Visitor: “Man, gimme another half bottle, please.”
Waiter: “But you, sir, are already properly soused.”
Visitor: “It’s just for courage, I’m really afraid of cholera.”
Waiter: “But thank God we haven’t heard anything about it here.”
Visitor: “At home my wife is clean, and my brother is… cholera.” [presumably the usual wordplay about “choleric”?]
(Razvlechenie, Moscow, 1883)
Sic Transit Pestilentia 