"Go along with you! What? Be flesh of your flesh, and you a-living on cabbage? Go marry a grass widow!"
The kindly spirit of British humor is revealed even in sarcastic jesting on the domestic relation, which, on the contrary, provokes the bitterest jibes of the Latins. The shortest of jokes, and perhaps the most famous, was in the single word of Punch's advice to those about to get married:
"Don't!"
The like good nature is in the words of a woman who was taken to a hospital in the East End of London. She had been shockingly beaten, and the attending surgeon was moved to pity for her and indignation against her assailant.
"Who did this?" he demanded. "Was it your husband?"
"Lor' bless yer, no!" she declared huffily. "W'y, my 'usband 'e 's more like a friend nor a 'usband!"
Likewise, of the two men who had drunk not wisely but too well, with the result that in the small hours they retired to rest in the gutter. Presently, one of the pair lifted his voice in protest:
"I shay, le's go to nuzzer hotel—this leaksh!"
Or the incident of the tramp, who at the back door solicited alms of a suspicious housewife. His nose was large and of a purple hue. The woman stared at it with an accusing eye, and questioned bluntly:
"What makes your nose so red?"