vintage jokes!

from reusableart.com (PD)

NO FRACTIONS WANTED
A small boy saw some young puppies at the dog dealer’s.
“ Oh, Mr. Brown,” he asked the man, “ how much do you want for those puppies?”
"They’re $3 apiece, Master Beverly.”

"Oh, but I don’t want a piece; I want a whole dog.”

THE WHOPPER THAT WON
A minister walking along a road saw a crowd of boys sitting in a ring with a small dog in the center. “What are you doing with that dog?” he asked. “ Whoever tells the biggest lie, he wins the dog,” said one of the boys. “Oh,” said the minister, “ I am surprised at you boys, for when I was like you I never told a lie.” There was a moment’s silence. Then one of the boys said: “Give the gent the dog, Jim.”

IRREPRESSIBLE
Little Davey Sloan is forever asking questions. “You’d better keep still or something will happen to you,” his tired mother finally told him, one night. “Curiosity once killed a eat, you know.”
Davey was so impressed with this that he kept silent for three minutes. Then: “Say, Mother, what was it the cat wanted to know?”

. . . and a story (true or not?) about the artist James McNeill Whistler, who also had a knack for not making friends:

GETTING EVEN
Here is a story typical of the great maker of enemies:
Whistler had a French poodle of which he was extravagantly fond. The dog was seized with an affection of the throat, and Whistler had the audacity to send for the great specialist Mackenzie.
Sir Morrel, when he saw that he had been called in to treat a dog, didn’t like it much, it was plain. But he said nothing. He prescribed, pocketed a big fee and drove away.
The next day he sent posthaste for Whistler, and Whistler, thinking he was summoned on some matter connected with his beloved dog, dropped his work and rushed like the wind to Mackenzie’s.
On his arrival Sir Morrel said gravely:
“How do you do, Mr. Whistler? I wanted to see you about having my front door painted.”

-- from Carleton B. Case,  Big Joke-book: Over 700 of the Funniest Jokes Ever Told (Chicago: Shrewsbury Publishing, 1919), passim.