"And as they took him off the field,
Cried he, 'Let others shoot,
'For here I leave my second leg,
'And the Forty-Second Foot.'"
It is doubtless true that it would require a surgical operation to get a joke into some particular Scotchman's head. But we have some persons of the sort even in our own country. Many of the British humorists have been either Scotch or Irish, and it is rather profitless to attempt distinctions as to the humorous sense of these as contrasted with the English. Usually, stories of thrift and penuriousness are told of the Scotch without doing them much injustice, while bulls are designated Irish with sufficient reasonableness. In illustration of the Scotch character, we may cite the story of the visitor to Aberdeen, who was attacked by three footpads. He fought them desperately, and inflicted severe injuries. When at last he had been subdued and searched the only money found on him was a crooked sixpence. One of the thieves remarked glumly:
"If he'd had a good shilling, he'd have killed the three of us."
And there is the classic from Punch of the Scotchman, who, on his return home from a visit to London, in describing his experiences, declared:
"I had na been there an hour when bang! went saxpence!"
Anent the Irish bull, we may quote an Irishman's answer when asked to define a bull. He said: