The steamer was on the point of leaving, and the passengers lounged on the deck and waited for the start. At length one of them espied a cyclist in the far distance, and it soon became evident that he was doing his level best to catch the boat.
Already the sailors' hands were on the gangways, and the cyclist's chance looked small indeed. Then a sportive passenger wagered a sovereign to a shilling that he would miss it. The offer was taken, and at once the deck became a scene of wild excitement.
In the very nick of time the cyclist arrived, sprang off his machine, and ran up the one gangway left.
Much to the curious little girl's disgust, her elder sister and her girl friends had quickly closed the door of the back parlor, before she could wedge her small self in among them.
She waited uneasily for a little while, then she knocked. No response. She knocked again. Still no attention. Her curiosity could be controlled no longer. "Dodo!" she called in staccato tones as she knocked once again. "'Tain't me! It's Mamma!"
"Tommy, why don't you play with Frank any more?" asked Tommy's mother, who noticed that he was cultivating the acquaintance of a new boy on the block. "I thought you were such good chums."
"We was," replied Tommy superciliously, "but he's a mollycoddle. He paid t' git into the ball-grounds."
In some of the college settlements there are penny savings banks for children.
One Saturday a small boy arrived with an important air and withdrew 2 cents from his account. Monday morning he promptly returned the money.
"So you didn't spend your 2 cents?" observed the worker in charge.
"Oh, no," he replied, "but a fellow just likes to have a little cash on hand over Sunday."
Two little boys, four and five years old respectively, were playing quietly, when the one of four years struck the other on his cheek. An interested bystander stepped up and asked him why he had hit the other who had done nothing.
"Well," replied the pugilistic one, "last Sunday our lesson in Sunday-school was about if a fellow hit you on the left cheek turn the other and get another crack, and I just wanted to see if Bobbie knew his lesson."
Senator Gore, of Oklahoma, while addressing a convention in Oklahoma City recently, told this story, illustrating a point he made: