Nuts to crack; or Quips, quirks, anecdote and facete of Oxford and Cambridge ScholarsGooch, Richard
History
Nuts to crack; or Quips, quirks, anecdote and facete of Oxford and Cambridge Scholars
Gooch, Richard
University of Cambridge -- Anecdotes; University of Oxford -- Anecdotes
Two Cantabs, brothers, named Whiter, one the learned author of
_Etymologicum Magnum_, the other an amiable divine; both were
remarkable, the one for being six, the other about five feet in
height. The taller was eccentric and often absent in his habits, the
other a wag. Both were invited to the same party, and the taller being
first ready, slipped on the coat of the shorter, and wended his way
into a crowded room of fashionables, to whom his eccentricities being
familiar, they were not much surprised at seeing him encased in a
coat, the tail of which scarcely reached his hips, whilst the sleeves
ran short of his elbows; in fact, it was a perfect _strait jacket_,
and he had not been long seated before he began to complain to every
body that he was suffering from a dreadful fit of _rheumatism_. One or
two suggested the _tightness_ of his coat as the cause of his pain;
but he remained rheumatic in spite of them, till his brother's
approach threw the whole party into a fit of convulsive laughter, as
he came sailing into the room, his coat-tails sweeping the room, _en
traine_, and his arms performing the like service on either side, as
he exclaimed, to his astonished brother, "Why, Bob, you have got my
coat on!" Bob then discovered that his friends' hints bordered on the
truth, and the two exchanged garments forthwith, to the amusement of
all present.
* * * * *
DR. PARR AN INGRATE.
The Doctor was once staying with the late great and good Mr. Roscoe,
when many of the most distinguished Whigs were his guests also, out of
compliment to whom the Doctor forbore to indulge in his customary
after-dinner pipe. At length, when wine and words had circulated
briskly, and twilight began to set in, he insisted upon mounting to
his own room to have a whiff _solus_. Having groped his way up stairs,
somewhat exhausted with the effort, he threw himself into what he took
to be an arm-chair. Suddenly the ears of the party were assailed with
awful moans and groans, as of some one in tribulation. Mr. Roscoe
hastened to learn the cause, and no sooner reached the stairs' foot,
than he heard the Doctor calling lustily for his man John, adding, in
more supplicatory accents, "Will nobody help a Christian man in
distress! Will nobody help a Christian man in distress!" Mr. Roscoe
mounted to the rescue, but could not forbear a hearty laugh, as he
beheld Dr. P. locked in the close embrace of a large old-fashioned
grate, which he had mistaken for an arm-chair, and from which he was
in vain struggling to relieve himself.
* * * * *
MON DIEU--LE DIABLE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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