Chateauneut, keeper of the seals of Louis XIII. when a boy of only nine years of age, was asked many questions by a bishop and gave very prompt answers to them all. At length the prelate said, I will give you an orange if you will tell me where God is?—My Lord, replied the boy, I will give you two oranges, if you will tell me where he is not!
During the great Frederick of Prussia’s last painful illness, that eminent physician Dr Zimmerman, of Hanover, attended him. One day, when he waited upon his Majesty, the King said to him, You, Sir, I suppose, have helped many a man into another world. Not so many, replied the doctor, as your Majesty, nor with so much honour to myself.
An apothecary in Durham has the following words written in his shop-window: “Dying stuffs sold here.”
A stranger, who had acquired the habit of standing long on one leg, came to Lacedemon to see the city. Exhibiting this trick to a Spartan, he told him, vauntingly, You could not preserve that posture so long. I know that, replied the Lacedemonian, but a goose can.
Mrs Siddons, in performing the character of Jane Shore, having arrived at the conclusion of that affecting tragedy, where she says, “Now I die! I die!” falls down, nature being supposed entirely exhausted.—A sailor, perched on the front of the shilling gallery, forgetting that the distress of the actress was feigned roared out to the pit, “Ho! why don’t some of you lubbers in that there hold hand the poor woman a can of grog, since she is so badly?”
Dr Franklin, when last in England, used pleasantly to repeat an observation of his negro-servant, when the Doctor was making the tour of Derbyshire, Lancashire, &c. “Every thing, Massa, work in this country; water work; wind work; fire work; smoke work; dog work; (he had noticed the last at Bath) man work; bullock work; horse work; ass work; every thing work here but the hog; he eat, he drink, he sleep, he do nothing all day, he walk about like a gentleman!”
One of the people called Quakers, equally remarkable for his gallantry to the fair sex, as for his urbanity of manners, was one day walking in the streets of Edinburgh with a handsome young lady who remarked to him, that the heat of the day was oppressive; on which the Quaker recommended her to throw off a petticoat. The lady replied, Between you and I, friend G——s, I have but one on. And between thee and me, replied broad-brim, even that is one too many!
A very young officer, striking an old grenadier of his company for some supposed fault in performing his evolutions, was unable to reach any higher than his legs. The grenadier, upon this infantine assault, gravely took off his cap, and holding it over the officer by the tip, said, Sir, if you were not my officer, I would extinguish you.
Francis I, having imposed a new tax it was reported to him, as a treasonable offence, that the people murmured so much as not even to spare his sacred person. Poh! answered Francis, why should they not have amusement for their money?