“Had any trouble on the road?”
“No, brother,” said the gentleman, “none that I know of. And now I’ll
ask you a question. Do you know a gentleman named Bonner?”
“Yes, I am Mr. Bonner,” was the answer.
“Well, these brethren and myself are Dunkards, and you were to meet us
and put us on the right train. Didn’t you get a telegram?”
Bonner was completely done for. He excused himself, and, calling the
sergeant of police aside, he told him that it was all a mistake, and he
and his men could go back to head-quarters. Then he disposed of his
religious friends, went around and cussed the telegraph operator, after
which he had to “set ’em up” for the whole police force on the promise
to keep mum.
_The Economy of Nature_
A young man on a Staten Island boat explained to his fair companion that
Robbin’s Reef Light-house was built upon a rock in the bay.
“Ah, yes,” said she. “Funny that the rock should be just where they
wanted a light-house, wasn’t it?”
_Desirable Uniformity_
Mr. Colville was reading to his wife from a newspaper on Saturday
morning, when he saw this paragraph: “Mr. and Mrs. James Clark, of
Pulaski, New York, both came into the world on the same day, both died
on the same day, and both were killed by a cancer.”
“Well, I declare! wasn’t that singular?” observed Mrs. Colville. “Born
on the same day, died on the same day, and with the same disease. Now,
if they’d only been married on the same day, the thing would have been
complete.”
“What’s that?” suddenly interrogated Mr. Colville, looking curiously at
her over the top of the paper.
“I say,” she repeated, “if they’d both been married on the—why, to be—”
she embarrassingly added, as she caught the amused expression of his
face—“that is—I wonder if I thought to put on the dish-water,” and she
hastened into the kitchen to attend to it.
_False Doctrine_
A woman in a village in Kent lost three children from diphtheria, and
when the clergyman’s wife went to condole with her, she railed against
the doctors, and said she couldn’t think how they could go to church,
and say _that prayer_, and then go and practice on the people as they
did. In answer to the question what prayer she meant, she said, “Why
they pray to be delivered from false _doctoring_, heresy, and schism,
and then they go about and do false doctoring, and kill the children.”
_Poor Children_
A Mobile paper, speaking of Dan Bryant, says, “Bryant died, and, after a
life of great profit, left his wife and five children as poor as they
were when he was married.” It is a very expressive sentence so far as
the children are concerned.
_Help from Above_
The wife of Emile de Girardin had the most absolute faith in his powers.
A few days after the revolution of 1848 a lady who was greatly
distressed about political events and troubled as to the future went to
see Mme. de Girardin, whose parlor was exactly underneath her husband’s
study and workroom. “Oh, my dear friend,” said the visitor, “what
terrible times we live in! What awful events! Who then can extricate us
from them?” “There is only one. He who is above (_là haut_) can do it!”
responded gravely Mme. de Girardin. “Yes, that’s so—the good Lord; you
are right!” “No; I am speaking of Emile!”
_Minding One’s Business_
An old dial in the Temple, London, bore the curious motto, “Begone about
your business.” The maker, wishing to know what motto the benchers
required for the dial, sent his lad to ascertain it. The boy applied
while the benchers were dining, and one of them, annoyed at the
unseasonable interruption, said, shortly, “Begone about your business.”
The lad, thinking that this was the desired motto, reported it to his
master, and the dial accordingly bore this novel inscription as long as
the building upon which it was placed remained. The United States cent,
which is usually called the Franklin cent, because its maxim was
suggested by the philosopher, bore another legend, “Mind your business.”
This has often been misquoted and altered to “Mind your own business,”
which, of course, has an entirely different sense.
_Direct Information_
The late Mrs. Jane W—— was equally remarkable for kindness of heart and
absence of mind. One day she was accosted by a beggar, whose stout and
healthy appearance startled her into a momentary doubt of the
needfulness of charity in this instance. “Why,” exclaimed the good old
lady, “you look well able to work.” “Yes,” replied the supplicant, “but
I have been deaf and dumb these seven years.” “Poor man, what a heavy
affliction!” exclaimed Mrs. W——, at the same time giving him relief with
a liberal hand. On returning home she mentioned the fact, remarking,
“What a dreadful thing it is to be deprived of such precious faculties!”
“But how,” asked her sister, “did you know that the poor man had been
deaf and dumb for seven years?” “Why,” was the quiet and unconscious
answer, “he told me so.”
_Mistranslation_
A daughter of James Fenimore Cooper once remarked that the translator
who first rendered her father’s novel, “The Spy,” into the French
tongue, among other mistakes, made the following: “Readers of the
Revolutionary romance will remember that the residence of the Wharton
family was called ‘The Locusts.’ The translator referred to his
dictionary and found the rendering of the word to be _Les Sauterelles_,
‘The Grasshoppers.’ But when he found one of the dragoons represented as
tying his horse to one of the locusts on the lawn, it would appear as if
he might have been at fault. Nothing daunted, however, but taking it for
granted that American grasshoppers must be of gigantic dimensions, he
gravely informs his readers that the cavalryman secured his charger by
fastening the bridle to one of the grasshoppers before the door,
apparently standing there for that purpose.
