The boy to his miserly father: "I have earned five piasters, Father!"
"And how
was that?"
"I ran behind the tramway and saved the fare."
"You should have run behind the automobile and earned half a lira!"
A man entered a restaurant and ordered a cup of coffee without milk. The waiter disappeared, then came back empty-handed and said: "We have no milk, sir—would you like coffee without cream?"
A man came to a doctor after midnight and insisted that he be woken. They woke him for him, and he said: "I read that you want a Turkish interpreter, and I do not know the Turkish language, so do not count on me!"...
A man came to the army doctor asking him for an excuse to get out of military service. The doctor asked what his excuse was, and he said: "My finger is like this," and showed him a bent finger.
The doctor asked him: "And since when has your finger been bent?"
"For eight years."
"And before the eight years, how was it?"
"Like this," and he stretched out his finger!...
By Way of Finding Out
A man saw a white paper atop a black pole and wanted to know what was on it. After much effort he climbed the pole and read upon it: Beware of the paint!
Which Is the Wise One?
The late Dr. Van Dyck was invited to a banquet at the home of some friends, and every time he finished eating they pressed something new upon him, as all Easterners do, so that he ate under compulsion until he was stuffed. On his way back he wanted to water his mule at a spring along the road. The mule drank until it had its fill, but the "overstuffed" doctor wanted to test the mule's intelligence, so he said: "Drink a little more, for my sake, for the sake of my affection." But the mule would not drink! So the doctor said: "Then it is you who have the right to be driving me!"...
A Contest in Quick Wits
The teacher asked his little pupil:
"Who created the heavens and the earth?" The pupil kept silent and did not answer, so the teacher repeated his question in a louder voice:
"Who created the heavens and the earth?" The
pupil trembled and did not answer. The teacher grew furious and said, threatening a beating:
"I said to you, who created the heavens and the earth?"
The pupil shrieked: "It wasn't me, teacher!"
The teacher went home and told his wife the story of the pupil, and when he had finished she said: "And why be so hard on the boy? Maybe it really wasn't him!"
A Ewe's Head
Juha sent one of his pupils to bring him a ewe's head, and on the way the devil whispered to the pupil to eat some parts of that head. When he arrived, Juha asked him:
"Where is the tongue?"
"The ewe was mute."
"And where are the ears?"
"The ewe was deaf."
"And where is the brain?"
"It was a schoolteacher!"
Winning Five Piasters
Two misers made a wager on how long each could stay underwater, the winner to receive five piasters. The first went down, stayed a while, then came out congratulating himself. The second went down and never came out!...
The volcanoes that exist beneath the earth have, in many places, thrown up heaps of hot molten rock, which afterward cooled and hardened and formed mountains and hills. And in many other places the surface of the earth has been raised by powerful pressure from beneath it.
It is the river Amazon, which covers an area of about two million seven hundred thousand square miles of South America, and it is therefore the greatest river in the world. Its length is a little less than the length of the Mississippi and the Missouri if they were joined together, and it pours forth at its mouth an enormous quantity of water, two hundred miles in breadth, so that it greatly lessens the saltiness of the Pacific Ocean up to a distance of one hundred and fifty miles from the land.
Many fish have very thin skins near their ears, and this thin skin helps in taking in oxygen.