As he was visiting his parishioners one Saturday afternoon, a new pastor stopped at one house and found that no one answered the door. It was clear that someone was home, but he knocked repeatedly and no one appeared. Finally he pulled out his card, wrote “Revelation 3:20” on the back, and left it in the door.

That Sunday he found the card in the collection basket. Below his message someone had written “Genesis 3:10.”

Revelation 3:20 reads, “Behold I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with me.”

Genesis 3:10 reads, “And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked.”

When he was a cadet at West Point, California humorist George Derby had attended a class on military strategy.

“A thousand men are besieging a fortress that contains these quantities of equipment and provisions,” said the instructor, pointing to a chart. “It is a military axiom that at the end of 45 days the fort will surrender. If you were in command of this fortress, what would you do?”

Derby raised his hand and said, “I would march out, let the enemy in, and at the end of 45 days I would change places with him.”

This guy takes a gorilla out golfing. At the first tee the gorilla says, “So what am I supposed to do?” The guy says, “You see that green area about 400 yards from here? You’re supposed to hit the ball onto that.” So the gorilla takes a club and whacks the ball and it soars up into the sky and drops down neatly on the green. The guy tees off and makes about 150 yards, so he hits an iron shot and then another iron shot and finally they arrive at the green. The gorilla says, “What do I do now?” The guy says, “Now you hit it into that cup.” The gorilla says, “Why didn’t you tell me that back there?”

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!”