Short Funny Jokes

11/22/2009

Funny Jokes AUTOMOBILING

"Sorry, gentlemen," said the new constable, "but I'll hev to run ye in. We been keepin' tabs on ye sence ye left Huckleberry Corners."

"Why, that's nonsense!" said Dubbleigh. "It's taken us four hours to come twenty miles, thanks to a flabby tire. That's only five miles an hour."

"Sure!" said the new constable, "but the speed law round these here parts is ten mile an hour, and by Jehosophat I'm goin' to make you ottermobile fellers live up to it."

Two street pedlers in Bradford, England, bought a horse for $11.25. It was killed by a motor-car one day and the owner of the car paid them $115 for the loss. Thereupon a new industry sprang up on the roads of England.

"It was very romantic," says the friend. "He proposed to her in the automobile."

"Yes?" we murmur, encouragingly.

"And she accepted him in the hospital."

"What you want to do is to have that mudhole in the road fixed," said the visitor.

"That goes to show," replied Farmer Corntassel, "how little you reformers understand local conditions. I've purty nigh paid off a mortgage with the money I made haulm' automobiles out o' that mud-hole."

The old lady from the country and her small son were driving to town when a huge automobile bore down upon them. The horse was badly frightened and began to prance, whereupon the old lady leaped down and waved wildly to the chauffeur, screaming at the top of her voice.

The chauffeur stopped the car and offered to help get the horse past.

"That's all right," said the boy, who remained composedly in the carriage, "I can manage the horse. You just lead Mother past."

"What makes you carry that horrible shriek machine for an automobile signal?"

"For humane reasons." replied Mr. Chugging. "If I can paralyze a person with fear he will keep still and I can run to one side of him."

In certain sections of West Virginia there is no liking for automobilists, as was evidenced in the case of a Washingtonian who was motoring in a sparsely settled region of the State.

This gentleman was haled before a local magistrate upon the complaint of a constable. The magistrate, a good-natured man, was not, however, absolutely certain that the Washingtonian's car had been driven too fast; and the owner stoutly insisted that he had been progressing at the rate of only six miles an hour.

"Why, your Honor," he said, "my engine was out of order, and I was going very slowly because I was afraid it would break down completely. I give you my word, sir, you could have walked as fast as I was running."

"Well," said the magistrate, after due reflection, "you don't appear to have been exceeding the speed limit, but at the same time you must have been guilty of something, or you wouldn't be here. I fine you ten dollars for loitering."—Fenimore Martin.

11/14/2009

Joke of the Day AUTOMOBILES

TEACHER—"If a man saves $2 a week, how long will it take him to save a thousand?"

BOY—"He never would, ma'am. After he got $900 he'd buy a car."

"How fast is your car, Jimpson?" asked Harkaway.

"Well," said Jimpson, "it keeps about six months ahead of my income generally."

"What is the name of your automobile?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know? What do your folks call it?"

"Oh, as to that, father always says 'The Mortgage'; brother Tom calls it 'The Fake'; mother, 'My Limousine'; sister, 'Our Car'; grandma, 'That Peril'; the chauffeur, 'Some Freak,' and our neighbors, 'The Limit.'"—Life.

"What little boy can tell me the difference between the 'quick' and the 'dead?'" asked the Sunday-school teacher.

Willie waved his hand frantically.

"Well, Willie?"

"Please, ma'am, the 'quick' are the ones that get out of the way of automobiles; the ones that don't are the 'dead.'"

"Do you have much trouble with your automobile?"

"Trouble! Say, I couldn't have more if I was married to the blamed machine."

A little "Brush" chugged painfully up to the gate of a race track.

The gate-keeper, demanding the usual fee for automobiles, called:

"A dollar for the car!"

The owner looked up with a pathetic smile of relief and said:

"Sold!"

11/11/2009

Very Funny Jokes

"It took me nearly ten years to learn that I couldn't write stories."

"I suppose you gave it up then?"

"No, no. By that time I had a reputation."

"I dream my stories," said Hicks, the author.

"How you must dread going to bed!" exclaimed Cynicus.

The five-year-old son of James Oppenheim, author of "The Olympian," was recently asked what work he was going to do when he became a man. "Oh," Ralph replied, "I'm not going to work at all." "Well, what are you going to do, then?" he was asked. "Why," he said seriously, "I'm just going to write stories, like daddy."

William Dean Howells is the kindliest of critics, but now and then some popular novelist's conceit will cause him to bristle up a little.

"You know," said one, fishing for compliments, "I get richer and richer, but all the same I think my work is falling off. My new work is not so good as my old."

"Oh, nonsense!" said Mr. Howells. "You write just as well as you ever did. Your taste is improving, that's all."

James Oliver Curwood, a novelist, tells of a recent encounter with the law. The value of a short story he was writing depended upon a certain legal situation which he found difficult to manage. Going to a lawyer of his acquaintance he told him the plot and was shown a way to the desired end. "You've saved me just $100," he exclaimed, "for that's what I am going to get for this story."

A week later he received a bill from the lawyer as follows: "For literary advice, $100." He says he paid.

"Tried to skin me, that scribbler did!"

"What did he want?"

"Wanted to get out a book jointly, he to write the book and I to write the advertisements. I turned him down. I wasn't going to do all the literary work."

