HumorUs Stories — Classic and Original Funny Stories

Four Men in a Cave by Stephen Crane — A Little Courage, a Lot of Bravado, and Something in the Dark

Four young men from the city, a campfire in the Sullivan County hills, and one small man who can’t stop talking about the black hole in the hillside. He wants a story to

The McWilliamses and the Burglar Alarm by Mark Twain — Confounding Contraptions Are Nothing New

Mark Twain falls into conversation with a pleasant gentleman who has mild opinions on weather, crops, literature, scandal and religion. Then the talk lands on burglar ala

The Eyes Have It — A Classic Tale by Philip K. Dick

Somebody left a paperback on the bus. A man brings it home, settles into his easy-chair, and makes a discovery the rest of us have missed: Earth has been invaded, and the

The Romance of a Busy Broker — A Classic Humorus Story by O. Henry

Wall Street, a spring morning at the turn of the century. The ticker is running hot, the telephone won’t quit, and Harvey Maxwell, broker, is handling it all like a man w

Tobermory — A Classic Short Story by Saki

Every house party has a guest who knows too much. A mild little man named Cornelius Appin has spent seventeen years on one problem. He believes he's solved it: he has ta

A Foot Too Deep — An Original Short Story by Don McDonald

Nobody in New Orleans had ever made Bernard de Marigny look foolish in public. He was rich past counting, small as a foil, and very likely the most dangerous man in Louis

A Slice of Life — A Classic Story by P.G. Wodehouse

A man in a country pub insists his story is true. It concerns his brother Wilfred, a chemist of some genius, a jolly outdoor girl with a wholesome sunburn, and a Yorkshir

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain

An errand, a name, a question. That's all it takes. Sent east to west on a friend's behalf, a traveler walks into a decayed mining camp in Calaveras County and asks one

The Reticence of Lady Anne — A Classic Short Story by Saki

A December afternoon, a fire going down, and a marriage stalled halfway through a quarrel nobody bothered to finish. Egbert comes in for tea prepared to be reasonable, th

Gipsy — A Classic Comic Tale by Booth Tarkington

Duke is a little old dog with a pessimistic worldview and a well-earned suspicion that life rarely improves. Gipsy is a rangy, scarred, yellow-eyed stray cat who lives by

A Wasted Day — A Classic Short Story by Richard Harding Davis

Arnold Thorndike buys a Correggio before breakfast and can price his own time to the minute. Two hundred dollars of it. So when he stops his car at the Court of General S

The Whirligig of Life — A Classic Short Tale by O. Henry

Ransie and Ariela Bilbro come down out of the Cumberland Mountains to have their marriage undone. Justice of the Peace Benaja Widdup can find no law on the subject, so he

Chain of Custody — An Original Comedy of Errors by Don McDonald

In Maple Glen, nothing ever happens. This week, nothing happens in three separate backyards, after dark, and everyone involved would prefer you didn't ask. A deadpan com

The Good Little Boy and The Bad Little Boy by Mark Twain

Mark Twain had a bone to pick with the Sunday-school storybook — that pious little genre where good children are showered with rewards and bad children are struck by ligh

The Nice People — A Classic Humorous Story by H.C. Brunner

Atop Orange Mountain, in Mr. Jacobus's summer boarding house, a bored married couple finds relief from their tiresome fellow guests in the arrival of the Bredes — a grace

Memoirs of a Yellow Dog — A Classic Humorous Tale by O. Henry

O. Henry usually saves his surprises for the last line. This time he starts with one: the narrator is a dog. In *The Memoirs of a Yellow Dog*, a mangy, good-natured mutt

The Committee Committee – An Original Short Story by Don McDonald

This is a parable set in a village where things run smoothly—because they always have. Problems are addressed. Responsibilities are shared. And when questions arise, the

Forever Fun

Some stories ask you to believe. These just want to humor us. Here's a narrated collection of short fiction with a straight face and a crooked grin. HumorUs is no longer

The Great American Pie Company — Classic Humor by Ellis Parker Butler

Eph Deacon sells pies for a living, or rather his wife bakes them and he carries the basket, which suits his philosophy just fine. Then Phineas Doolittle starts undercutt

My Financial Career — A Short Classic Humorous Tale by Stephen Leacock

He only wants to open an account. That's all. Fifty-six dollars, a polite request, and maybe two minutes of a bank manager's time. But the moment our narrator steps insid