A nephew of Mr. Bagges, in explaining the mysteries of a tea-kettle,
describes the benefits of the application of steam to useful purposes.
“For all which,” remarked Mr. Bagges, “we have principally to thank—what
was his name?” “Watt was his name, I believe, uncle,” replied the boy.
Of Dr. Keate many anecdotes are afloat among old Etonians. One was told
that is well worth repeating. A boy named Rashleigh, with all the others
of his class, was set to write a theme on the maxim: _Temere nil
facias_. When the time came for giving in the papers, Rashleigh appeared
without his. “Where is your theme, sir?” asked the formidable Doctor. “I
haven’t done it, sir,” answered Rashleigh. “Not done your theme, sir?”
“No, sir!” persisted he, undaunted by the near prospect of the “apple
twigs.” “Why, you told me not to do it!” “I told you!” “Yes, sir; you
said, _Temere nil facias_—do nothing, Rashleigh.” And the headmaster was
so taken by the Latin pun that the apple twigs were allowed to repose on
the shelf.
“So old Scrapetill is dead at last,” observed David from the interior of
his evening paper; “oceans of money, too.” “What did he do with it?”
queried Dora. “Oh, left it here and there,” said David. “That scapegrace
son gets a quarter of a million. If he doesn’t paint the town red, now,
then I’m a Canadian.” “I should think,” mused Dora, softly, as she
helped herself to another needleful of silk—“I should think that anybody
with a quart of vermilion might paint a town very red indeed.” And David
was so astounded that he put his paper in the fire and laid a fresh
stick of wood in the very centre of the plush-covered table.
Punning would not be so bad were it not so infectious. Puns leave germs
which lie in idle minds until they fructify and bear a baleful crop of
more puns. The other day some of us got to talking about that witty old
cynic, Dean Swift, when one of the company took advantage of the opening
and gave us this _jeu de mot_ of his: “Why,” asked the Dean, “is it
right, by the _lex talionis_, to pick an artist’s pocket?” It was given
up, of course, and the answer was: “Because he has pictures.” A silence
fell about the table round, until, one by one, we saw it. Then one
thoughtful man observed, “It was impossible to give the answer—because
the Dean had contrived to reserve the answer to himself. I could not,
for instance, say that it is right for me to pick an artist’s pocket,
because he has picked yours.” Here is another conundrum, founded upon a
pun, which only the propounder can solve: An old man and a young one
were standing by a meadow. “Why,” asked the young man, “is this clover
older than you?” “It is not,” replied the other. “It is, though,”
returned the man, “because it is pasturage.” Thereupon an abstracted
looking person, who had not followed the line of remark, and who had not
understood the illustration, startled us all with this irrelevant
inquiry, “Why cannot a pantomimist tickle nine Esquimaux? Give it up?
Why it’s because he can gesticulate.”
When Jonah interviewed the whale
And haunted his internals,
As erst it is recorded in
The truthfulest of journals,
What monarch did he symbolize?
(A far-fetched joke you’ll style it.)
It seems to us he might have been
A sort of _paunch’s pilot_.
“I’d rather not,” Augustus said,
The truffles quick rejecting;
“How now, my dear,” said she, “what fresh
Conceit are you affecting?
I do not wish t’ruffle you.
Nor yet to make a pun, Gus;
But then I surely thought that you
Were fond of any fun-Gus.”
“In St. Mary’s Church, Nottingham, England, on the tombstone of Mary
Angell are these lines:
‘Sleep on in peace, await thy Maker’s will,
Then rise unchanged, and be an Angell still.’
The stone is an old one, and the punning epitaph is according to the
spirit of the times, when so many queer inscriptions were put on
monuments.”
A young minister of high-church tendencies was called to preside over a
congregation that abhorred ritualism and was a stickler for the simplest
of services. He asked Bishop Potter of New York what would be the result
if he went in for ritualism just a bit.
“Suppose I should burn a pastille or two during the service, what do you
think would happen?” he inquired. “I dearly wish to try the experiment.”
“Your congregation would be incensed, your vestrymen would fume, and you
would go out in smoke,” replied the Bishop.
Gustave Doré bought a villa on the outskirts of Paris, and wrote over
the entrance the musical notation, “Do, Mi, Si, La, Do, Re.” This being
properly interpreted, is “Domicile a Doré.”
I saw Esau kissing Kate,
And what’s more, we all three saw;
For I saw Esau, he saw me,
And she saw I saw Esau.
