At the last Christmas race-meeting at Ellerslie, New Zealand, just
as the course was being cleared for the event of the day, uproarious
sounds of merriment arose behind the saddling paddock, and a number
of sailors belonging to Her Majesty's ship _Sapphire_ were seen
scurrying along, a stalwart blue-jacket in their midst bearing in
his brawny arms the form of a woman. No screams resounded above the
din created by the abductors; but nothing doubting that the capture
was an unwilling one, a gallant newspaper editor and a detective,
eager to aid beauty in distress, started in hot pursuit, and after a
smart chase across country, overtook the miscreants. To the officer's
stern demand for the instant release of their fair prisoner, the tars
replied by dropping their prize, whereupon the brave rescuers, rushing
forward, tenderly raised the prostrate figure. Judge, however, of their
feelings of mortification upon being told by the sailors that having at
the interesting game of Aunt Sally, fairly demolished the old lady's
pipe, and the accustomed sixpence for the adroit achievement not being
forthcoming, they had carried off the old lady in reprisal!
For a dressed-up doll to be taken for a lady seems as improbable
as that a lawyer should be taken for a thief, but even that has
happened--so liable are men to be led away by appearances. Daniel
Webster travelling by the night-stage from Baltimore to Washington with
no companion save the driver, contemplated that worthy's forbidding
features with a very uneasy mind. He had nearly reasoned his suspicious
fear away, when they came to the dark woods between Bladensburg and
Washington, and Webster felt his courage oozing out of his finger-ends
as he thought what a fitting place it was for murder. Suddenly the
driver turned towards him and gruffly demanded his name. It was given.
Then he wanted to know where he was going.
'To Washington; I am a senator,' said Daniel, expecting his worst
thoughts were near realisation.
The driver grasped him by the hand, saying: 'How glad I am, mister,
to hear that. I've been properly scared for the last hour; for when I
looked at you, I felt sure you were a highwayman.'
Upon another occasion a young gentleman accosted a stately looking
personage at a Washington wedding reception with: 'Good-evening; I'm
delighted to see you; we have not met since we parted in Mexico.'
Ignoring the outstretched hand, the gentleman addressed said: 'I fear
you have the advantage of me.'
'Why, is it possible you don't recollect me?' exclaimed the mortified
young fellow. 'Certainly I was much younger when I was in Mexico with
my father.'
'To tell the truth,' said the other, 'my remembrances of ever being in
Mexico are very indistinct.'
'Are you not Sir Edward Thornton?' inquired the puzzled one, beginning
to suspect there was a mistake somewhere; a suspicion becoming a
certainty when the reply came: 'By no means; I am Judge Poland, of
Vermont.'
A few nights after this rebuff, the youth happened to be at another
party, and seeing the judge there, made up to him, and after a word or
two about the weather, observed: 'That was an awkward blunder of mine
the other evening, to take you for old Thornton!'
'And whom do you take me for now, may I ask?' was the reply.
'Why,' said he, feeling rather bewildered by the other's manner, 'you
told me you were Judge Poland, of Vermont.'
'On the contrary, sir, my name is Thornton,' was the annihilating
response.
The victim to this case of awkward duality was not so much to be pitied
as his fellow-countryman Slimmer, who fared worse from a similar
mistake that was none of his making. Slimmer, a modest young bachelor,
peeping into the ladies' waiting-room at a railway station, found a
pair of plump arms round his neck, a lady's head resting lovingly on
his manly bosom, and half-a-dozen youngsters of nicely graduated sizes
clasping his legs, tugging at his coat-tails, and crying 'Papa!' at the
top of their voices. While the half-strangled victim was struggling to
disentangle himself from his affectionate surroundings, a gentleman
rushed into the waiting-room, took the situation in at a glance,
floored the innocent Slimmer with his carpet-bag, and then sat upon
him. When he came to himself he was in bed in the infirmary, a bruised
and battered bachelor; and all he got for his pains was a grumbling
apology from his assailant for the unfortunate mistake his wife had
made. The common lot of sufferers from the mistakes of such over-hasty
folk.
