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?”
A couple were going to be married, and had proceeded as far as the church door: the gentleman then stopped his intended bride, and thus unexpectedly addressed her:–
‘My dear Eliza, during our courtship I have told you most of my mind, but I have not told you the whole: when we are married, I shall insist upon three things.’
‘What are they?’ asked the lady.
‘The three things are these,’ said the bridegroom: ‘I shall sleep alone, I shall eat alone, and find fault when there is no occasion: can you submit to these conditions?’
‘O yes, sir, very easily,’ was the reply, ‘for if you sleep alone, I shall not; if you eat alone, I shall eat first: and as to your finding fault without occasion, that I think may be prevented, for I will take care you shall never want occasion.’
The conditions being thus adjusted, they proceeded to the altar, and the ceremony was performed.
— The Knot Tied: Marriage Ceremonies of All Nations, 1877
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!”
An English professor was training her students in memorization techniques.
“For instance,” she said, “if you want to remember the name of a certain poet, Bobbie Burns, you could visualize a London policeman in flames.” She drew a picture in chalk. “You see? ‘Bobbie Burns.'”
A student raised his hand and asked, “How could we know that’s not ‘Robert Browning’?”
Three men went into a diner, and each ordered a cup of coffee. The waitress brought the three cups of coffee and a dish with twelve lumps of sugar. Each man took an odd number of lumps of sugar, and when they had finished, there was no sugar left. How many lumps did each man take?
It requires only a few moments to recognize that the sum of three odd numbers must be odd itself. So there must be a trick somewhere, and there is.
The first man took one lump, the second man took one lump, and the third man took ten lumps. “Aha!” you will cry, “ten is not an odd number!” And then, we slyly inquire, “Do you know anyone who takes ten lumps of sugar in his coffee?”
— M.H. Greenblatt, Mathematical Entertainments, 1965
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
There was a young man from Pall Mall
Who went to a fancy dress ball.
Just for the fun
He dressed up as a bun;
And was eat by a dog in the hall.
— Anonymous, in A.C. McClurg, The Humbler Poets, 1910
A woman proceeding by the elevated railroad, by the side of the Niagara Falls, asked the engine-driver, ‘If the rope broke, where she would go to?’ The driver told her that ‘If one broke they would have the other one to hold them.’ The woman then said, ‘Well, driver, if that broke, where should I go to?’ ‘Well,’ said the driver, ‘it just depends upon what sort of a life you have led.’
— Tit-Bits From All the Most Interesting Books, Periodicals and Newspapers in the World, Dec. 3, 1881