Why should girls, a wit exclaimed,
Surpassing farmers be?
Because they’re always studying
The art of husbandry.
Sentimental young lady to perfumer: “I don’t think you forwarded the
scent I meant; it seems entirely different from that I ordered.”
Perfumer, who is fond of punning: “Madam, I am sure that what you meant
I sent; the scent I sent was the scent you meant, consequently we are
both of one sentiment.”
A duel was fought in Texas by Alexander Shott and John S. Nott. Nott was
shot, and Shott was not. In this case it is better to be Shott than
Nott. There was a rumor that Nott was not shot, and Shott avows that he
shot Nott, which proves either that the shot Shott shot at Nott was not
shot, or that Nott was shot notwithstanding. Circumstantial evidence is
not always good. It may be made to appear on trial that the shot Shott
shot shot Nott or, as accidents with fire-arms are frequent, it may be
possible that the shot Shott shot shot Shott himself, when the whole
affair would resolve itself into its original elements, and Shott would
be shot, and Nott would be not. Apparently the shot Shott shot shot not
Shott, but Nott; anyway, it is hard to tell who was shot.
On the death of Lord Kennet, in 1786, Sir William Nairne was raised to
the bench under Lord Dunsinnan—a circumstance which called forth a _bon
mot_ from the Duchess of Gordon. Her grace, happening to meet his
lordship shortly after his elevation, inquired what title he had
assumed. “Dunsinnan,” was, of course, the reply. “I am astonished at
that, my lord,” said the duchess, “for I never knew that you had begun
sinning.”
A noted Washington wag and beau of many years ago signed his name “A.
More.” Mrs. John Washington had invited him to a formal dinner party at
Mount Vernon. The company all arrived except Mr. More, but knowing his
queer ways the hostess did not wait for him. After she was seated some
time a huge envelope was handed her, in which she found an enormous leaf
of a sycamore tree. The interpretation was “Sick.—A. More.”
A young lady of Louisville, having received urgent proposals of marriage
from an old gentleman, sent the following answer by mail:
“Why thus urge me to compliance?
Why compel me to refuse?
Yet though I court not your alliance,
Perchance a younger I may choose.
For ’tis a state I’ll ne’er disparage,
Nor will I war against it wage;
I do not, sir, object to marriage,
I but dislike to marri-age.”
Madame Cresswell, a woman of infamous character, bequeathed ten pounds
for a funeral sermon, in which nothing ill should be said of her. The
Duke of Buckingham wrote the sermon, which was as follows: “All I shall
say of her is this—she was born _well_, she married _well_, lived
_well_, and died _well_; for she was born at Shad-well, married to
Cress-well, lived at Clerken-well, and died in Bride-well.”
In 1835 John Howard Payne spent some time in the South and formed the
acquaintance of a daughter of Judge Samuel Goode, of Montgomery,
Alabama. An old autograph album of hers contains the following lines in
Payne’s handwriting and over his signature:
“Lady, your name, if understood,
Explains your nature, to a letter;
And may you never change from _Goode_,
Unless, if possible, to _better_.”
On the next page is a response, written by Mirabeau B. Lamar, afterwards
President of the “Lone Star Republic” of Texas. It runs as follows:
“I am content with being _Goode_;
To aim at _better_ might be vain;
But if I do, ’tis understood,
Whate’er the cause—it is not _Payne_.”
To church the two together went,
Both, doubtless, on devotion bent.
The parson preached with fluent ease,
On Pharisees and Sadducees.
And as they homeward slowly walked,
The lovers on the sermon talked,
And he—he deeply loved the maid—
In soft and tender accents said:
“Darling, do you think that we
Are Pharisee and Sadducee?”
She flashed on him her bright black eyes
In one swift look of vexed surprise,
And thus he hastened to aver,
He was her constant worshipper;
“But, darling, I insist,” said he,
“That you are very fair I see;
I know you don’t care much for me,
And that makes me so sad you see.”
The wife of an optical instrument maker tried, on landing at New York,
after a European tour, to smuggle under her dress a quantity of
artificial eyes. In reply to the usual question whether she had anything
to declare, she said, “No,” most positively; but on the officer shaking
her dress the deception was exposed, and in spite of her “No’s,” the
eyes had it. But how absurd of the fair smuggler to hope to escape
detection when _every eye was upon her_!