To Hierocles, who lived in the sixth century, is attributed a
book called “Asteia,” which contains twenty-one jests, the most
of which are now alive, and passing themselves off as “real,
original Jacobs.” Among them is the man who would not venture
into the water until he had learned to swim; the man whose horse
died just as he had taught it to live without eating; the other
who stood before the mirror with his eyes shut, to see how he
looked when asleep; the other who apologized for a negligence by
saying, “I never received the letter you wrote me”; the other
who kept a crow expressly to satisfy himself if the creature did
live to the age of two hundred years; and the old philosopher
who carried a brick about as a specimen of the house he desired
to sell. But, older than Hierocles--old as Horace--is the stupid
fellow who, wanting to cross a stream, sat down upon the bank
to wait for all the water to run by. The French king who said,
“After me, the deluge,” was thought to be original, but the
phrase is found in the Greek of two thousand years ago; as is
also the proverb, “There is many a slip between the cup and the
lip,” which was the appropriate inscription upon the drinking
cup of a rich Greek. Every one knows the lady who insists that
her age is but thirty, and whose friend asserts that he believes
her, because he has heard her say so “any time these ten years.”
Bacon, in his “Apothegms,” asserts that the same anecdote is
told of Cicero.--EDMUND KIRKE, _North American
Review_.
(1685)
=Jesus All Right=--See CHRIST APPROVED.
=Jesus as a Character-builder=--See CHARACTER-BUILDING.