Don’t Follow Suit

The fellow was being sold a very cheap suit. “But the left arm is a lot longer than the right arm,” he complained.

“That’s why the suit is such a bargain,” the sales clerk explained. “Just cock your left shoulder up a little, like this, and tuck this left lapel under your chin a bit, like this.”

“But the right leg is way too short,” argued the customer.

“No problem,” the sales clerk answered. “Just keep your right knee bent a little at all times, walk like this, and no one will notice. That’s why this suit is only thirty dollars.”

Finally, the fellow bought the suit, cocked his left shoulder into the air, tucked the suit’s left lapel under his chin, bent his right knee, and limped out of the store toward his car. Two doctors happened along and noticed him. “Good heavens,” the first doctor said to the second, “look at that poor crippled fellow.”

“Yeah,” answered the second doctor. “But doesn’t that suit fit great?”

 

Fractions

The school’s math teacher was giving a lesson on fractions and wrote an example on the chalkboard. He explained that the numerator was the top and the denominator the bottom. Leaning against the board, he asked the class, “Are there any questions?”

When he turned back to face the board, laughter filled the room. “Mr. Alexander,” one student giggled, “you have chalk dust all over your denominator!”

 

Green Banana

This bloke is working on the buses and collecting tickets. He rings the bell for the driver to set off when there’s a woman half getting on the bus. The driver sets off, the woman falls from the bus and is killed. At the trial the bloke is sent down for murder and seeing as it’s Texas he’s sent to the electric chair.

On the day of his execution he’s sat in the chair and the executioner grants him a final wish.

“Well” says the man, “is that your packed lunch over there?”

“Yes” answers the executioner.

“Can I have that green banana?” the man asks.

The executioner gives the man his green banana and waits until he’s eaten it. When the man’s finished, the executioner flips the switch sending hundreds of thousands of volts through the man. When the smoke clears the man is still alive. The executioner can’t believe it.

“Can I go?” the man asks.

“I suppose so” says the executioner, “that’s never happened before.”

The man leaves and eventually gets his job back on the buses selling tickets. Again he rings the bell for the driver to go when people are still getting on. A man falls under the wheels and is killed. The bloke is sent down for murder again and sent to the electric chair. The executioner is determined to do it right this time so rigs the chair up to the electric supply for the whole of Texas. The bloke is again sat in the chair.

“What is your final wish?” asks the executioner.

“Can I have that green banana in your packed lunch?” says the condemned man.

The executioner sighs and reluctantly gives up his banana. The bloke eats the banana all up and the executioner flips the switch. Millions of volts course through the chair blacking out Texas. When the smoke clears the man is still there smiling in the chair. The executioner can’t believe it and lets the man go.

Well, would you believe, the bloke gets his job back on the buses. Once again he rings the bell whilst passengers are still getting on, this time killing three of them. He is sent to the electric chair again. The executioner rigs up all the electricity in America to the chair, determined to get his man this time. The man sits down in the chair smiling.

“What’s your final wish?” asks the executioner.

“Well” says the man, “Can I have that green banana out of your packed lunch?”

The executioner hands over his banana and the man eats it all, skin included. The executioner then pulls the handle and a zillion million trillion volts go through the chair. When the smoke rises the man is still sat there alive without even a burn mark.

“I give up” says the executioner, “I don’t understand. How you can still be alive after all that?” He stroked his chin. “It’s something to do with that green banana isn’t it?” he asked.

“Nahh” said the bloke,”…I’m just a really bad conductor.”

 

Miss-Print

A newspaper is a daily marvel, even a miracle. Limitless possibilities exist for error, human and mechanical. Add the crushing pressure of deadlines, and it’s surprising there aren’t more mistakes.

When goofs do occur, editors scurry to print corrections, even though we often prefer the misprint to the corrected version. Here just a few samples:

1. IMPORTANT NOTICE: If you are one of hundreds of parachuting enthusiasts who bought our Easy Sky Diving book, please make the following correction: on page 8, line 7, the words “state zip code” should have read “pull rip cord.”

