On Trial
A defendant was asked if he wanted a bench trial or a jury trial.
“Jury trial,” the defendant replied.
“Do you understand the difference?” asked the judge.
“Sure,” replied the defendant. “That’s where twelve ignorant people decide my fate instead of one.”
Ear Replaceable
While talking with my semi-deaf uncle one evening, I noticed that his “hearing aid” was actually an earphone from a transistor radio. The wire had been cut and was sticking out of his shirt.
“How does that help your hearing?” I asked.
“Don’t help my hearing none,” he replied. “Makes people talk louder.”
Army Spread Sheets
As the family gathered for a big dinner together, the youngest son announced that he had just signed up at an army recruiter’s office.
There were audible gasps around the table, then some laughter, as his older brothers shared their disbelief that he could handle this new situation. “Oh, come on, quit joking,” snickered one. “You didn’t really do that, did you?”
“You would never get through basic training,” scoffed another.
The new recruit looked to his mother for help, but she was just gazing at him. When she finally spoke, she simply asked, “Do you really plan to make your own bed every morning?”
Simple Thoughts
Showers are great whether they’re hot, cold, baby, or bridal!
Math homework is nothing but problems.
Q: What is the world’s longest punctuation mark?
A: The hundred yard dash.
Q: What do postal workers do when they’re mad?
A: They stamp their feet.
Q: Where does a boat go when it is sick?
A: To the dock.
Q: How do locomotives hear?
A: Through the engineers.
*– Smooth Operators –*
Four surgeons were sitting around discussing who they like to operate on.
The first surgeon said, “I like operating on librarians. When you open them up everything is in alphabetical order.”
The second surgeon said, “I like operating on accountants. When you open them up everything is in numerical order.”
The third surgeon said, “I like operating on electricians. When you open them up everything is color coded.”
The fourth surgeon said, “I like operating on politicians.”
The other three surgeons looked at each other in disbelief. One of them asked why.
The fourth surgeon replied, “Because they are heartless, gutless, spineless, and their bottoms and tops are interchangeable.”
Q: What do stylish frogs wear?
A: Jumpsuits.
Q: What bird is the best weightlifter?
A: The crane.
Thanksgiving Proclamation
— By Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States of America
It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord.
We know that by His divine law, nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world. May we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people?
We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown.
But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father Who dwelleth in the heavens.
Signed… A. Lincoln – October 3, 1863
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Thanksgiving Prayer
— By J. E. Rankin
We come, O Lord, these Autumn days,
With hymns of gratitude and praise.
Harvest of gold the plains adorn,
Rich fruits roll forth from Plenty’s horn;
Thou givest treasures from the rocks;
The little hills are clothed with flocks;
The seas are with their burden white,
And new Thy mercies day and night.
For changing seasons as they go,
For Autumn leaf, for Winter’s snow,
For the green verdure of the Spring,
For life in plant and life on wing,
For Summer with its ripening heat,
For hopes the rounded years complete,
For morn and noon, for night and day,
For light that marks our heavenward way;
For all the blessings of Thy hand,
For freedom in fair freedom’s land,
Pursuits of thrift that bring us wealth,
For schools and churches, peace and health,
For commerce, yielding up her stores,
Brought for man’s use from distant shores;
For countless gifts, O Lord, we raise
Our hymns of gratitude and praise.
Thou settest man in families,
And all his wants the earth supplies;
Of children, be they far or near,
Of children’s children gathered here,
We thank Thee for Thy gracious care,
And lift for them the secret prayer,
As clustered round each social board
We eat and drink, and praise the Lord.
