Jokes

A playwright came to the stage director George Kaufman and said to him: "Here is a play that needs no scene changes. In the first scene I stand at the left of the stage, and the audience must imagine that I am eating in a restaurant. In the second scene I move to the right, and the audience must imagine that I am in my private room." Kaufman answered him: "And on the second night, you will have to imagine that there is an audience."

• A patient came to a doctor's office and complained to him that he could not sleep at night, so the doctor prescribed that he eat something before going to sleep. The patient answered: "But I came to you two months ago and you told me not to eat anything before sleeping." The doctor thought a little, then answered: "That was two months ago; medicine has advanced a great deal in that interval."

• Judge Landis sentenced an accused man to five years' imprisonment. The accused said: "But I shall die long before that; I am a sick man and cannot be imprisoned five years."

The judge answered: "At least you can try."

• A tourist was touring a rural region in the north of America when he found a man smoking a pipe in the shade of a tree while his wife hoed the ground. The tourist said to the man: "Isn't this work hard on your wife?" The man answered: "No! We work here by turns." — "You mean that when she gets tired, you do the hoeing?" — "No; when she gets tired of working the land, she moves on to working in the house."

• When aviation was still new and people were afraid to travel by airplane, one of the air companies wanted to encourage travelers, so it allowed businessmen to bring their wives along free of charge, to prove to them that flying was not dangerous. The company kept a register of the names of the businessmen who accepted this offer. After a time the company wrote to poll these ladies on their opinion of that air journey, and the answer of 95 percent of them was: "What air journey?"

• A lady passed by an artist who was painting with his left hand. She watched him a little, then asked him in astonishment: "Do you always paint with the left?" He answered: "No; it just happens that today I am holding my hat in my right hand."