Atchoo! Sneezes from a Hilarious Vaudevillian

And he yanked off the beard of one of the supers, threw it on the floor and stamped on it.

"And look at that wig!" and a bit of false head-dressing followed the whiskers to the floor, and was shredded under the American's angry heel. "And that one, too!" Another wig went to destruction. "And that nose! – that nose!"

Here he made a grab at the very prominent and highly Roman nasal organ of a very short super, and tweaked it as through he would throw it, too, to the floor and stamp on it.

The super's eyes filled with tears, he uttered a cry of pain, indignantly grabbed and pulled away the manager's wrenchlike fingers, and then backing away, bowed and explained very humbly:

"Hi begs your pardon, sir, but that's me hown."

But, after all, it takes a young woman of the present day, to rub it in with a free hand.

There's Miss Gutting, for instance, whose father roped me in on many a deal on Wall Street. He made his little pile, and of course the daughter is considered a great catch, and among those who hover about the bright flame are several young society swells whose brains have never come out of their swaddling clothes.

She gave Softleigh an awful jolt the other day when he thought to get off a poem, which somehow seemed to lose all its point in his hands.

"I think, Mr. Softleigh, you will become quite a distinguished man if you live long enough," she said.

"Ah, thanks, awfully, doncher know. It's very good of you to say that. By the way, what do you – aw – think I will be distinguished for?"

"Longevity," said the minx.

It was cruel, perhaps, but I've no doubt she enjoyed it.

But Miss Gutting sometimes finds her match in the grim old Wall Street operator whom she calls papa.

She has a passion for hats, and of course her Easter creation was a dandy.

"Isn't it a duck of a hat?" she asked the old gentleman, parading it before him.

"Certainly; only I'd call it a pelican," he said, grimly glancing at the account on his desk, "judging from the size of the bill."

I suppose you've noticed that I've done a good deal of chin-scratching to-night. Some people do that when they're thinking hard, but not so with me. Oh, no, the simple fact is I got shaved by a new barber and I guess I'll grow a beard in future. Some people say there's lots of comedy in a barber shop. They mean tragedy. Again some people think there's poetry in the prattlings of the knight of the brush. I know one man who thinks different. Little Archie Rickets has a horror of the tribe and has a scheme to head 'em off.

Whenever he has to patronize a strange barber during the course of his travels, it is his invariable custom to immediately hand out a piece of money before sitting down in the chair, and whisper:

"Here, put this in your pocket for yourself."

The barber, delighted of course, always declares that he has never before received a tip before commencing operations.

Whereupon Rickets will frown and cut him short with:

"That is not a tip – it's hush money."

And in every case the barber tumbles to the racket, and puts a lock on his lips.

Rickets was telling me the other day about a wonderful bookkeeper his father used to have in his office.

"An all-around athlete," he declared, with a grin.

"Indeed," I replied, knowing he had a card up his sleeve, for Rickets is quite prone to have his little joke.

"Yes, indeed," he continued, "you ought to have seen him balancing the books. Why, he could keep the day-book in the air while he juggled the ledger on his nose and totaled up the journal with either right or left hand. Oh, he was fine, but pop had to let him go."

"How was that?" I asked.

"He was too much of an adept at the horizontal bar."

"Yes," I remarked, "that same bar has doubtless been the cause of many a fine fellow's downfall. But it is becoming the fashion now among men who lead a strenuous life to give up their tippling. I was just reading that Santos Dumont, the celebrated Brazilian air-ship navigator, does not indulge at all."

"Quite right," remarked Rickets, soberly; "probably he is afraid of taking a drop too much."

There's poor old Juggins, who used to be a great friend of mine till he took to drink.

I knew he would get his desserts if he continued his habit of a periodical spree, and the other day sure enough he turned up in the pen when the cases of drunk and disorderly were called.

"Officer," said the police-court judge, "what made you think the prisoner was drunk?"

"Well, your honor, as he was going along the sidewalk he ran plump into a street lamppost. He backed away, replaced his hat on his head, and firmly started forward again, but once more ran into the post.

"Four times he tried to get by the post, but each time his uncertain steps took him right into the iron pole.

"After the fourth attempt and failure to pass the post he backed off, fell to the pavement, and clutching his head in his hands, murmured, as one lost to all hope:

"'Lost! Lost in an impenetrable forest.'"

"Ten days;" said the court.

Juggins has been given to this sort of thing ever since he lost his chance of marrying a belle in Washington, and the daughter of a rich senator.

As a newspaper man Juggins was rather free with his criticism of public men and measures, and one of his letters, written before he became infatuated with the young lady in question, had rubbed it in so hard that the senator had gone to the trouble of finding out just who the writer was.

His hour of revenge arrived when Juggins summoned up courage to ask for his daughter's hand.

Then he arose in all his awful majesty.

"Only a year ago, Mr. Juggins, you referred to me emphatically as an old pirate," he said.

Juggins was naturally overwhelmed.

His sins had found him out.

Of course he tried to stammer out excuses, and how he had regretted his indiscreet act ever since.

"No, I'm not a pirate, Mr. Juggins, I wish you to distinctly understand that – I'm only a sort of freebooter. This (biff-bing) won't cost you a cent."

And Juggins went out of that senatorial mansion a sadder and a wiser man.

That was why he took to drink.