566. When the baggage of Lady Hamilton was landed at Palermo, Lord
Nelson’s coxswain was very active in conveying it to the ambassador’s
hotel. Lady Hamilton observed this, and presenting the man with a
moidore, said, Now, my friend, what will you have to drink? Why, please
your honour, said the coxswain, I am not thirsty. But, said her
ladyship, Nelson’s steersman must drink with me, so what will you take,
a dram, a glass of grog, or a glass of punch? Why, said Jack, as I am to
drink with your ladyship’s honour, it would not be good manners to be
backward, so I’ll take the dram now, and will be drinking the glass of
grog while your ladyship is mixing the tumbler of punch for me.
567. When Paddy Blake heard an English gentleman speaking of the fine
echo at the lake of Killarney, which repeats the sound forty times, he
very promptly observed, Poh! faith that’s nothing at all, to the echo in
my father’s garden, in the county of Galway; there, honey, if you were
to say to it, How do you do, Paddy Blake? it would answer, Very well, I
thank you, sir.
568. When a late duchess of Bedford was at Buxton, in her eighty-fifth
year, it was the medical farce of the day for the faculty to resolve
every complaint of whim and caprice into a shock of the nervous system.
Her grace, after inquiring of many of her friends in the rooms what
brought them there, and being generally answered, for a nervous
complaint, was asked, in her turn, What brought her to Buxton? I came
only for pleasure, answered the healthy duchess; for, thank goodness, I
was born before nerves came into fashion.
569. As a clergyman was burying a corpse, a woman came, and pulled him
by the sleeve, in the middle of the service. Sir, sir, I want to speak
with you. Prithee wait, woman, till I have done. No, sir; I must speak
to you immediately. Well, then, what is the matter? Why, sir, you are
going to bury a man who died of the small pox, near my poor husband, who
never had it.
570. What have you to say, old Bacon-face? said a counsellor to a
farmer, at a late Cambridge assizes. Why, answered the farmer, I am
thinking that my bacon face and your calf’s head would make a very good
dish.
571. A scholar, a bald man, and a barber, travelling together, agreed
each to watch four hours in the night, in turn, for the sake of
security. The barber’s lot came first, who shaved the scholar’s head
while he was asleep, then waked him when his turn came. The scholar,
scratching his head, and feeling it bald, exclaimed, you wretch of a
barber, you have waked the bald man instead of me.
572. A man much addicted to drinking, being extremely ill with a fever,
a consultation was held in his bed-chamber by three physicians, how to
cure the fever, and abate the thirst. Gentlemen, said he, I will take
half the trouble off your hands; you cure the fever, and I will abate
the thirst myself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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