Humorous American Short Stories

by Bob Blaisdell

  The pie was no longer visible. I told Mrs. Adams that I had not been successful, whereupon we sought out the hired girl, whose name is Tootie Tooterson, a foreign damsel, who landed in this country Nov. 7, this present year. She does not understand our language, apparently, especially when we refer to pie. The only thing she does without a strong foreign accent is to eat pumpkin pie and draw her salary. She landed on our coast six weeks ago, after a tedious voyage across the heaving billows. It was a close fight between Tootie and the ocean, but when they quit, the heaving billows were one heave ahead by the log.

  Miss Tooterson landed in Massachusetts in a woolen dress and hollow clear down into the ground. A strong desire to acquire knowledge and cold, handmade American pie seems to pervade her entire being.

  She has only allowed Mrs. Adams and myself to eat what she did not want herself.

  Miss Tooterson has also introduced into my household various European eccentricities and strokes of economy which deserve a brief notice here. Among other things she has made pie crust with castor oil in it, and lubricated the pancake griddle with a pork rind that I had used on my lame neck. She is thrifty and saving in this way, but rashly extravagant in the use of doughnuts, pie and Medford rum, which we keep in the house for visitors who are so unfortunate as to be addicted to the doughnut, pie or rum habit.

  It is discouraging, indeed, for two young people like Mrs. Adams and myself, who have just begun to keep house, to inherit a famine, and such a robust famine, too. It is true that I should not have set my heart upon such a transitory and evanescent terrestrial object like a pumpkin pie so near to T. Tooterson, imported pie soloist, doughnut maestro and feminine virtuoso, but I did, and so I returned from the pantry desolate.

  I told Abigail that unless we poisoned a few pies for Tootie the Adams family would be a short-lived race. I could see with my prophetic eye that unless the Tootersons yielded the Adamses would be wiped out. Abigail would not consent to this, but decided to relieve Miss Tooterson from duty in this department, so this morning she went away. Not being at all familiar with the English language, she took four of Abigail’s sheets and quite a number of towels, handkerchiefs and collars. She also erroneously took a pair of my night-shirts in her poor, broken way. Being entirely ignorant of American customs, I presume that she will put a belt around them and wear them externally to church. I trust that she will not do this, however, without mature deliberation. I also had a bottle of lung medicine of a very powerful nature which the doctor had prepared for me. By some oversight, Miss Tooterson drank this the first day that she was in our service. This was entirely wrong, as I did not intend to use it for the foreign trade, but mostly for home consumption.

  This is a little piece of drollery that I thought of myself. I do not think that a joke impairs the usefulness of a diary, as some do. A diary with a joke in it is just as good to fork over to posterity as one that is not thus disfigured. In fact, what has posterity ever done for me that I should hesitate about socking a little humor into a diary? When has posterity ever gone out of its way to do me a favor? Never! I defy the historian to show a single instance where posterity has ever been the first to recognize and remunerate ability.

  December 6.—It is with great difficulty that I write this entry in my diary, for this morning Abigail thought best for me to carry the oleander down into the cellar, as the nights have been growing colder of late.

  I do not know which I dislike most, foreign usurpation or the oleander. I have carried that plant up and down stairs every time the weather has changed, and the fickle elements of New England have kept me rising and falling with the thermometer, and whenever I raised or fell I most always had that scrawny oleander in my arms.

  Richly has it repaid us, however, with its long, green, limber branches and its little yellow nubs on the end. How full of promises to the eye that are broken to the heart. The oleander is always just about to meet its engagements, but later on it peters out and fails to materialize.

  I do not know what we would do if it were not for our house plants. Every fall I shall carry them cheerfully down cellar, and in the spring I will bring up the pots for Mrs. Adams to weep softly into. Many a night at the special instance and request of my wife I have risen, clothed in one simple, clinging garment, to go and see if the speckled, double and twisted Rise-up-William-Riley geranium was feeling all right.