Jealous-minded people are particularly prone to misconceptions
involving serious results. The captain of a schooner trading between
San Francisco and Mexico left his wife in a tenement house in San
Francisco. He had been away some twelve months, when one night as
his wife was nursing the baby _of a neighbour_, the door of her room
opened and she saw her husband standing looking at her. She rose to
greet him; but repulsing her with an oath, he turned on his heel and
was gone, leaving her to cry herself to sleep. A knock at the door
awoke her. Before she could reach it, her husband was in the room, his
hand at her throat. Dragging her shrieking to the window, he would
have thrown her from it; but her cries had drawn a crowd in front of
the house, and the unhappy woman managed to extricate herself from
his strong grasp, only to feel a knife enter her flesh, and to fall
senseless to the ground. The infuriated seaman made for the stairway,
where he was met by a crowd of men. Threatening to shoot the first who
came near him, he smashed in a door of a room, jumped through a window,
and although pursued, reached the Chinese quarter, and was lost in its
labyrinths. The occupant of the room through which he had dashed so
unceremoniously, hearing the commotion without comprehending it, sprang
out of bed and fired a shot; upon which somebody outside in the hall
fired another. 'Lynch him!' was the cry; and in a very short time the
guiltless occupant of the room was under a lamp-post, and would have
been dangling from it but for the intervention of the people about,
who assured the excited mob that the actual assailant of the woman was
already beyond reach. The woman was not killed; but whether her hasty
mate discovered his mistake and atoned for it, is not recorded.
Not so tragical in consequence was another instance of jumping to
conclusions. A blushing damsel of forty summers or so entered the
town-clerk's office at Wheeling, West Virginia, and asked for a
license. The clerk took down her name and address and asked for
that of 'the other party.' 'Faithful; he lives with me,' said the
applicant. The clerk eyed her curiously, but keeping his thoughts to
himself, filled up the paper and handed it over. The lady glanced at
it, shrieked out 'Monster!' and swept out of the office, leaving the
offender dumfounded at the explosion; till it flashed upon his mind
that possibly a dog license, not a marriage license, was what the
spinster wanted.
Equally unhappy in interpreting a lady's meaning was a timid young man
of Titusville. Calling upon a pretty girl one evening, she said: 'I
want to propose to you'----
'You are very kind,' gasped the alarmed visitor; 'but I am not
worthy of such happiness; in fact none of our family are marrying
people--besides, my income is limited, and I have to meet a friend, and
I'm afraid I'll be late.' He was making his exit without waiting to put
on his overcoat, through the door of a cupboard.
'Why,' said the young woman, 'I wanted to propose to you to accompany
me as far as Main Street; that was all.'
'Oh, in that case,' answered the relieved gentleman, 'I shall be only
too happy.'
Ladies should eschew ambiguous expressions, and ambiguous actions for
that matter. A lady visiting a great public library for the first time,
grateful for the assistance rendered her by an assistant-librarian,
slipped half-a-crown into his hand; of course the gentleman immediately
returned it whence it came; and by-and-by had the pleasure of
overhearing one of his fellows say to another: 'Well, I saw it all, but
can't make out whether he was making love to the lady or the lady to
him: but they were squeezing each other's hands!'
Mr Sayre of Lexington was troubled with a lisp. One day the overseer of
one of his farms came to headquarters to say he wanted some porkers.
'Very well,' said Mr Sayre. 'Go and buy four or five thowth and pigth,
and put them on the farm.'
The man inquired if he should take the money with him to pay for them.
'No,' said Sayre; 'they all know me. Thend them here, and I'll pay.'
In a fortnight's time the overseer reappeared with the information that
he had been all over the country, but could not get more than nine
hundred pigs.
'Nine hundred pigth!' exclaimed his employer. 'Who told you to buy nine
hundred pigth?'
'Why, you did, sir,' said the overseer. 'You told me to buy four or
five thousand pigs; and I tried to do it.'
