How to Tell a True Princess

Well my little boys and gals this is the case of a prince who his father had told him he must get married but the gal he married must be a true princess. So he says to the old man how do you tell if a princess is a true princess or a phony princess. So the old man says why if she is a true princess she must be delicate.

Yes said the prince but what is the true test of delicate.

Why said the old man who was probably the king if she is delicate why she probably can’t sleep over 49 eiderdown quilts and 28 mattresses provided they’s a pea parked under same which might disturb her. So they made her bed this day in these regards. They put a single green pea annext the spring and then piled 28 mattresses and 49 eider quilts on top of same and says if she can sleep on this quantity of bed clothing and not feel disturbed, why she can’t possibly be delicate and is therefore not a princess.

Well the princess went to bed at 10 o’clock on acct. of having called up everybody and nobody would come over and play double Canfield with her and finely she give up and went to bed and hadn’t been asleep more than 3 hrs. when she woke up and says I am very uncomfortable, they must be a pea under all these quilts. So they looked it up and sure enough they was a green pea under the quilts and mattresses. It made her miserable. She was practally helpless.

But the next day when she woke up they didn’t know if she was a princess or the reverse. Because lots of people had slept under those conditions and maybe it was the mattress or the springs that had made them miserable. So finely the king suggested why not give her a modern trial.

So the next evening but one they sent her to bed under these conditions:

The counterpane was concrete and right under it was 30 layers of tin plate and then come 4 bales of cotton and beneath that 50 ft. of solid rock and under the entire layout a canary’s feather.

“Now Princess,” they said to her in a friendly way, “if you can tell us the name of the bird which you are sleeping on under all these condiments, why then we will know you are a true princess and worthy to marry the prince.”

“Prince!” she said. “Is that the name of a dog?”

They all laughed at her in a friendly way.

“Why yes,” she said, “I can tell you the name of that bird. His name is Dickie.”

This turned the laugh on them and at the same time proved she was a true princess.

Tomorrow night I will try to tell you the story of how 6 men travelled through the wide world and the story will begin at 6:30 and I hope it won’t keep nobody up.

Cinderella

Once upon a time they was a prominent clubman that killed his wife after a party where she doubled a bid of four diamonds and the other side made four odd, giving them game and a $26.00 rubber. Well, she left him a daughter who was beginning to run absolutely hog wild and he couldn’t do nothing with her, so he married again, this time drawing a widow with two gals of her own, Patricia and Micaela.

These two gals was terrible. Pat had a wen, besides which they couldn’t nobody tell where her chin started and her neck left off. The other one, Mike, got into a brawl the night she come out and several of her teeth had came out with her. These two gals was impossible.

Well, the guy’s own daughter was a pip, so both her stepmother and the two stepsisters hated her and made her sleep in the ashcan. Her name was Zelda, but they called her Cinderella on account of how the ashes and clinkers clang to her when she got up noons.

Well, they was a young fella in the town that to see him throw his money around, you would of thought he was the Red Sox infield trying to make a double play. So everybody called him a Prince. Finally he sent out invitations to a dance for just people that had dress suits. Pat and Mike was invited, but not Cinderella, as her best clothes looked like they worked in a garage. The other two gals made her help them doll up and they kidded her about not going, but she got partly even by garnisheeing their hair with eau de garlic.

Well, Pat and Mike started for Webster Hall in a bonded taxi and they hadn’t much sooner than went when a little bit of an old dame stepped out of the kitchen sink and stood in front of Cinderella and says she was her fairy godmother.

“Listen,” says Cinderella: “don’t mention mother to me! I’ve tried two different kinds and they’ve both been a flop!”

“Yes, but listen yourself,” says the godmother: “wouldn’t you like to go to this here dance?”

“Who and the h⁠⸺⁠l wouldn’t!” says Cinderella.

“Well, then,” says the godmother, “go out in the garden and pick me a pumpkin.”

“You’re pie-eyed,” was Cinderella’s criticism, but anyway she went out and got a pumpkin and give it to the old dame and the last named touched it with her wand and it turned into a big, black touring car like murderers rides in.

Then the old lady made Cinderella go to the mousetrap and fetch her six mice and she prodded them with her wand and they each became a cylinder. Next she had her bring a rat from the rat trap and she turned him into a big city chauffeur, which wasn’t hardly any trouble.

“Now,” says the godmother, “fetch me a couple lizards.”

So Cinderella says, “What do you think this is, the zoo?” But she went in the living-room and choose a couple lizards off the lounge and the old lady turned them into footmen.

The next thing the old godmother done was tag Cinderella herself with the wand and all of a sudden the gal’s rags had become a silk evening gown and her feet was wrapped up in a pair of plate-glass slippers.

“How do you like them slippers?” asked the old dame.

“Great!” says Cinderella. “I wished you had of made the rest of my garments of the same material.”