  Last summer Abigail brought home a slip of English ivy. I do not like things that are English very much, but I tolerated this little sickly thing because it seemed to please Abigail. I asked her what were the salient features of the English ivy. What did the English ivy do? What might be its specialty? Mrs. Adams said that it made a specialty of climbing. It was a climber from away back. “All right,” I then to her did straightway say, “let her climb.” It was a good early climber. It climbed higher than Jack’s beanstalk. It climbed the golden stair. Most of our plants are actively engaged in descending the cellar stairs or in ascending the golden stair most all the time,

  I descended the stairs with the oleander this morning, though the oleander got there a little more previously than I did. Parties desiring a good, second-hand oleander tub, with castors on it, will do well to give us a call before going elsewhere. Purchasers desiring a good set of second-hand ear muffs for tulips will find something to their advantage by addressing the subscriber.

  We also have two very highly ornamental green dogoods for ivy vines to ramble over. We could be induced to sell these dogoods at a sacrifice, in order to make room for our large stock of new and attractive dogoods. These articles are as good as ever. We bought them during the panic last fall for our vines to climb over, but, as our vines died of membranous croup in November, these dogoods still remain unclum.

  Second-hand dirt always on hand. Ornamental geranium stumps at bed-rock prices. Highest cash prices paid for slips of black-and-tan foliage plants. We are headquarters for the century plant that draws a salary for ninety-nine years and then dies.

  I do not feel much like writing in my diary today, but the physician says that my arm will be better in a day or two, so that it will be more of a pleasure to do business.

  We are still without a servant girl, so I do some of the cooking. I make a fire each day and boil the tea-kettle. People who have tried my boiled tea-kettle say it is very fine.

  Some of my friends have asked me to run for the Legislature here next election. Somehow I feel that I might, in public life, rise to distinction some day, and perhaps at some future time figure prominently in the affairs of a one-horse republic at a good salary.

  I have never done anything in the statesman line, but it does not look difficult to me. It occurs to me that success in public life is the result of a union of several great primary elements, to-wit:

  Firstly—Ability to whoop in a felicitous manner.

  Secondly—Promptness in improving the proper moment in which to whoop.

  Thirdly—Ready and correct decision in the matter of which side to whoop on.

  Fourthly—Ability to cork up the whoop at the proper moment and keep it in a cool place till needed.

  And this last is one of the most important of all. It is the amateur statesman who talks the most. Fearing that he will conceal his identity as a fool, he babbles in conversation and slashes around in his shallow banks in public.

  As soon as I get the house plants down cellar and get their overshoes on for the winter, I will more seriously consider the question of our political affairs here in this new land where we have to tie our scalps on at night and where every summer is an Indian summer.

  SOURCE: Edgar W. Nye. Remarks by Bill Nye. New York: M. W. Hazen and Company. 1887.

  ACTIVE COLORADO REAL ESTATE (1895)

  Hayden Carruth

  Not to be confused with the late twentieth-century American poet, this Hayden Carruth (1862–1932) was a journalist and novelist from Minnesota.

  “WHEN I WAS visiting at my uncle’s in Wisconsin last fall, I went out to Lake Kinnikinnic an
d caught a shovel-nose sturgeon which weighed eighty-five pounds.”

  It was Jackson Peters who spoke, and he did it rapidly and with an apprehensive air, for Jones was watching him closely. As he finished, Peters drew a long breath, and seemed much relieved that he had got through the story without an interruption.

  “Eighty-five pounds,” mused Jones.

  “Yes, eighty-five pounds and ten ounces, to be exact, but I called it eighty-five.”

  “Exactness does not help your story in the least, Jackson,” continued Jones. “You might give us the fractions of the ounce, and your story would still remain a crude production. I am in the habit of speaking plainly, and I will do so now. I take it that we are to consider your story simply as an exaggeration—that the fish probably didn’t weigh ten pounds. Simple exaggeration, Jackson, is not art, and is unworthy of a man of brains. Anybody can exaggerate— the street laborer as easily as the man in Congress. But artistic storytelling is another thing, and the greatest may well hope for distinction in it. Why did you not, Jackson, tell an artistic lie, and say that when you pulled your fish out of the water the level of the lake fell two feet?”

  Peters moved about uneasily, but made no reply.

  “You never tell fish-stories, Jones?” observed Robinson, in an inquiring tone.

