For a more light-hearted collection of jokes, see the section on
Hugh Troy in _Merry_Gentlemen_and_One_Lady_, by J. Bryan, III.
Troy's jokes did not get people in trouble or stink up innocent people's
apartments; they did cause utter bewilderment worthy of talk.bizarre.
I think Bryan also tells of the time Robert Benchley and a fellow
Harvard undergraduate, dressed in work clothes, went to the door of
a house on a veddy nice square in Boston and said to the maid,
"We're here for the sofa."
"Which one?" she said.
This was a dangerous moment, but Benchley saw a sofa in the
corner of the living room and said, "That one."
They then walked, carrying the sofa, to another house on the
same square, rang the bell, and told a second maid, "We're here with
the sofa."
"Um, I guess you can put it there," she said; and so they did.
Benchley heard, in a roundabout way, that the lady of the
first house visited the lady of the second one some six months later
and recognized her old sofa.