“Now, listen,” says the godmother: “don’t stay no later than midnight because just as soon as the clock strikes twelve, your dress will fall off and your chauffeur and so forth will change back into vermin.”

Well, Cinderella clumb in the car and they was about to start when the chauffeur got out and went around back of the tonneau.

“What’s the matter?” says Cinderella.

“I wanted to be sure my taillight was on,” says the rat.

Finally they come to Webster Hall and when Cinderella entered the ballroom everybody stopped dancing and looked at her pop-eyed. The Prince went nuts and wouldn’t dance with nobody else and when it come time for supper he got her two helpings of stewed rhubarb and liver and he also had her laughing herself sick at the different wows he pulled. Like for instance they was one occasion when he looked at her feet and asked her what was her shoes made of.

“Plate glass,” says Cinderella.

“Don’t you feel no pane?” asked the Prince.

Other guests heard this one and the laughter was general.

But finally it got to be pretty near twelve o’clock and Cinderella went home in her car and pretty soon Pat and Mike blowed in and found her in the ashcan and told her about the ball and how the strange gal had come and stole the show.

“We may see her again tomorrow night,” says Pat.

“Oh,” says Cinderella, “is they going to be another ball?”

“Why, no, you poor sap!” says Mike. “It’s a Marathon.”

“I wished I could go,” says Cinderella. “I could if you would leave me take your yellow dress.”

The two stepsisters both razzed her, little wreaking that it was all as she could do to help from laughing outright.

Anyway they both went back to the dance the next night and Cinderella followed them again, but this time the gin made her drowsy and before she realized it, the clock was striking twelve. So in her hurry to get out she threw a shoe and everybody scrambled for it, but the Prince got it. Meanw’ile on account of it being after midnight, the touring car had disappeared and Cindy had to walk home and her former chauffeur kept nibbling at her exposed foot and annoying her in many other ways.

Well, the Prince run a display ad the next morning that he would marry the gal who could wear the shoe and he sent a trumpeter and a shoe clerk to make a house to house canvass of Greater New York and try the shoe on all the dames they could find and finally they come to the clubman’s house and the trumpeter woke up the two stepsisters for a fitting. Well, Pat took one look at the shoe and seen they was no use. Mike was game and tried her best to squeeze into it, but flopped, as her dogs was also mastiffs. She got sore and asked the trumpeter why hadn’t he broughten a shoe horn instead of that bugle. He just laughed.

All of a sudden him and the shoe clerk catched a glimpse of Cinderella and seen that she had small feet and sure enough, the slipper fitted her and they run back to the Prince’s apartment to tell him the news.

“Listen, Scott,” they says, for that was the Prince’s name: “we have found the gal!”

So Cinderella and the Prince got married and Cinderella forgive her two stepsisters for how they had treated her and she paid a high-price dentist to fix Mike up with a removable bridge and staked Pat to a surgeon that advertised a new, safe method of exterminating wens.

That is all of the story, but it strikes me like the plot⁠—with the poor, ragged little gal finally getting all the best of it⁠—could be changed around and fixed up so as it would make a good idear for a play.

Red Riding Hood

Well, children, here is the story of little Red Riding Hood like I tell it to my little ones when they wake up in the morning with a headache after a tough night.

Well, one or two times they was a little gal that lived in the suburbs who they called her little Red Riding Hood because she always wore a red riding hood in the hopes that sometime a fresh guy in a high power roadster would pick her up and take her riding. But the rumor had spread the neighborhood that she was a perfectly nice gal, so she had to walk.

Red had a grandmother that lived over near the golf course and got in on most of the parties and one noon she got up and found that they wasn’t no gin in the house for her breakfast so she called up her daughter and told her to send Red over with a bottle of gin as she was dying.

So Red starts out with a quart under her arm but had not went far when she met a police dog. A good many people has police dogs, and brags about them and how nice they are for children and etc. but personly I would just as leaf have my kids spend their weekend swimming in the State Shark Hatchery.

Well, this special police dog was like the most of them and hated everybody. When he seen Red he spoke to her and she answered him. Even a dog was better than nothing. She told him where she was going and he pertended like he wasn’t paying no tension but no sooner had not she left him when he beat it up a alley and got to her grandmother’s joint ahead of her.

Well the old lady heard him knock at the door and told him to come in, as she thought he must either be Red or a bootlegger. So he went in and the old lady was in bed with this hangover and the dog eat her alive.

Then he put on some pajamas and laid down in the bed and pertended like he was her, so pretty soon Red come along and knocked at the door and the dog told her to come in and she went up to the bed to hand him the quart. She thought of course it would be her grandmother laying in the bed and even when she seen the dog she still figured it was her grandmother and something she had drank the night before must of disagreed with her and made her look different.

“Well, grandmother,” she says, “you must of hit the old hair tonic last night. Your arms looks like Luis Firpo.”

“I will Firpo you in a minute,” says the dog.

