Three commercials, travelling from Cork to Dublin, had a discussion on the illiteracy of the Irish railway employés. "Look here," said one of them, "the majority of the ticket collectors can't even read the tickets they are supposed to check." The other two refused to believe him, but he stoutly maintained his assertion. Taking out of his pocket the round ticket given him at the office of the Cork hotel, and containing the number of his bedroom, he said, "I intend to offer this, instead of my railway ticket, at the first station where tickets are punched." Shortly thereafter, the train stopped, and a porter came round the carriages to look at the tickets. There was silence deep as death when the commercial handed his bedroom ticket to the official. The latter looked long and carefully at the thing and muttered, "Bejabbers, I never saw one like that before!" "Don't keep the train waiting," said the commercial, in a pretended fury, "don't you see it's a circular ticket." "Oh, and in faith it's you that's right: it is a circular ticket," said the porter. So saying, he punched the hotel check and withdrew, leaving the three travellers to weep for joy all the way to Dublin.
A COMPOUND POSSESSIVE.
The following grammatical story will doubtless be new to most readers. A Sunday School jaunt had been arranged in an Ayrshire town, and the children were all ready to go in carts to a field, some miles away, for games and open-air junketing. Everyone was impatient to set out, but the piper was late, and the procession of carts could not start without music. The minister became impatient, and sent a youth to tell the piper to hurry up. The boy, on coming to the piper's house, saw a woman standing at the door, and addressed her in these words: "Are you the man-that-plays-the-pipes's wife?"
SIXTEEN MEDALS.
Those who doubt the efficacy of self-lauding advertisement are refuted by this story. A commercial traveller, representing a whisky firm, craved an order from a small Highland innkeeper. "Come, Donald," he said, "you must give me an order this time." "You will be getting no order from me, for your whisky is no good whatever. Dewar of Perth has got sixteen medals for his whisky; it is so good to drink, and makes people drunk so nice and quiet. But your firm never got a single medal for filling folk fou." The granting of medals for quiet and comely intoxication is a brilliant, although droll, idea.
"SHE'S AULD, AND SHE'S THIN, AND SHE'LL KEEP."
In a lone isle of the West, funerals are functions that cannot be celebrated (at least in the way consecrated tradition prescribes) without ample dispensing of whisky among the mourners. As there is no pier on the island, the steamer very frequently may not be able to call for days, during the terrific gales of winter. The legitimate stores of insular whisky thus occasionally become exhausted, and should a death occur during the period of dearth, a very regrettable situation arises. In the epigrammatic style of King James I., who used to say "No bishop, no king," we might express the difficulty by saying No whisky, no funeral. While a gale of exceptional ferocity was raging some winters ago, an old woman passed away, and there was not enough whisky on the island to bury her with credit. Her son scanned the angry sky and sea daily, in the hope that the weather would show signs of clearing up. After a week's blighted hopes, he still refused to sanction interment, remarking, "She's auld, and she's thin, and she'll keep." Next day the sea was calm, the Dunara called, and the old lady got her munera pulveris.
THE WILL O' THE DEAD.
The foregoing story suggested to one of the auditors the tale told in connection with the death of Lord Forglen, one of the Judges of the Court of Session, in 1727. After a long illness, in which he had endured the expert advice of several eminent physicians, Forglen, one morning, departed into the land of shadows. Not knowing of the fatal termination, one of the medical men, Dr. Clark, called as usual and asked David Reid, clerk to Forglen, how his master was. David's answer was: "I houp he's well,"—a gentle euphuism, indicating that all was over, and also a timid hope that Heaven had received a new inhabitant. The doctor was shown into a room where he saw two dozen of wine under the table. Other doctors arriving, David made them all take seats, while he detailed, with much pathos, the affecting incidents of his master's dying hours. As an antidote to their grief, the company took a glass or two, and thereafter the doctors rose to depart, but David detained them. "No, no, gentlemen; not so. It was the express will o' the dead that I should fill ye a' fou, and I maun fulfil the will o' the dead." All the time the tears were streaming down his cheeks. "And indeed," said Dr. Clark afterwards, when telling the story, "he did fulfil the will o' the dead, for before the end o't there was na ane of us able to bite his ain thoom."