The captain of a freighter was notoriously strict. On one occasion the new first mate, whom he had just hired, became a bit too boisterous after hours, and the captain wrote in the ship’s log, “The first mate was drunk last night.”

The mate was an able, conscientious seaman, and he pleaded with the captain to strike this from the record. He had never been drunk before, he did his job faithfully, and he was off duty when the offense had happened. He begged for leniency, pointing out that such a record would cloud his whole future.

“I can’t help it,” the captain said. “You were drunk last night, and I can’t change the fact. The record must stand.”

Wounded, the mate returned to his duties, and he stood the watch that night without complaint. In the morning he wrote in the log, “The captain was sober last night.”

If you remember how much easier it is to remember what you would rather forget than remember, than remember what you would rather remember than forget, then you can’t forget how much easier it is to forget what you would rather remember than forget, than forget what you would rather forget than remember.

— Elmira Gazette, quoted in New York Times, Feb. 13, 1891

G.K. Chesterton founded a debating club in London called the IDK. When asked what the letters stood for, members would say, “I don’t know!”

In the pub at the Royal Hotel in Pilgrims Rest, South Africa, hangs a board engraved WYBMADIITY. Each time a customer asks what this means, the bartender says, “Will you buy me a drink if I tell you?”

Two communists are sitting on the porch of a nudist colony.

One says, “Have you read Marx?”

The other says, “Yes, I think it’s these wicker chairs.”

(Dr. Johnson abominated puns. When Boswell suggested that perhaps he couldn’t make them himself, Johnson said, “If I were punishéd for every pun I shed, there would not be left a puny shed for my punnish head.”)

A father exhorting his son to rise early in the morning reminded him of the old adage ‘It’s the early bird that picks up the worm.’ ‘Ah,’ replied the son, ‘but the worm gets up earlier than the bird.’

— The Book of Humour: Wit & Wisdom, 1867

Two matrons were taking a train across Canada in the 1940s. The country was beautiful but vast, and eventually they lost track of their location.

The train pulled into a station, and one of the women saw a man on the platform.

“Pardon me, young man,” she said. “Can you tell me what town this is?”

The man tipped his hat and said, “Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.”

The woman turned to her friend and said, “Isn’t that charming? They don’t speak English!”

A story is told of Sheridan, himself an Irishman, that one day, when coming back from shooting with an empty bag, he did not like to go home completely empty, and seeing a number of ducks in a pond, and a man or farmer leaning on a rail watching them, Sheridan said, ‘What will you take for a shot at the ducks?’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I will take half a sovereign.’

‘Done!’ said Sheridan, and he fired into middle of the flock, killing a dozen. ‘I am afraid you made a bad bargain!’

‘I don’t know,’ said the man: ‘they weren’t mine.’

— Tit-Bits From All the Most Interesting Books, Periodicals and Newspapers in the World, Oct. 29, 1881