Alphonso, King of Arragon, to whom a Jew wished to sell a picture of our Saviour for five hundred ducats, said, “You are much more unconscionable than your ancestors, who sold the original for thirty pieces.”
A man and his wife, as a proof of their fondness for each other, made a mutual vow, that, on either of their deaths, the survivor should remain in a state of celibacy. The husband having died, the widow kept her vow, religiously, for about a twelvemonth. At the end of this period, however, she began to repent of it, and being a Catholic, she applied to the priest, to know whether she could not be released from it. This having, as might be expected, been negatived, the good woman thought of appealing to a higher power, and accordingly she daily paid her devotions to an image of the Virgin, who she hoped would, by some sign, sanction her second marriage. On one of those occasions, when, as usual, she fervently asked the Virgin whether she might not lawfully marry a second time, a wag, who had concealed himself under the image, answered, No!—On which the devotee immediately replied. Hold your tongue, you bastard; I am speaking to your mother.
The Captain of one of the British frigates a man of undaunted bravery, had a natural antipathy to a cat. A sailor, who from misconduct had been ordered a flogging, saved his back by presenting to his Captain the following petition:
By your Honour’s command,
A culprit I stand—
An example to all the ship’s crew;
I am pinion’d and stript,
And condemn’d to be whipt;
And, if I am flogg’d ’tis my due