Atchoo! Sneezes from a Hilarious Vaudevillian

Always ready to impart information to the inquiring mind of youth, his fond parent replied such was the common saying, which might be accepted as truth.

"Well, I am glad of that," said the boy, heaving a genuine sigh of relief, "because then our old tortoise-shell's got eight coming to her."

I'm afraid my smallest chap is going to take after his proud father – it's about time, since I've taken after him on many an occasion.

For instance now, at school, in the course of his astronomy lesson, the teacher happened to ask:

"What supports the sun in the heavens?"

"Why, its beams, of course," was the prompt answer given by the flower of the family.

He was not encouraged to exercise the propensity further.

But it is not always the boys who can be depended on to furnish material for a good story.

I knew a little tot of a girl once, Helen they called her, the pride and joy of a young couple with whom I used to dine occasionally in my happy bachelor days.

I discovered, however, one night, that the little lady was very much afraid of the dark, just as some of her older sisters are prone to be, and all her mother's persuasive eloquence was required to induce the child to leave the brilliantly lighted dining room for her own dark bedroom.

A whispered colloquy between mother and child finally resulted in the little one's departure to her room without further protest.

When the mother returned to the dining room she explained:

"It's so easy to handle children if you just know how. I told her there was no reason to be afraid; that the dark was filled with angels, all watching over her. Now she is quite content to be left alone and – "

"Mamma! Mamma!" piped a small, far-away voice at this point, "please come quick. The angels is a-biting me."

While I was talking with Mike who should drop in but the archbishop?

Now, because a man's a priest is no reason he shouldn't have a big streak of humor in him, and the archbishop can appreciate a joke as well as the next one.

They say that when he was up in the Harlem district last winter, for the purpose of administering confirmation, he asked one nervous little girl what matrimony was, and she answered:

"A state of terrible torment, which those who enter it are compelled to undergo for a time to prepare them for a brighter and better world."

"No, no," remonstrated the pastor; "that isn't matrimony; that's the definition of purgatory."

"Leave her alone," said the archbishop; "maybe she's right. What do you or I know about it?"

Thinking to test his knowledge of history, some one once remarked in his hearing:

"I wonder who made the first after-dinner speech?"

"Adam did," replied the archbishop, promptly, "for you know we read that after he had eaten that apple down to the core, he arose and said, 'the woman tempted me'."

And you will agree with me he was pretty nearly correct that time.

I always take considerable interest in the yacht races for the America's Cup, and when my friend Donovan informed me recently that the next boat would have a wonderful rudder filled with air, to add to the buoyancy and save weight, I began to consider whether the advantages might not be offset by the new dangers accompanying a pneumatic rudder.

If a yacht should happen to get a puncture in her rudder during the race she would be compelled to drop out, owing to the difficulty of cementing or plugging it while sailing.

And in a race a yacht is liable to be on a tack at any moment.

A week ago I took a spin on my wheel, along country roads where the festive bull loiters in the shade of the tree, waiting for a victim.

If you have ever taken the trouble to notice, there are funny things sometimes happening on these dusty highways of the hobos, and more than a few times the shrewd city man finds himself the sport of Rube's wit.

Having become somewhat confused as to my bearings on this particular occasion, I thought to make inquiries of a slab-sided youth, who leaned on a fence and sucked at a straw meditatively.

"I say, my good fellow, am I on the right road to Jericho?" I asked, with my most patronizing smile.

He surveyed me a minute and then said slowly:

"Ya-as, stranger, but I kinder reckon you're goin' in the wrong direcshun."

Say, as I was walking along Sixth Avenue a man thumped me on the back and yelled out:

"Sure, Michael, ye're the broth av a bhoy. Len' me ten."

And I did; I couldn't refuse it. That's like the Irish; they're so hearty and will share your last cent.

There's one bright Irishman that I'm greatly interested in. Terence Sullivan came over here with the idea that he could pick up money in the streets; and sure enough the first day he landed he found a nice new ten-dollar bill on one of the seats in Battery Park. Since then he's gone on doing well.

Sullivan was never much of a reader, and I had often wondered at this until on a certain occasion he gave his prejudice an airing.

"And faith," said he, "Oi don't see the since in noospapers. They kin only print what's already happened."

As affairs prospered with the honest fellow, like all true-hearted Irishmen, he must needs send for the mother, and install her in a comfortable home.

I remember meeting the old lady once, and under conditions that often make me smile.

I had a friend, a lawyer, who had an office away up in one of the skyscrapers downtown, and here Mrs. Sullivan, after much persuasion, had been induced to come and pay her rent.

The lawyer's office was on one of the upper floors of a large office building.

After the rent had been paid and the receipt given, the old woman was shown out into the hallway by the office boy.

I found her in the hallway a few minutes later, when I chanced along. She was wandering about opening doors and otherwise acting in a strange manner.

"What are you looking for?" I asked.

"Shure," she said, in her simplicity, "I'm lookin' for the little closet I came up in."

I suppose you will believe me when I tell you that my theatrical ventures have frequently brought me in contact with ripe episodes that impressed themselves strongly upon my memory.

Sometimes they were too ripe, and gave occasion for much toil ere they could be wholly eradicated from my unfortunate coat.

I long ago lost my taste for eggs in any shape.