  “Seldom, Robinson. The trail of gross exaggeration is over them all. Fish stories have become the common property of the inartistic multitude. Of course I do not for this reason suppress facts having a scientific or commercial value. For instance, last winter I went before the legislative committee on fisheries, and laid before it an account of my experience when I had a farm near Omaha, on the Missouri River bottoms, and baited two miles of barbed-wire fence with fresh pork just before the June rise, and after the water receded removed thirty-eight thousand four hundred fish from the barbs, weighing, in the aggregate, over ninety-six tons. The Legislature passed a special vote of thanks for the facts.”

  Jones was becoming warmed up. “You have observed, Robinson,” he went on, “that I seldom relate the marvellous. That is because it is too easy. I prefer to have the reputation of telling a plain tale artistically to that of telling a fabulous one like a realistic novelist. That is the reason I never told any one of my experience at breaking one hundred and sixty acres of land to ride.”

  “Tell us, by all means, Jones,” said Robinson.

  “Yes, go ahead,” added Smith. Jackson Peters hid himself behind a cloud of cigar smoke.

  “It was an exciting experience,” said Jones, thoughtfully, as he gazed into the fire, “and one which I have never mentioned to anybody, although it happened twenty years ago. There is nothing so easy to lose as a reputation for truthfulness. I have my own to maintain. More men have lost their good names by telling the plain, straightforward truth than by indulging in judicious lying. However, I will venture this time. It was, as I said, twenty years ago. There was a great mining boom in Colorado, and I closed my defective-flue factory in Chicago, to the intense joy of the insurance companies, and went out. I saw more money in hens than I did in mines, and decided to start a hen ranch. Eggs sold at five dollars a dozen. The hen, you know, requires a great amount of gravel for her digestion, and she also thrives best at a high altitude; so I went about two miles up Pike’s Peak and selected a quarter-section of land good for my purpose. There was gravel in plenty, and I put up a small house and turned loose my three hundred hens. I became so interested in getting settled that I forgot all about establishing my right to the land before the United States Land Office at Colorado Springs.

  “One day a large, red-headed man came along and erected a small house on one corner of my ranch, and said that he had as much right to the land as I. He turned out two hundred head of goats, and started for Colorado Springs to file his claim. He had a good horse, while I had none. It was ten miles to the town by the road, and only five in a straight line down the mountain, but this five was impassable on foot or in any other ordinary way. But I did not despair. I had studied the formation of the land, and knew what I could do. I took a half-dozen sticks of giant powder and went over to a small ridge of rocks which held my farm in place. I inserted the powder, gentlemen, and blew those rocks over into the next county. I then lay down on my back and clung to a root while I rode that one hundred and sixty acres of good hen-land down the mountain to Colorado Springs. It felt very much like an earthquake, and I made the five miles in a little over four minutes. Probably ten acres of my farm around the edges were knocked off along on the grand Colorado scenery, and most of the goats jolted off, but the hens, gentlemen, clung, the hens and myself. The corner of my front yard struck the Land Office and knocked it off its foundation. The register and receiver came running out, and I said:

  “ ‘Gentlemen, I desire to make claim entry on the northeast quarter of section twenty-seven, township fourteen south, of range sixty-nine, and to prevent mistake I have brought it with me.’ The business was all finished by the time the red-headed man came lumbering along, and I gave him ten minutes to get the rest of his goats off my land. He seemed considerably surprised, and looked at me curiously.”

  Jackson Peters was the first to speak after Jones paused. “It is one of the saddest things in this life,” he said, “that the man who always adheres to the exact truth often gets the reputation of being a liar.”

  “You are right, Jackson,” said Jones. “I know of nothing sadder, unless it be, perhaps, to see a young man forget the respect he owes his elders. This life, Jackson, is full of sad things.”

  SOURCE: Hayden Carruth. The Adventures of Jones. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1895.

  THE IDIOT’S JOURNALISM SCHEME (1895)

  John Kendrick Bangs

  Bangs was born in Yonkers, New York, and while at Columbia University began his writing career. He was an editor at Harper’s and a popular novelist. In 1895 he created the character of the Idiot, who was cleverly stupid in dozens and dozens of situations and adventures, many of which stories were collected into books. The episode below, featuring the Idiot himself and two of his foils, is untitled in the original edition.

