Compositions
This page provides extracts from authentic, unconsciously humorous answers to school exam questions and essays, gathered from a compilation by Viking Press published under the pseudonym of Alexander Abingdon in 1952. The selected extracts, edited and rearranged, are reproduced for readers in countries where the book is in the public domain, which, to the best of our knowledge, includes Australia (because more than 50 years have passed since the book's publication and because the so-called anonymous rule applies). For other countries, please check your local copyright laws.
Opening of a play written as a class exercise: Act One, Scene One. The Count and Countess are sitting in the lounge. Enter the butler, who bows very low and says, "Good morning Countess! A son has been born to you".
After the shipwreck Mr X and the boys swam to the shore of the Virgin Islands. The Virgins dried them, gave them food, and then they all went to bed.
When my grandma lived in Germany, she found a nest of snake's eggs and she went there and hatched them. She hatched them with a hatchet.
We caught a snake, and we wanted to keep him, but my father said to kill him. We knew it was no use arguing with father, so we took him out back of the barn, held him down with a forked stick, and skinned him.
When a man's emotions are aroused he is apt to do something he will regret for the rest of his life, such as commit suicide
The army advanced to the sound of marital music
At the mine, after sinking a shaft one hundred feet, they finally struck bedpan
One advantage of being an immortal woman, like the Queen of Sheba, is that you get into all sorts of movies
England has always been known as a nation of shoplifters
From a Chinese student of English: Q. What are the five great races of mankind? A. The 100-yard, the hurdles, the quarter-mile, the mile, and the three miles.
Armistice Day is celebrated each year to perpetuate the Great War
The World Almanac is a book of sadistics
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