Paul Smith, the famous hotel-keeper in the Adirondacks, told of a law suit that he had with a man named Jones in Malone.
“It was this way: I sat in the courtroom before the case opened with my witnesses around me. Then Jones bustled in. He stopped abruptly, and looked my witnesses over carefully. Presently he turned to me.
“‘Paul,’ he asked, ‘are those your witnesses?’
“‘They are,’ I replied.
“‘Then you win,’ he exclaimed. ‘I’ve had them witnesses twice myself.'”
* * *
The grateful woman on the farm in Arkansas wrote to the vendors of the patent medicine:
“Four weeks ago I was so run down that I could not spank the baby. After taking three bottles of your Elegant Elixir I am now able to thrash my husband in addition to my other housework. God bless you!”
* * *
In one of the most desolate areas of Montana, a claim was taken by a man from Iowa. The nearest neighbor, from twenty miles away, visited the homesteader’s shack, and introduced himself.
“Where did you come from?” the visitor inquired presently, and when he had been told:
“I can’t understand why anybody should want to get out of that civilized country to come and live in this lonesomeness.”
“Fact was,” the man from Iowa explained somberly, “I didn’t exactly like it down there any more. You see, it was this way. They got to telling things about me. Why, they even said I was a liar and hoss thief, and no better than I ought to be. And, by Jemima, I jest pulled out and went right away from them scandalous folks.”
“Well, I swan!” the visitor exclaimed indignantly. “You can bet I wouldn’t leave a place for any reason like that. I’d make them prove what they said.”
The homesteader sighed dismally as he answered:
“That’s jest the trouble—they did prove it!”