'I did no thuth thing,' said Sayre; 'I told you to buy four or five
thowth and their little pigth; a pretty meth you've made of it!'
Among the many good stories told by Colonel Stuart in his
_Reminiscences of a Soldier_, are the two following. A sentry at
Chatham, when the captain of the guard questioned him as to his orders,
replied: 'My orders are, sir, if a fire broke out, I'm to take my
musket and shoot the nearest policeman.' The officer suggested he had
made some mistake, but the soldier stuck to his text; and with 'I pity
the policeman,' the captain of the guard walked on without giving the
correct instruction: 'If a fire breaks out, fire your musket, and alarm
the nearest policeman.'--A Scotch subaltern at Gibraltar was one day on
guard with another officer, who falling down a precipice, was killed.
He made no mention of the accident in his guard report, leaving the
addendum, 'N.B. Nothing extraordinary since guard-mounting,' standing
without qualification. Some hours after the brigade-major came to
demand an explanation, saying: 'You say, sir, in your report, "Nothing
extraordinary since guard-mounting," when your brother-officer, on
duty with you, has fallen down a precipice four hundred feet and been
killed.' 'Weel, sir,' replied he, 'I dinna think there's onything
extraordinary in it: if he'd faun doon a precipice four hundred feet
and _no_ been killed, I should hae thought it vary extraordinary
indeed, and wad hae put it doon in my report.'
Taking things too literally is a fertile cause of amusing blunders.
Two costermongers claiming proprietorship of one donkey, went to the
Westminster county court to get the dispute decided. After hearing
a part of the evidence, the judge said they had better settle the
case out of court during the adjournment for luncheon. Upon the
court reopening the defendant told His Honour it was all right; the
donkey was his. Turning to the plaintiff, the judge saw his personal
appearance was altered for the worse; but before he could put any
questions, the defendant went on to say that they had found a quiet
yard to settle it in, as His Honour had suggested. He had been rather
rough on the plaintiff, but couldn't help it; they had only half an
hour to pull it off in, and plaintiff was a much tougher customer
than he looked to be. The explanation was conclusive, if not quite
satisfactory to the court, and the donkey became the prize of the
victor in the fight.
'Come up to the Capitol while we are in session, and I'll give you a
seat on the floor of the House,' said a member of Congress to one of
his supporters, who called upon him in Washington.
'Wall, no; I thank you,' said the West Virginian; 'poor as I am, I
always manage to have a cheer to sit on at home, and I ha'n't come here
to sit on the floor.'
A doctor, called in for the second time just in time to save the life
of a man who during fits of intoxication was given to dosing himself
with laudanum, rated his patient roundly for a good-for-nothing
scoundrel, who, if he really intended to kill himself, should cut his
throat and have done with it. One night the doctor's bell was pulled.
Putting his head out of window, he saw the self-poisoner's wife, and
heard her call out: 'He has done it, doctor.' 'Done what?' asked he.
'John has taken your sensible advice,' replied the woman; 'he has cut
his throat, and will save you further trouble!'
The American poet must have been either very angry or very much
amused, when his note to a friend, 'Come and see me; I am at
Barnum's'--meaning the hotel of that name in New York, elicited the
answer: 'I am sorry you are going to exhibit yourself. If you had stuck
to literature you would have made your mark and fortune. Whereabouts
is the show now?' Ill-natured people might suspect the mistake was
wilfully made. We should be sorry to suppose anybody capable of
thinking the same respecting the extraordinary misconception under
which an eminent divine laboured at a dinner-party. He was so dull and
silent, that the lady next him expressed her fear that he was unwell.
'To tell the truth,' said he, 'I am not quite the thing; I have a
presentiment that a serious illness is hanging over me--a peculiar
numbness all down my right side seems to forebode paralysis; for I
have been pinching my right leg all dinner-time, and can elicit no
responsive feeling whatever; the limb seems dead.' 'If that is all,'
said his fair neighbour, with a good-natured smile, 'you need not alarm
yourself: the leg you have been pinching all the evening belongs to
me!'--Honi soit qui mal y pense.