“Much laughter has been raised at a French _littérateur_ who professed
to be ‘_doctus utriusque linguæ_.’ Cibber’s play of ‘Love’s Last Shift’
was translated by a Frenchman who spoke ‘Inglees’ as ‘_La Dernière
Chemise de l’Amour_;’ Congreve’s ‘Mourning Bride,’ by another, as
‘_L’Epouse du Matin_;’ and a French scholar included among his catalogue
of works on natural history essays on ‘Irish Bulls’ by the Edgeworths.
Jules Janin, the great critic, in his translation of ‘Macbeth,’ renders
‘Out, out, brief candle!’ as ‘_Sortez, chandelle_.’ And another, who
_traduced_ Shakespeare, commits an equally amusing blunder in rendering
Northumberland’s famous speech in ‘Henry IV.’ In the passage
“‘Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so _woe-begone_.’
the words italicized are rendered, ‘_ainsi douleur! va-t’en!_’-‘so
grief, be off with you!’ Voltaire did no better with his translations of
several of Shakespeare’s plays; in one of which the ‘myriad-minded’
makes a character renounce all claim to a doubtful inheritance, with an
avowed resolution to carve for himself a fortune with his sword.
Voltaire put it in French, which retranslated, reads, ‘What care I for
lands? With my sword I will make a fortune cutting meat.’
“The French translator of one of Sir Walter Scott’s novels, knowing
nothing of that familiar name for toasted cheese, ‘Welsh rabbit,’
rendered it literally by ‘_un lapin du pays de Galles_,’ or a rabbit of
Wales, and then informed his readers in a foot-note that the lapins or
rabbits of Wales have a very superior flavor, and are very tender, which
cause them to be in great request in England and Scotland.”
_Misplaced Zeal_
“I was once sent to attend a man who had taken laudanum,” said the
doctor. “I hurried to the place and found the would-be suicide being
walked up and down the room as fast as they could walk by two friends of
his. As they put him down on a chair for me to treat him one of them
remarked, ‘Awful glad to see you, doctor; we’ve been walking Jim up and
down for an hour and a half. It’s been terrible hard work to keep him
alive all this time.’
“I made a slight examination; took my hat and started to go, when one of
the pedestrians said, ‘What’s the matter, doctor? Ain’t you going to
give him anything?’ ‘He’s been dead for an hour,’ I replied, and left.”
_Before Railroads_
A party of cultivated people were standing before an ancient cathedral
admiring its grandeur, which several centuries of existence had failed
to dim. The noise of the cars in the immediate vicinity so annoyed one
of the ladies that she impulsively said, “I wonder why they built the
cathedral so near the railroad!”
This is on a par with another innocent party’s commendation of the
wisdom of Providence in making rivers flow past the largest towns.
_The Wrong Word_
A young Methodist missionary who had been stationed in Brazil long
enough to acquire familiarity with Brazilian Spanish, after a brief
absence in the United States, returned with his bride. She, anticipating
the need of learning the Spanish language, studied diligently, and, for
a time, there was some hesitation and embarrassment, but no trouble.
Thinking she was getting along famously, she soon gained more
confidence.
So all went well till the young couple set up an establishment and
secured a man-servant with the fine manners of a Spanish grandee. The
reverend gentleman’s wife stood in awe of him from the start. And her
greatest trial was when her husband would be detained from home during
the dinner hour, when she had to dine alone, except for that grand
man-servant. One day that functionary was standing elegant and
impressive, when she had occasion to ask him to hand her the cheese. The
man stood immovable like a lay figure in a clothing-house. She felt sure
that he had heard her, and she became angry when he made no move to do
her bidding.
She repeated her command, as she thought, “Give me the cheese,” This
time the grandee of a man-servant perceptibly laughed, but was
immovable. In indignation, supposing him to be impertinent, or worse
still, crazy, she rushed to the front door to call assistance, when she
met the belated missionary, her husband, and promptly explained the
situation.
“What did you say, my dear,” was his smiling query.
“‘Give me the cheese,’ was what I said.”
“Yes, but the word,” he insisted. ·
“I said beso,” replied the wife, still puzzled.
Then the unfeeling missionary fairly roared with laughter. His wife had
begun to think that he, too, had gone mad, when he managed to keep calm
long enough to explain. It was only a mistake in the sound of one letter
that she had made, but it was a funnily fatal one that time. She should
have said “queso” instead of “beso.” And instead of asking the
man-servant for the “cheese” she had asked him without any qualification
for a “kiss.”