2. It was incorrectly reported last Friday that today is T-shirt Appreciation Day. In fact, it is actually Teacher Appreciation Day.

3. There was a mistake in an item sent in two weeks ago which stated that Ed Burnham entertained a party at crap shooting. It should have been trap shooting.

4. In Frank Washburn’s March column, Rebecca Varney was erroneously identified as a bookmaker. She is a typesetter.

5. There are two important corrections to the information in the update on our Deep Relaxation professional development program. First, the program will include meditation, not medication. Second, it is experiential, not experimental.

6. Just to keep the record straight, it was the famous Whistler’s Mother, not Hitler’s, that was exhibited. There is nothing to be gained in trying to explain how this error occurred.

7. Yesterday we mistakenly reported that a talk was given by a bottle-scared hero. We apologize for the error. We obviously meant that the talk was given by a battle-scarred hero.

8. In one edition of today’s Food Section, an inaccurate number of jalapeno peppers was given for Jeanette Crowley’s Southwestern chicken salad recipe. The recipe should call for two, not 21, jalapeno peppers.

 

Parking Solution
A pastor of a two-church parish had to drive every Sunday morning about four miles from the 9:30 service at one church to the 11 o’clock at the other. He would often find the parking lot of the second church full, and he would be forced to park down the road and race to the church on foot.

The problem was finally solved when he selected a parking spot near the side door of the church and posted a sign that read, “You Park – You Preach.”

 

Eye Test

When his eyes began to give him trouble, a man went to a ophthalmologist in Prague.

The doctor showed the patient the eye chart, displaying the letters CVKPNWXSCZ.

“Can you read that?” the doctor asked.

“Can I read it?” the Czech replied. “I dated his sister!”

ONLY A TALLOW DIP

 The following was related in an evangelistic meeting: A woman who had been bedridden for years, lived near the railroad track, a long way from any other house. Near by was a deep gully over which the railroad passed on a new, substantial iron bridge, as was supposed. There was a terrible wind one night. This poor woman, as was often the case, was alone. All at once she heard a fearful crash; she felt sure it was the bridge. She looked at the clock. In ten minutes the through passenger train would be along. What should she do? Her son was away from home. Praying earnestly to God for help, she took the only light in the house, a tallow candle, and began to crawl (for she could not walk) toward the railroad track. How she ever got there she never knew. The track reached, she could hear the roar of the coming train. She prayed this prayer: “O God, help me to light this candle, and keep it burning until the engineer sees it; and make him see it.” God heard her prayer. The candle was lighted, there was a lull; just then she waved the candle-would the engineer see it? She heard a grating sound, she knew the brakes were set. She lost consciousness then, but the train came to a stand -still a few feet from the yawning chasm. Hundreds of lives were saved. This weak, sick woman did what she could; God used what she had. He will use what you have for the saving of men, if you will do your part. — Union Gospel News.

O Christian! If that poor woman felt so deeply the need, and made so great an effort, to save the passengers on that train from physical death, how ought you to feel, and what effort ought you to make, in order to rescue the multitudes about you that are hurrying on to eternal ruin, unconscious of their danger and ready to perish, unless some one, who has the light and knowledge, goes to their rescue?

 

A MANIFESTATION OF PARENTAL LOVE

There are some who reject Christianity because it seems to them incredible that God would have taken so much trouble, as the New Testament represents him to have done, for the salvation of creatures so infinitely beneath Him as we are. They forget that the New Testament teaches also that God is our Father. That being true, I declare to you that it is not surprising that God made such sacrifice to save us. Even a man will not permit a child to perish — any child, it need not be his own without putting forth mighty effort to save it.

One fact is worth a dozen arguments; and I will therefore ask you to listen to a humble man, as he relates an incident in his otherwise uneventful life. For a little while imagine yourself to be seated around the table of an American boardinghouse, where the inmates are spending an hour or two in the evening relating the more remarkable events that have occurred to them; imagine that you are listening to one of the guests there, instead of to me.

My name is Anthony Hunt. I am a drover, and I live many miles away upon the western prairie. There wasn’t a house in sight when we moved there, my wife and I and now we haven’t many neighbors, though those we have are good men.

