The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-04-06

her ~long-haired, eighteen-year-old nephew
appeared, after a strenuous and besmirch-
ing game Of football with a rival academy,
she cried: please, don't anybody tell Tom
that he looks like a poet. 1t makes him
so mad!"
Most Of the humor Of country converse
ton, however, is unconscious with the
lectable kind. For instance, 1 doubt IL l
shall ever outgrow the necessity of smil-
ing when I think of what a certain ex-
cellent Vermont lady replied in all serious
ness, TO her pastor, when he was urging
her TO join the church. She said that she
didn't want to join any church. She didn't
want TO go to any other place than her
husband went TO, and she was afraid if she
Joined the church that she might / think
this is the most heroic case of conjugal
loyalty that ever came to my notice.
/ was fishing one day with a very senti-
mental and poetical young man (such as
one encounters occasionally in the country,
who was also very fat in his pronunciation.
We were sitting in a fatbottomed boat on
a pond, the little silver-sided waves dane
ing all about us and slapping the bow of
our craft, when suddenly my young rural
poet heaved a deep sigh. lifted his sad,
sentimental eyes to my face, and ex-
claimed:
"Haow the water goes saoW, saow against
the boat!'
1t was a sincere and heartfelt interpre-
tation of nature, and yet 1t obliged me to
search for several moments under my seat
for the bait-can which 1 knew was not
there.
A middle-aged farmer, whose conjugal re-
iations according to all reports. had not
TO me, when speaking Of his wife: GOOD
Lordi I've spent enough on that woman TO
buy three farms. and yet, come a Sunday.
she'd ruther go of TO some holiness meetin'
than stay to hum and help me dress a
hawg!"
My wife's sister once asked a pallid little
country woman II she wasn't going to keep
a hired girl during the winter. wall, I
dunno" was the reply. Il don't feel as
il l could jest yit, but p'rhaps If | should
get TO feelin' a leetle better and stronger
A young farmer called at the town clerks
office In the village where L was staying
on summer to sign some papers with ref
erence TO a farm which he had Just bought.
After asking the apparently irrelevant and
lmpertinent questions common to such oc-
casions, the clerk inquired:
Married."
mo"
The clerk was scratching down the an
sWer, when the young man interrupted,
1ervously: Hold on. I'm goin' to be. Say.
90 you want TO know who TSP
There is another form of country humor
mat Is more formulated, more conscious
more nearly approaching wit. Replies of
this kind often need very little polishing To
make them available literary bon mots.
For example: A dry old farmer, when asked
why he did not take more stock in re-
friend. 1t looks just this way to meas if
religion, TO most people that have got IL
was a good deal like an achin' head. Thev'd
be mighty glad to get rid ont, but they
don't want 10 run the resk Of losin' their
heads" ~
A village wag was watching some bows
playing soldier" in front of the store. Sud
denly | heard him call out: Say. bows,
You haint organized that comp'ny right
accordin TO the State milishy rules. There
hadn't orter be more n one private for
ev'ry two officersi"
A self-conscious and rather egotistical
young minister, who was supplying a cotIn-
try church In my neighborhood ventY,rad
TO ask one of the deacons. a grizzled. plain
spoken old chap. what he thought of this
morning. eHort meaning. of course, the
sermon he had just preached.
wall answered the old man SLOWLY
I'll tell We, but III tell We in a kind o;
parable. II reminde me of old Sim Peck's
He f~ollored the deer's tracks All right
but he follered EN- all day in the wrong
direction