The Jest Book: The Choicest Anecdotes and SayingsLemon, Mark
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The Jest Book: The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings
Lemon, Mark
Anecdotes -- Great Britain; English wit and humor
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 fashion,
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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