I could sympathize with Teddy.

We've all been there.

Now, it happened that a good woman next door had been called in.

She was a devout Christian Scientist, and the way she assured the boy he must be deceiving himself, and there could not be anything the matter with him, would have convinced you or me right away.

But Teddy stubbornly refused to take comfort.

"I think I ought to know," he groaned. "I guess I've got inside information."

Speaking of these fads puts me in mind of the widow McCree, whose husband when alive was noted as a tough case, but he left her well provided for, and she tries to make people believe she mourns for him.

Once she even went to a medium, hoping to hear some message of consolation from the dear departed.

But I rather guess that same medium had been acquainted with Billy during his lifetime.

"Is there any message from my dear husband?" asked the widow, anxiously.

"Yes, there is," snapped the medium, "and it's hot stuff, too."

By the way, on that Old Dominion steamer there was a newly-married couple – there always is.

I soon discovered that the lady had been something of a yachtswoman, and seemed perfectly at home on the heaving ocean.

Not so the newly-made Benedict.

As soon as the swell off the capes set us to dancing he rushed to the side and started lightening the ship.

This he repeated many times, but was too game to seek his berth.

So, as night came on, they sat there, she chipper as a lark, and he about as dejected a bridegroom as could be found in seven counties.

Perhaps she thought a touch of the romantic might get him out of his mood, so she tried this:

"The moon is up, isn't it, darling?"

"Yes," I heard him reply, languidly; "that is, if I swallowed it."

It isn't often that a shrewd lawyer gets two set-backs on the same day.

Yet I once witnessed such a thing.

It was in a Western city – never mind the name.

This lawyer was cross-examining a woman who it seemed was the spouse of a burglar of considerable notoriety.

It was his intention to shatter her testimony, and he went about it in the usual browbeating way.

"Madam, you are the wife of this man?"

"Yes."

"You knew he was a burglar when you married him?"

"Yes."

"How did you come to contract a matrimonial alliance with such a man?"

"Well," the witness said, sarcastically, "I was getting old, and I had to choose between a lawyer and a burglar."

The cross-examination ended there.

In the other case, the gentleman of the green bag received even a worse dose, and he was such a bulldozing character that no one felt sorry.

"Now, sir," began the attorney, knitting his brows and preparing to annihilate the witness whom he was about to cross-examine, "you say your name is Williams? Can you prove that to be your real name? Is there anybody in the courtroom who can swear that you haven't assumed it for purposes of fraud and deceit?"

"I think you can identify me yourself," answered the witness, quietly.

"I? Where did I ever see you before, sir?" demanded the astonished lawyer.

"I put that scar over your right eye twenty-five years ago, when you were stealing peaches out of father's orchard. Yes, I'm the same Williams."

Which must have shattered some of the nerve of that same legal gentleman.

But that's nothing to the nerve of a Western landlord! One of them roped me in for fair. You see the blamed hotel burned down while I was there, and – would you believe it? – the next day I got a bill from the proprietor for a fire in my room.

I've been abroad more than once during my checkered career, the last time with a company that played the "Children of the Ghetto." When it was staged in New York, in order to get the best effect of the mob scene the manager went into the New York Ghetto and engaged the real article, employing at the same time an interpreter to explain to them in Yiddish the stage directions. The plan was successful.

But when the production was taken to London we abandoned this scheme.

The English manager had employed the usual group of cockney supers, and spent a good deal of English gold in buying make-ups for them. When our manager saw the lot he was furious.

"Why," he screamed, "that band of mutts looks like a gang of sneak thieves trying to dodge the police! They'll ruin the play! – ruin it! – do you hear me? They'll ruin it! Look at those whiskers!"