“It was very smart,” I admitted. Our neighbour showed his antiquarian research in another story as well as in this one. It related to the curate of a local parish who, in the unavoidable absence of his vicar, who was a Rural Dean, found himself taking a timid breakfast with the Bishop of the Diocese. He was naturally a shy man and he was shying very highly over an egg that he had taken and that was making a very hearty appeal to him. Observing him, the Bishop, with a thorough knowledge of his Diocese, and being well aware that the electoral contest which had been expected a few months earlier had not taken place, turned to the curate and remarked---- But if you've heard the story before what he remarked will not appeal to you so strongly as the egg did to the clergyman; so there is nothing gained by repeating the remark or the response intoned by the curate. But when our antiquarian told us both we heartily agreed with him that that curate deserved to be a bishop. We are awaiting without impatience. I trust, the third of this Troika team of anecdotes--the one that refers to the Scotsman and Irishman who came to the signpost that told all who couldn't read to inquire at the blacksmith's. That story is certain to be revealed to us in time. The antiquarian from the stable of whose memory the other two of the team were let loose cannot possibly restrain the third. Such things are pleasantly congenial with the scent of lavender in an old-world garden that knows nothing of how busy people are in the new world outside its boundary. But what are we to say when we find in a volume of serious biography published last year only as a previously unheard-of instance of the wit of the “subject,” the story of the gentleman who, standing at the entrance to his club, was taken for the porter by a member coming out? “Call me a cab,” said the latter. “You're a cab,” was the prompt reply. The story in the biography stops there; but the original one shows the wit making a second score on punning points. “What do you mean?” cried the other. “I told you to call me a cab.” “And I've called you a cab. You didn't expect me to call you handsome,” said the ready respondent. Now that story was a familiar Strand story forty years ago when H. J. Byron was at the height of his fame, and he was made the hero of the pun (assuming that it is possible for a hero to make a pun).