One day about ten years ago, I went away from home to sell some fifty head of cattle –fine creatures as ever I saw. I was to buy some groceries and dry goods before I came back and, above all, a doll for our youngest child, Dolly (she never had a shop doll of her own, only the rag-babies her mother made her). Dolly could talk of nothing else, and went down to the very gate to call after me to “buy a big one.”

Nobody but a parent can understand how my mind was on that toy, and how, when the cattle were sold, the first thing I started off to buy was Dolly’s doll. I found a large one, with eyes that would open and shut when you pulled a wire, and had it wrapped up in paper, and tucked it under my arm while I had the parcels of calico, and delaine, and tea, and sugar put up. It might have been more prudent to have stayed until the morning, but I felt anxious to get back, and eager to hear Dolly’s prattle about the doll she was so eagerly expecting.

I mounted a steady-going old horse of mine and, pretty well loaded, started for home. Night set in before I was a mile from town, and settled down dark as pitch while I was in the midst of the wildest bit of road I know of. I could have felt my way through, I remembered it so well, and it was almost like doing that when the storm that had been brewing broke, and the rain fell in torrents. I was five, or may be six miles from home, too. I rode on as fast as I could; but suddenly I heard a little cry, like a child’s voice. I stopped short and listened. I heard it again; I called, and it answered me. I couldn’t see a thing; all was dark as pitch. I got down and felt about in the grass; called again, and again was answered. Then I began to wonder. I’m not timid; but I was known to be a drover, and to have money about me. I thought it might be a trap to catch me, and there to rob and murder me. I am not superstitious — not very — but how could a real child be out on the prairie in such a night at such an hour? It might be more than human. The bit of coward that hides itself in most men showed itself to me then, and I was half inclined to run away. But once more I heard that piteous cry, and, said I: “If any man’s child is hereabouts, Anthony Hunt is not the man to let it lie here and die.”

I searched again. At last I bethought me of a hollow under the hill, and groped that way. Sure enough, I found a little dripping thing, that moaned and sobbed as I took it in my arms. I called my horse, and he came to me, and I mounted, and tucked the little soaked thing under my coat as best I could, promising to take it home to mamma.

It seemed tired to death, and soon cried itself to sleep against my bosom. It had slept there over an hour when I saw my own windows. There were lights in them, and I sup-posed my wife had lit them for my sake; but when I got into the dooryard, I saw something was the matter, and stood still with dead fear of heart five minutes before I could lift the latch. At last I did it, and saw the room full of neighbors, and my wife amid them weeping. When she saw me she hid her face.

“Oh, don’t tell him,” she said; “it will kill him.”

“What is it, neighbors?” I cried.

And one said: “Nothing now, I hope. What’s that in your arms?”

“A poor lost child,” said I. “I found it on the road. “Take it, will you? I’ve turned faint.” And I lifted the sleeping thing, and saw the face of my own child, my little Dolly. It was my darling, and no other, that I had picked up on the drenched road.  My little child had wandered out to meet papa and the doll, while her mother was at work, and for her they were lamenting as for one dead.

I thanked God on my knees before them all.

It is not much of a story, neighbors; but I think of it often in the nights, and wonder how I could bear to live now, if I had not stopped when I heard the cry for help upon the road the little baby-cry, hardly louder than a squirrel’s chirp.

Is God less pitiful than man? Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.”  Did you notice the last sentence in that man’s story?  “It is not much of a story, neighbors; but I think of it often in the nights, and wonder how I could bear to live now if I had not stopped when I heard that cry for help upon the road — that little baby cry, hardly louder than a squirrel’s chirp.”

To me that sentence explains the whole story of redemption. That man’s love for his child was such that life would have been intolerable to him had he failed to save her.

Sinner! God the Father listened to the cry for help, the piteous wail of misery that ascended to Him from His lost children; and he sent His Son to seek and to save that which was lost.

For, be it remembered, He knew not merely that certain children were perishing, but that they were His children. — Homiletic Cyclopedia.