Newspaper Humour
Shoemakers Apprentice (passing by a baker’s stand): “Got any stale rolls?”
Baker: “Yes, my lad.”
Apprentice: “Serves you right. You should have sold ’em when they were fresh.”
In Court.—Judge: “How is it that you picked up a number of comparatively worthless articles, and left the money, which was close at hand, untouched?”
Criminal: “I hope your honour won’t find fault with me for that. My wife has been hard enough on me about it.”
Restaurant-keeper (to guest reading his paper): “I am very sorry, sir, to be obliged to ask you not to lunch here in future. You shake your head all the time. I know it’s the politics, but others don’t know it, and it’s hurting my reputation.”
At a Restaurant.—“This beefsteak is so tough the knife won’t go through.”
Restaurant-keeper: “Waiter, another knife for the gentleman.”
Father: “Goodness, how you look, child!”
Frankie: “I fell into the canal.”
Father: “What! With your new trousers on?”
Frankie: “I didn’t have time to take ’em off.”
“Allow me, Mademoiselle, to present this to you.”
“No, no, I do not wish to accept a present.”
“It is a volume of my poems.”
“Ah, that is different. I could not have permitted you to give me anything valuable.”
Judge (to an individual notorious for thievish proclivities): “I was told you stole wood the other day. That is not true, is it, Peter?”
Peter: “Nay, Herr Judge.”
Judge: “The policeman says he found the wood at your house. That can’t be so?”
Peter: “Nay, Herr Judge.”
Judge: “Well, Peter, I’ll sentence you to six weeks in gaol. That’s not too much, is it?”
Peter: “Nay, Herr Judge.”
“I wonder why that gentleman over there is holding the paper up before his face for such an interminable length of time?”
“The explanation is very simple. Because his tailor happens to be sitting at our table.”
A Considerate Youth.—Aunt: “Well, Fritz, I hear you were flogged in school to-day?”
Fritz: “Yes, but it didn’t hurt.”
Aunt: “I thought I heard you cry.”
Fritz: “I did that to please the teacher.”
“You advertise your socks to have fast colours, and now I had on a pair for two days, and for a fortnight I have not been able to get the colour off from my feet.”
“Well, don’t you call that a fast colour? What more can you wish?”
At the Livery Stable.—“How much do you ask for this horse by the hour?”
“One thaler.”
“That is, I trust, counting up to the time when the horse returns? It is quite likely I shall be here somewhat later!”
Doctor: “I know just what will help you. You must drink two cups of very strong tea every morning.”
Patient: “Why, that is just what I have done for years.”
Doctor: “Then you must stop it.”
“Henry, my cigars are disappearing at a great rate. Is it possible that within the short time you have been in my service——”
“Never fear, sir; I have three boxes full left from my last master.”
Lieutenant A. (relating his gallant adventures at the ball): “A crowd of ladies stood about me, waiting for me to say something very brilliant.”
Lieutenant B.: “Of course you kept them in suspense.”
Lieutenant A.: “Most certainly I did.”
New Burgomaster: “No celebrity ever been born in this town?”
First Citizen: “Not yet, unfortunately; but all that will be different under your administration.”
A. (to a young doctor): “How many rooms have you?”
B.: “First, there is a waiting-room.”
A.: “Pardon me for interrupting you. What do you call a waiting-room? Is it a room in which your patients wait for you, or one in which you wait for patients?”
A.: “Dr. Krampel has saved my life.”
B.: “I did not know that you were ever in his treatment.”
A.: “No, when I consulted him he advised me to go to another physician.”
Poetry and Prose.—“Tell me what it was that inspired you to write this glorious poem?”
Poet: “My youngest needed a new suit of clothes.”
Lady (roguishly to her partner): “So you too are a conductor on the road to Hades?”
Young Physician: “You mistake, I am less than that—in fact, merely a brakesman!”
Baroness: “Your daughter will find a kind mistress in me. I trust she is accustomed to work and to early rising?”
Peasant: “That she is, ma’am. She can serve you as an example.”
Coquetry Avenged.—Lady: “Ah, Herr Lieutenant, I have rejected many addresses!”
Lieutenant: “Is that so? Well, you have had time to do so!”
Judge: “Prisoner, do you confess your guilt?”
Prisoner: “No. The words of my counsel have convinced me of my innocence.”
Lady: “And so you are a friend of my son Edward? I shall be delighted to hear what news you can tell me about him. Is he enjoying his studies at the university, and has he grown accustomed to the intricacies of town-life? Has he learned to find his way about?”
Student: “Oh yes, he is all right so far as that is concerned. Only he has some difficulty in finding his way home from the tavern.”
“Come, John, get up on the mare!”
“Pray, why should I make such a detour to get around to the other side?”
At the Ball.—Gentleman: “Do you play on the piano?”
Lady: “No.”
Gentleman: “Ah, then you sing?”
Lady: “No, sir,—neither have I had the influenza.”
Maid (to her young mistress, who has written a love-letter for her at her request): “Oh, thank you so much, Miss! The letter is beautiful. But please don’t forget to put a postscript: Excuse bad writin’ and spellin’!”
“It is very provoking that your wife should have read my last letter to you. I thought you said she never opens your letters?”
“She doesn’t generally, but you committed the folly of writing ‘Private’ upon the envelope.”
If you ask a man for the date of his birth, he tells you only the year; if you ask a woman, she never tells you more than the day.
Custodian of the Schloss at Heidelberg (explaining the functions of his office to stranger): “What the professors are to the university, that we are to the Schloss.”
In Court.—Defendant: “Gentlemen, I have much to say in favour of my client. First——”
Prisoner (interrupting him): “You’d better not give yourself any trouble trying to pull me through, Herr Doctor. I take it the gentlemen haven’t much faith left in either of us.”
A.: “I wish I knew something to give my uncle for his birthday. He is such an old miser that no matter what I buy him, I’m sure he will not use it.”
B.: “Why, that’s glorious! All you have to do is to fill half-a-dozen of bottles with water, cork and seal them well, and stick on a label, ‘Old Rhine Wine, 1780.’”
Frederick, a tailor’s apprentice, has lent a shilling to Henry, a barbers journeyman. To show his gratitude, Henry says: “Frederick, if you should ever get into straits, if all your friends should fall off from you; if your father and mother, your sister and brother, should leave you in the lurch, then come to me, and take my word for it, I’ll shave you, and never charge you a penny!”
Stranger: “Beg pardon, sir, will you tell me which road I must take to get to the university?”
First Student: “I don’t know precisely myself. It is only two years since I came here. It is more likely you know, Bummer—you’ve been here for eight years.”
Second Student: “I? I have forgotten long ago.”
Note
Acknowledgments are here tendered to Herr Wilhelm Raabe, for his kind permission to include the translation from Hunger-Pastor; to Herr Julius Stinde, for his kind permission to translate from the Familie Buchholz; to Herr W. H. Riehl and his publisher, to translate from Jörg Muckenhuber; to Herr Friedrich Theodor v. Vischer, and to the Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart, to translate from Herr v. Vischer’s Auch Einer; to Herr Ernst Eckstein, to translate from Besuch im Carcer; to Messrs. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, & Co., Limited, and to Mr. Leland, for their kind permission to include Mr. Leland’s translations of Scheffel and others (see Gaudeamus, published by Messrs. Kegan Paul). Best thanks are also to be accorded to various German authors and publishers, who have so courteously sanctioned translated extracts.