  THE IDIOT WAS unusually thoughtful—a fact which made the School-Master and the Bibliomaniac unusually nervous. Their stock criticism of him was that he was thoughtless; and yet when he so far forgot his natural propensities as to meditate, they did not like it. It made them uneasy. They had a haunting fear that he was conspiring with himself against them, and no man, not even a callous school-master or a confirmed bibliomaniac, enjoys feeling that he is the object of a conspiracy. The thing to do, then, upon this occasion, seemed obviously to interrupt his train of thought—to put obstructions upon his mental track, as it were, and ditch the express, which they feared was getting up steam at that moment to run them down.

  “You don’t seem quite yourself this morning, sir,” said the Bibliomaniac.

  “Don’t I?” queried the Idiot. “And whom do I seem to be?”

  “I mean that you seem to have something on your mind that worries you,” said the Bibliomaniac.

  “No, I haven’t anything on my mind,” returned the Idiot. “I was thinking about you and Mr. Pedagog—which implies a thought not likely to use up much of my gray matter.”

  “Do you think your head holds any gray matter?” put in the Doctor.

  “Rather verdant, I should say,” said Mr. Pedagog.

  “Green, gray, or pink,” said the Idiot, “choose your color. It does not affect the fact that I was thinking about the Bibliomaniac and Mr. Pedagog. I have a great scheme in hand, which only requires capital and the assistance of those two gentlemen to launch it on the sea of prosperity. If any of you gentlemen want to get rich and die in comfort as the owner of your homes, now is your chance.”

  “In what particular line of business is your scheme?” asked Mr. Whitechoker. He had often felt that he would like to die in comfort, and to own a little house, even if it had a large mortgage on it.

  “Journalism,” said the Idiot. “Ther
e is a pile of money to be made out of journalism, particularly if you happen to strike a new idea. Ideas count.”

  “How far up do your ideas count—up to five?” questioned Mr. Pedagog, with a tinge of sarcasm in his tone.

  “I don’t know about that,” returned the Idiot. “The idea I have hold of now, however, will count up into the millions if it can only be set going, and before each one of those millions will stand a big capital S with two black lines drawn vertically through it—in other words, my idea holds dollars, but to get the crop you’ve got to sow the seed. Plant a thousand dollars in my idea, and next year you’ll reap two thousand. Plant that, and next year you’ll have four thousand, and so on. At that rate millions come easy.”

  “I’ll give you a dollar for the idea,” said the Bibliomaniac.

  “No, I don’t want to sell. You’ll do to help develop the scheme. You’ll make a first-rate tool, but you aren’t the workman to manage the tool. I will go as far as to say, however, that without you and Mr. Pedagog, or your equivalents in the animal kingdom, the idea isn’t worth the fabulous sum you offer.”

  “You have quite aroused my interest,” said Mr. Whitechoker. “Do you propose to start a new paper?”

  “You are a good guesser,” replied the Idiot. “That is a part of the scheme—but it isn’t the idea. I propose to start a newspaper in accordance with the plan which the idea contains.”

  “Is it to be a magazine, or a comic paper, or what?” asked the Bibliomaniac.

  “Neither. It’s a daily.”

  “That’s nonsense,” said Mr. Pedagog, putting his spoon into the condensed-milk can by mistake. “There isn’t a single scheme in daily journalism that hasn’t been tried—except printing an evening paper in the morning.”

  “That’s been tried,” said the Idiot. “I know of an evening paper the second edition of which is published at mid-day. That’s an old dodge, and there’s money in it, too—money that will never be got out of it. But I really have a grand scheme. So many of our dailies, you know, go in for every horrid detail of daily events that people are beginning to tire of them. They contain practically the same things day after day. So many columns of murder, so many beautiful suicides, so much sport, a modicum of general intelligence, plenty of fires, no end of embezzlements, financial news, advertisements, and headlines. Events, like history, repeat themselves, until people have grown weary of them. They want something new. For instance, if you read in your morning paper that a man has shot another man, you know that the man who was shot was an inoffensive person who never injured a soul, stood high in the community in which he lived, and leaves a widow with four children. On the other hand, you know without reading the account that the murderer shot his victim in self-defense, and was apprehended by the detectives late last night; that his counsel forbid him to talk to the reporters, and that it is rumored that he comes of a good family living in New England.