“But listen grandmother,” says Red, “don’t you think you ought to have your ears bobbed?”

“I will ear you in a minute,” says the dog.

“But listen grandmother,” says Red, “you are cockeyed.”

“Listen,” says the dog, “if you had of had ½ of what I had last night you would of been stone blind.”

“But listen grandmother,” says Red, “where did you get the new store teeth?”

“I heard you was a tough egg,” says the dog, “so I bought them to eat you with.”

So then the dog jumped out of bed and went after Red and she screamed.

In the mean w’ile Red’s father had been playing golf for a quarter a hole with a couple of guys that conceded themselfs all putts under 12 ft. and he was $.75 looser coming to the 10th tee.

The 10th hole is kind of tough as your drive has to have a carry of 50 yards or it will fall in a garbage incinerating plant. You can either lift out with a penalty of two strokes or else play it with a penalty of suffocation. Red’s old man topped his drive and the ball rolled into the garbage. He elected to play it and made what looked like a beautiful shot, but when they got up on the green they found that he had hit a white radish instead of a golf ball.

A long argument followed during which the gallery went home to get his supper. The hole was finely conceded.

The 11th hole on the course is probably the sportiest hole in golfdom. The tee and green are synonymous and the first shot is a putt, but the rules signify that the putt must be played off a high tee with a driver. Red’s father was on in two and off in three more and finely sunk his approach for a birdie eight, squaring the match.

Thus the match was all square coming to the home hole which is right close to grandmother’s cottage. Red’s father hooked his drive through an open window in his mother-in-law’s house and forced his caddy to lend him a niblick. He entered the cottage just as the dog was beginning to eat Red.

“What hole are you playing father?” asked Red.

“The eighteenth,” says her father, “and it is a dog’s leg.”

Whereat he hit the police dog in the leg with his niblick and the dog was so surprised that he even give up the grandmother.

“I win, one up,” says Red’s father and he went out to tell the news to his two opponents. But they had quit and went home to dress for the Kiwanis Club dance.

Bluebeard

Well children it seems they was a gal married a man named Bluebeard on acct. of he being rich. That was why she married him and not why they called him Bluebeard, the last⁠—named being on acct. of him not having had time to shave for several days.

So on this day he come into his wife’s boudoir whiskers and all and says he was going on the road for 6 wks. to sell tooth brushes with no bristles and might half to make a couple speeches at different Rotary Clubs.

“But listen dearie,” he says before departing, “you have got a charge acct. at Haynes the butcher and the great Atlantic and Pacific Tea store so you should worry. And here is my keys,” he says, “and this here key opens the rm. where I got my dough and this here key is the key to the rm. where the extra dishes is locked up in case you should have a whole lot of Co. and I hope you entertain all your friends w’ile I am gone so as we can get that much over with. And you can use all of these here keys except this little key which opens the closet at the end of the drawing rm. which I forbid you to enter same.”

“Yes, but what is in this closet?” asked the little woman thinking to herself that it must be the place where he kept his Scotch and corkscrew which he had been drinking unbeknownest to her or why would he of went so many days without shaving.

“That is none of your business,” was his husbandly reply. “But I am just telling you to lay off that little closet.”

He hadn’t no sooner than got out of the house when Co. begin to show up as they will when lease desired and amongst the Co. was 2 of her brothers and 1 sister and a couple guys that was stuck on her long before she married Bluebeard.

So they set around all evening and told stories and tried to sing but nothing to sustain them and the little woman wouldn’t open the closet door where everybody thought the hootch was for the simple reason that she had got the key in the door and it wouldn’t fit and finely they all went home and said they would come back the next day and hoped she would not be so stingy with the drinks.

So they beat it all but her sister, and the 2 gals hadn’t no sooner went to bed when the doorbell ring and a Jap answered and who should it be but Bluebeard. And he come up to the rm. and asked her for the keys and she give them all to him except the key to what she thought was the wine cellar.

“Listen,” he says, “I will give you 7 minutes to produce that one key which is the most important key in the house.”

“Sure,” she says, “because that key opens the closet where you are storing the hootch.”

“If you think it’s hootch, look it over,” was his criticism.

So she went up and opened the door to this closet and instead of finding hootch, she found the skeleton forms of former wives and some of them looked like vintage.

“Now,” says Bluebeard, “you are going to occupy a clothes hanger along with the rest of these gals.”

“Just wait a minute,” she says, “till I can go out and get cleaned and pressed.”

So she pretended like she was sending herself out to the tailor’s but in the meantime she was asking her sister to look out of the window and see was they any help coming and finely her 2 brothers and the guys that was stuck on her showed up and stuck a safety razor into Bluebeard’s whiskers and the shock of getting shaved killed him and the little woman and her relatives divided the spoils and believe me spoils is right. The moral of this story is if your husband don’t get shaved for 3 days, somebody should ought to step in and do their duty.