THE WORD-TWISTING OF THE PUNSTERS
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!
On the marriage of Ebenezer Sweet and Jane Lemon a wag said,—
How happily extremes do meet in Jane and Ebenezer!
She no longer sour, but sweet, and he a lemon squeezer.
And George D. Prentice once said,—
A Mr. J. Lemon, of the North Carolina Legislature, has abandoned the Whigs and joined the Democrats. That’s all right enough. If the Democrats think they can recruit their strength with Lemon-aid, they are welcome to try the experiment.
Toast any girl but her, said Ned,
With every other flutter—
I’ll be content with Annie Bread,
And won’t have any but her.
A young man in one of our Western towns had patronized the arts so far as to buy a picture of the Temptation of Adam and Eve. Some one asked him if it was a chaste picture. “Yes,” he said, “chased by a snake.” This would have been witty if he had known it, but he didn’t.
A judge did once his tipstaff call,
And say, “Sir, I desire
You go forthwith and search the hall
And bring me in the crier.”
“And search in vain, my lord, I may,”
The tipstaff gravely said;
“The crier cannot cry to-day,
Because his wife is dead.”
When the fleet commanded by Lord Howe was stationed at Torbay, some time previous to his defeat of St. André (1794), the inhabitants used to play upon his name, saying,—
Lord Howe he went out!
Lord Howe he came in!
After the great victory over the French, the following toast was much in vogue:
May the French know Howe to be master of the seas.
“How is it that you can tell such whoppers?” asked a caller, addressing the editor of the fish-story department.
“Well, you see,” replied the editor, “our wife’s name is Anna.”
“What has that to do with it?”
“A great deal. When we are writing fish stories we usually have Anna nigh us to help us.”
Two Quaker girls about to do some ironing on the same table, one asked the other which side she would take, the right or left. She answered promptly: “It will be right for me to take the left, and then it will be left for thee to take the right.”
How a French marshal conveyed an order under cover of a cough, in 1851, is told as follows:
The prevalence of coughs and colds at the present moment reminds me of the fact that it was a cough which was mainly responsible for the immense amount of bloodshed that attended the coup d’état whereby Napoleon III. obtained his throne.
That unscrupulous but brilliant adventurer, General, and afterward Field Marshal, de St. Arnaud, had charge of the military operations. But he was unwilling to assume the direct responsibility of ordering the troops to fire upon the people, being not altogether certain as to the result of Napoleon’s memorable enterprise.
When the moment for action arrived and the mob began to show signs of sweeping aside the troops, the brigadier generals under his orders sent an officer to him at head-quarters to ask him what they were to do, whether they were to fire on the populace or give way.
Strangely enough, St. Arnaud was seized at that moment with a violent fit of coughing which lasted for several minutes. Finally when it ceased the General just managed to gasp the words, “Ma sacrée toux!” (my cursed cough).
The officer having waited until the General had recovered his breath repeated the question. Again St. Arnaud was seized with a violent fit of coughing, which terminated, as on the previous occasion, with the parting exclamation of “Ma sacrée toux!”
The officer was no fool; he could take a hint as well as anyone else, and saluting he left St. Arnaud’s presence. On returning to the brigadiers and colonels who had sent him for instructions he was asked what reply St. Arnaud had made.
“The General’s only words and commands were massacrez tous!” (massacre everybody).
These commands were obeyed to the letter, and many thousand people were shot down and bayoneted in consequence.
The word-twisters do not hesitate to invade the cemeteries and leave their mark on tombstones. Here is one of Dr. Dibdin’s epitaphs:
Reader, of these four lines take heed,
And mend your life for my sake;
For you must die, like Isaac Reed,
Though you may read till your eyes ache.
Cecil Clay, the counsellor of Lord Chesterfield, directed this whimsical pun upon his name to be put on his tombstone:
Sum quod fui. (I am what I was.)
On an Oxford organist:
Here lies one blown out of breath,
Who lived a merry life and died a Merideth.
On a Norwich celebrity:
Hic jacet Plus, plus non est hic,
Plus et non plus, quomodo sic?
Here lies More, no more is he,
More and no more, how can that be?
In All Saints’ Church, Hertford, we are told “Here sleeps Mr. Wake.” The inscription over the bones of Captain Jones, the famous traveller and story-teller, winds up with “He swore all’s true, yet here he lies.” On the slab of a cockney cook is written, “Peace to his hashes.” Of a drunken cobbler, a friend to awl, who toward the close of life repented of his evil courses, it was said, “He saved his sole by mending at the last.” Of John Potter, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1736, it is recorded, “Potter himself is turned to clay.”
A well known anecdote of Dr. Johnson’s dislike of punning is told in the following way: “Sir,” said Johnson, “I hate a pun. A man who would perpetrate a pun would have little hesitation in picking a pocket.” Upon this, Boswell hinted that his illustrious friend’s dislike to this species of small wit might arise from his inability to play upon words. “Sir,” roared Johnson, “if I were punish-ed for every pun I shed, there would not be left a puny shed of my punnish head.”
Two merchants of a Scotch town were noted for many sharp bargains. One of them was named Strong and the other answered to the name of Wiley. One Sunday the good old minister greatly surprised his hearers by invoking “a blessing upon us, for our enemies are wily and strong, as Thou knowest, O Lord.” Notwithstanding the solemnity of the occasion, few could resist a smile, feeling how applicable it was.
Among a party dining with W. S. Caine, M.P., was Rev. Dr. John Watson (Ian Maclaren). Mr. Caine offered to give fifty pounds to a hospital fund through the man who would make the best pun on his name within five minutes. Cogitation became active, and then, just as the time was about to expire, and Mr. Caine thought he would escape, Mr. Watson said, “Don’t be in such a hurry, Caine.”
Daniel Webster, when a young man in New Hampshire, indulged in a form of pleasantry on one occasion, unusual with him even in his lightest moods. Party spirit running high in Portsmouth in the days of the embargo, great efforts were made at an annual State election by both parties to carry the town. The Republicans succeeded in electing their moderator, Dr. Goddard, a position of potentiality, because he decided, in case of a challenge, the right to vote. A man’s vote was offered on the part of Mr. Webster’s friends which the Republican party objected to, and the moderator was appealed to for a decision. The doctor hesitated; he did not wish to decide against his own party, and still he was too conscientious to make intentionally a wrong decision. He seemed at a loss what to do. “I stand,” said he to the meeting, “between two dangers; on the one side is Scylla, on the other, Charybdis, and I don’t know which to do.” “I fear then,” said Mr. Webster, “that your Honor will take the silly side.”
In the way of oddities among the books may be noted a short man reading Longfellow; a burglar picking at Locke; a jeweller devouring Goldsmith; an artilleryman with Shelley; an omnibus driver calling for one Moore; a nice young man going to the Dickens; a laborer at his Lever; a young woman with her Lover; a Tom studying Dick’s works; a lancer learning Shakspeare; a servant looking for the Butler; a miller deep in Mill; a glazier’s hour with Paine; a hedger absorbed in Hawthorne; a Dutchman interested in Holland; a domestic man with Holmes; a bookseller trying to save his Bacon; a woman in Thiers; a lazy man’s Dumas; a determined man with Kant; a corn-doctor with Bunyan’s Progress; a philologist contemplating Wordsworth; a minstrel reading Emerson; a Catholic at Pope; a creditor pleased with Sue; a jolly fellow laughing over Sterne.