At a London dinner recently the conversation turned to the various methods of working employed by literary geniuses. Among the examples cited was that of a well-known poet, who, it is said, was wont to arouse his wife about four o'clock in the morning and exclaim, "Maria, get up; I've thought of a good word!" Whereupon the poet's obedient helpmate would crawl out of bed and make a note of the thought-of word.

About an hour later, like as not, a new inspiration would seize the bard, whereupon he would again arouse his wife, saying, "Maria, Maria, get up! I've thought of a better word!"

The company in general listened to the story with admiration, but a merry-eyed American girl remarked: "Well, if he'd been my husband I should have replied, 'Alpheus, get up yourself; I've thought of a bad word!'"

11/07/2009

Joke of the Day AUTHORS

Oscar Wilde, upon hearing one of Whistler's bon mots exclaimed: "Oh, Jimmy; I wish I had said that!" "Never mind, dear Oscar," was the rejoinder, "you will!"

THE AUTHOR—"Would you advise me to get out a small edition?"

THE PUBLISHER—"Yes, the smaller the better. The more scarce a book is at the end of four or five centuries the more money you realize from it."

AMBITIOUS AUTHOR—"Hurray! Five dollars for my latest story, 'The Call of the Lure!'"

FAST FRIEND—"Who from?"

AMBITIOUS AUTHOR—"The express company. They lost it."

A lady who had arranged an authors' reading at her house succeeded in persuading her reluctant husband to stay home that evening to assist in receiving the guests. He stood the entertainment as long as he could—three authors, to be exact—and then made an excuse that he was going to open the front door to let in some fresh air. In the hall he found one of the servants asleep on a settee.

"Wake up!" he commanded, shaking the fellow roughly. "What does this mean, your being asleep out here? You must have been listening at the keyhole."

An ambitious young man called upon a publisher and stated that he had decided to write a book.

"May I venture to inquire as to the nature of the book you propose to write?" asked the publisher, very politely.

"Oh," came in an offhand way from the aspirant to literary fame, "I think of doing something on the line of 'Les Miserables,' only livelier, you know."

"So you have had a long siege of nervous prostration?" we say to the haggard author. "What caused it? Overwork?"

"In a way, yes," he answers weakly. "I tried to do a novel with a Robert W. Chambers hero and a Mary E. Wilkins heroine."—Life.

Mark Twain at a dinner at the Authors' Club said: "Speaking of fresh eggs, I am reminded of the town of Squash. In my early lecturing days I went to Squash to lecture in Temperance Hall, arriving in the afternoon. The town seemed very poorly billed. I thought I'd find out if the people knew anything at all about what was in store for them. So I turned in at the general store. 'Good afternoon, friend,' I said to the general storekeeper. 'Any entertainment here tonight to help a stranger while away his evening?' The general storekeeper, who was sorting mackerels, straightened up, wiped his briny hands on his apron, and said: 'I expect there's goin' to be a lecture. I've been sellin' eggs all day."

An American friend of Edmond Rostand says that the great dramatist once told him of a curious encounter he had had with a local magistrate in a town not far from his own.

It appears that Rostand had been asked to register the birth of a friend's newly arrived son. The clerk at the registry office was an officious little chap, bent on carrying out the letter of the law. The following dialogue ensued:

"Your name, sir?"

"Edmond Rostand."

"Vocation?"

"Man of letters, and member of the French Academy."

"Very well, sir. You must sign your name. Can you write? If not, you may make a cross."—Howard Morse.

George W. Cable, the southern writer, was visiting a western city where he was invited to inspect the new free library. The librarian conducted the famous writer through the building until they finally reached the department of books devoted to fiction.

"We have all your books, Mr. Cable," proudly said the librarian. "You see there they are—all of them on the shelves there: not one missing."

And Mr. Cable's hearty laugh was not for the reason that the librarian thought!

Really Funny Jokes ATTENTION

The supervisor of a school was trying to prove that children are lacking in observation.

To the children he said, "Now, children, tell me a number to put on the board."

Some child said, "Thirty-six." The supervisor wrote sixty-three.

He asked for another number, and seventy-six was given. He wrote sixty-seven.

When a third number was asked, a child who apparently had paid no attention called out:

"Theventy-theven. Change that you thucker!"

Funny Jokes ATHLETES

The caller's eye had caught the photograph of Tommie Billups, standing on the desk of Mr. Billups.

"That your boy, Billups?" he asked.

"Yes," said Billups, "he's a sophomore up at Binkton College."

"Looks intellectual rather than athletic," said the caller.

"Oh, he's an athlete all right," said Billups. "When it comes to running up accounts, and jumping his board-bill, and lifting his voice, and throwing a thirty-two pound bluff, there isn't a gladiator in creation that can give my boy Tommie any kind of a handicap. He's just written for an extra check."

"And as a proud father you are sending it, I don't doubt," smiled the caller.

"Yes," grinned Billups; "I am sending him a rain-check I got at the hall-game yesterday. As an athlete, he'll appreciate its value."—J.K.B.

11/06/2009

Short Funny ARTISTS Jokes

ARTIST—"I'd like to devote my last picture to a charitable purpose."

CRITIC—"Why not give it to an institution for the blind?"

"Wealth has its penalties." said the ready-made philosopher.

"Yes," replied Mr. Cumrox. "I'd rather be back at the dear old factory than learning to pronounce the names of the old masters in my picture-gallery."

CRITIC—"By George, old chap, when I look at one of your paintings I stand and wonder—"

ARTIST—"How I do it?"

CRITIC "No; why you do it."