THE CLASS IN CONCEALED geography is told that when Bulle Whyo, the African prince, was shown into the State Senate, the exiled savage chieftan burst into tears, saying that “it reminded him so of his distant home.”
Thinking that it, in some way, brought up painful realizations of his lost sway, he was asked for an explanation, and replied “the talking of the Assemblymen so recalls the chattering of monkeys in our banyan trees, that I am sorry I cannot shoot arrows at them.”
Those chattering monkeys hide the name Albany.
2. Puzzling Charades.
A Frenchman who was studying English on the Ollendorf method became so imbued with the system that he perpetuated the following series of clever puzzles:
1. Did the butcher’s monkey eat oysters on the half ladder?
No, my friend; but your two-headed uncle ate one on a whole war-horse.
2. Was the tailor’s mistletoe amputated last Christmas.
Yes, madam; and his bashful two, one, underwent the severe operation of being kissed by the cobbler’s all.
3. Were the aesthetic costumes all destroyed?
No, monsieur; all of them were hung in the one to two.
4. How far is it from the tailor’s knee to the tailor’s elbow?
The distance varies, fair damsel, but a whole reads that there should be a foot to the two of each one.
5. Are the French polite enough to grant woman-suffrage?
No, my sister; but the best of them believe that if two be not three to all he will sooner or later be reduced to one.
6. Is the young widow of two husbands as sensible as her sister, the miller’s bride?
More so, my gentle sophomore; though she affects all, as when she threw the second after the newly wedded, she has set her first for the groom’s-man.
7. Do topers without thumbs drink beer through a straw?
No, your reverence; they are like one, each puts his two into the whole.
8. Did the ambassador eat a chicken’s wing at the archbishop’s banquet?
Yes, my lord; and the papal whole two the one of a turkey.
9. Did not the falling portcullis transfix the knight?
No, brave marshal of France; the two of the arch escaped the one but killed the whole his squire sat on.
10. Are not many of the gypsies crazy from change of scene?
One, my little one; on the contrary, there are but few of them two, and they are all called because they wander.
11. Did the lady with the eyes dark and the air sad sell all her drawings of the halfbreeds with the dark skins?
Yes, madam; and the fop with the red one gave her daughter so two a both of roses that he drew at the fair.
12. Was not your comrade punished from unhinging the door?
Yes, my friend; and the teacher kept me after school to one two three me because two one the yard three into a puddle.
13. Is not the frisky engine-tender partly blue?
Yes, great traveler, and the sleeping one of two is painted all.
14. Did the witches catch the venturesome Tam?
No, my daughter; that one he rode a fleet old two. Do not credit such idle tales. It was but the oppression of a one two.
15. Does the ledge-man call his horse “Magnet” because his daughter Maggie knitted the horse’s fly-net?
O, no, my juvenile paragrapher; it is because he draws a one of two as easily as a whole could draw her needle.
16. Was the soldier drowned while fording cattle?
No, sweet corporal; he was driving a horse and one of the two of a hill when the both together exploded.
17. Was the Mill on the Floss by John H. Sullivan and Paddy Ryan what injured the morals of the village?
No. my innocent; more all was done when the one decayed with two.
18. Does aestheticism pay?
Yes, my Croesus of the future; it pays the dealers one twos and one threes, for the extravagance of the buyers is great as often as their taste is all.
19. The sailor bringeth hither fleece and peltry. Doth he not strange things to graze sheep and follow the bounding stag?
He doth not these, fond fool; and yet strange things doth he.
Prithee, master, what?
What the one windeth he drinketh; what the other bloweth he smoketh, and he danceth both at once.
Answers to the charades will be found in the following potpourri of words:
Dam-age, Wo-man-kind, Night-mare, In-fan-tile, Cap-rice, Load-stone, Horn-pipe, Hog’s-head, Cart-ridge, Nose-gay, Pie-bald, Leg-ate, Cast-i-gate, Tom-boy, Don-key, Car-mine, Sun-dry, No-mad, Leg-end.
3. AN ENIGMA.
I’m just like the nose on your face,
Be it Roman, or Grecian, or pug;
By using one optic you’ll notice with ease,
Just why I’m quartered so snug.
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