allied debts, the income tax, etc.

In offering the toasts, jokes, quotations and stories in this
second volume, the editor has endeavored to bring further aid to the
distracted toastmaster, to the professional after-dinner speaker who
must change his stories often, and to individuals inexperienced in
public speaking and so unfortunate as to have public addresses forced
upon them. He views the product with much the same feeling as did
Alexander Pope, who said, "O'er his books his eyes began to roll, in
pleasing memory of all he stole."

Paolo Bellezze expressed the same feelings in the introduction to his
work "Humor" when he said "Of this work of mine, I must confess it is
a great lot of stuff gathered from everywhere except from my brain....
It is a necklace of pearls strung upon a slender cord; that, I have
put there; the pearls have been furnished me by the most famous
jewelers, native and foreign. This said, I can--without being accused
of pride--recommend it to my respectable customers as an article of
great value and of absolute novelty."

In making this collection, files of such magazines as Life, Judge,
Puck and Punch were drawn on extensively; also magazines having
humorous pages or columns, such as the Literary Digest, Ladies' Home
Journal, Everybody's, Harper's; also Bindery Talk and various other
house organs. According to Samuel Johnson "A man will turn over half
a library to make one book," and the compiler of this one makes humble
acknowledgment to a whole library of books and periodicals where most
of these jokes have already appeared. It has been impossible to give
credit unless the place of first publication was definitely known.