"O relation Too nice and yet too true." DEAR UNCLE, ΤΟ Numerous as are the pledges you have received at our hands, yet we venture to approach you with this little Book, trusting it will not be altogether unacceptable. Favour us with a little consideration, for we promise you some interest in return, be the amount ever so small. This one pledge we hope at least to redeem. Believe us to remain, dear Uncle, Yours, by much stronger ties than those of mere consanguinity, TWO OF THE JONESES. DIRECTIONS TO THE READER. ALL the Jokes contained in this Volume are warranted to go off equally well in any climate. They should be kept as dry as possible, and care be taken by those who handle them not to prick their fingers with the points. PREFACE. TORMENTED With a literary itching, which nothing would allay but scratching with a pen, and wishing, like the rest of the world, to turn the honest penny, we resolved, in a brown study, to produce a Hand-book for Joking, at the same time we did not feel inclined "to stand the grin," but by laying before you a guide to merriment we hoped to obtain your silver compliments, and win your golden opinions. Now in these days of cheap literature, when Weekly Volumes, European Libraries, and Hand-books of every known thing, and Guides to every known place, have enlightened all sorts of people, on all sorts of subjects, that can never be of any service to them, one thing appears to have escaped the notice of those numerous lively authors, who are for ever prowling about in search of stray ideas, which, when met with under any circumstances, they appropriate with the coolness of pick-pockets, and cling to with the tenacity of bull-dogs. That one thing is a Hand-book of Joking-there are Hand-books of every class and denomination from the Hand-book of Heraldry down to the Hand-book of Hair-dressing; but no one seems to have imagined it necessary to fill up this literary hiatus. We, brimful of love for our species (yet with a needful glance to our publishers' specie), bursting with unbounded philanthropy, propose, Curtius-like, to fill the awful gap. Alone we'll do it; though we have "Every man his own Butler," (and we do not despair of one day seeing "Every man his own Washerwoman,") yet where, we ask, is the Hand-book to teach every man to be funny? We perceive the opening, and, having the cause of humanity at heart, in we jump, if only for a joke. |