The Jest Book: The Choicest Anecdotes and SayingsLemon, Mark
General
The Jest Book: The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings
Lemon, Mark
Anecdotes -- Great Britain; English wit and humor
DURING Pope's last illness, a squabble happened in his chamber, between
his two physicians, Dr. Burton and Dr. Thomson, they mutually charging
each other with hastening the death of the patient by improper
prescriptions. Pope at length silenced them by saying, "Gentlemen, I
only learn by your discourse that I am in a dangerous way; therefore,
all I now ask is, that the following epigram may be added after my death
to the next edition of the Dunciad, by way of postscript:--
'Dunces rejoice, forgive all censures past,
The _greatest dunce_ has killed your foe at last.'"
MCCXC.--OPPOSITE TEMPERS.
GENERAL SUTTON was very passionate, and calling one morning on Sir
Robert Walpole, who was quite the reverse, found his servant shaving
him. During the conversation, Sir Robert said, "John, you cut me"; and
continued the former subject of discourse. Presently he said again,
"John, you cut me"; but as mildly as before: and soon after he had
occasion to say it a third time; when Sutton, starting up in a rage,
said, swearing a great oath, and doubling his fist at the servant, "If
Sir Robert can bear it, I cannot; and if you cut him once more, John,
_I'll knock you down_."
MCCXCI.--A CONJUGAL CONCLUSION.
A WOMAN having fallen into a river, her husband went to look for her,
proceeding up the stream from the place where she fell in. The
bystanders asked him if he was mad,--she could not have gone against the
stream. The man answered, "She was _obstinate_ and _contrary_ in her
life, and no doubt she was the _same at her death_."
MCCXCII.--A QUEER EXPRESSION.
A POOR but clever student in the University of Glasgow was met by one of
the Professors, who noticing the scantiness of his academical toga,
said, "Mr. ----, your gown is very short."--"It will be long enough,
sir, before I get another," replied the student. The answer tickled the
Professor greatly, and he went on quietly chuckling to himself, when he
met a brother Professor, who, noticing his hilarity, inquired what was
amusing him so much. "Why, that fellow ---- said such a funny thing. I
asked why his gown was so short, and he said, 'it will be a long time
before I get another.'"--"There's nothing very funny in that."--"Well,
no," replied the other, "there is not, after all. But _it was the way he
said it_."
MCCXCIII.--AN IRISHMAN'S NOTION OF DISCOUNT.
IT chanced, one gloomy day in the month of December, that a good-humored
Irishman applied to a merchant to discount a bill of exchange for him at
rather a long though not an unusual date; and the merchant having
casually remarked that the bill had a great many days to run, "That's
true," replied the Irishman, "but consider how _short the days are_ at
this time of the year."
MCCXCIV.--A PARTICIPATION IN A PRACTICAL JOKE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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