THE TRAMP

Father Delany was walking home after his sermon late one night when he came upon this intoxicated tramp on the sidewalk. Wanting to help, he asked the man, "Do you live here?"

"Yesh," the man slowly replied.

"Would you like me to help you upstairs?" the father asked.

"Yesh," the man slowly sputtered.

When they got up on the second floor he asked, "Is this your floor?"

"Yesh," again the man replied.

Then Father Delany got to thinking that maybe he didn't want to face the man's irate wife because she may think he was the one who got the man drunk. So, he opened the first door he came to and shoved him through it, then went back downstairs.

But lo and behold when he went back outside, there was another tramp lying on the sidewalk. So he asked that man, "Do you live here?"

"Yesh."

"Would you like me to help you upstairs?"

"Yesh."

So he did and put him in the same door with the first tramp. Then went back downstairs, where, to his surprise, there was another tramp.

So he started over to him. But before he got to him, the tramp staggered over to a policeman and cried, "For God's sake, offisher, protect me from thish man. He'sh been doing nothing all night long but takin' me upstairsh and throwing me down the elevator shaft!"