Part 62 (1/2)
A SCOTCH country minister had been invited, with his wife, to dine and spend the night at the house of one of his lairds. Their host was very proud of one of the very large beds which had just come into fas.h.i.+on, and in the morning asked the lady how she had slept in it. ”O very well, sir; but, indeed, I thought _I'd lost_ the minister a' thegither.”
MXCVIII.--ENVY.
A DRUNKEN man was found in the suburbs of Dublin, lying on his face, by the roadside, apparently in a state of physical unconsciousness. ”He is dead,” said a countryman of his, who was looking at him. ”Dead!” replied another, who had turned him with his face uppermost; ”by the powers, _I wish I had just half his disease_!”--in other words, a moiety of the whiskey he had drunk.
MXCIX.--A SLIGHT DIFFERENCE.
”I KEEP an excellent table,” said a lady, disputing with one of her boarders. ”That may be true, ma'am,” says he, ”but you put very little _upon it_.”
MC.--MORE HONORED IN THE BREACH.
A LAIRD OF LOGAN sold a horse to an Englishman, saying, ”You buy him as you see him; but he's an _honest_ beast.” The purchaser took him home.
In a few days he stumbled and fell, to the damage of his own knees and his rider's head. On this the angry purchaser remonstrated with the laird, whose reply was, ”Well, sir, I told you he was an honest beast; many a time has he _threatened_ to come down with me, and I kenned he would _keep his word_ some day.”
MCI.--”YOU'LL GET THERE BEFORE I CAN TELL YOU.”
MR. NEVILLE, formerly a fellow of Jesus College, was distinguished, by many innocent singularities, uncommon shyness, and stammering of speech, but when he used _bad_ words he could talk fluently. In one of his solitary rambles a countryman met him and inquired the road.
”Tu--u--rn,” says Neville, ”to--to--to--” and so on for a minute or two; at last he burst out, ”_Confound it, man! you'll get there before I can tell you_!”
MCII.--ON MR. MILTON, THE LIVERY STABLE-KEEPER.
TWO Miltons, in separate ages were born, The cleverer Milton 'tis clear we have got; Though the other had talents the world to adorn, _This_ lives by his _mews_, which the other could not!
MCIII.--A LONG RESIDENCE.
THE following complacent Scottish remark upon Bannockburn was made to a splenetic Englishman, who had said to a Scottish countryman that no man of taste would think of remaining any time in such a country as Scotland. To which the canny Scot replied, ”Tastes differ; I'se tak' ye to a place no far frae Stirling, whaur thretty thousand o' yer countrymen ha' been for five hunder years, an' they've nae thocht _o'
leavin' yet_.”
MCIV.--SPARE THE ROD.
A SCHOOLBOY being asked by the teacher how he should flog him, replied, ”If you please, sir, I should like to have it upon the _Italian system_--the heavy strokes up-wards, and the down ones light.”
MCV.--POLITICAL SINECURE.
CURRAN, after a debate which gave rise to high words, put his hand to his heart, and declared that he was the trusty _guardian_ of his own honor. Upon which Sir Boyle Roche congratulated his honorable friend on the snug little _sinecure_ he had discovered for himself.
MCVI.--EPIGRAM ON A PEt.i.t-MAiTRE PHYSICIAN.
WHEN Pennington for female ills indites, Studying alone not what, but how he writes, The ladies, as his graceful form they scan, Cry, with ill-omened rapture,--”_Killing man_!”
MCVII.--DAMPED ARDOR.