“What am I?” he asked.
“A mon.”
“Yes, a man; but the Vicar is a man, and the Master is a man: what sort of man am I?”
“A very hugly one,” was the answer, and the line of examination was changed.
One should not lay oneself open to crushing rejoinders. I too have been crushed, and I rashly told the piteous tale to a lady at dinner, thinking to meet with sympathy. She contributed as much of the story as she could remember to a newspaper; whence it was pirated by a compiler of “Railway Jests,” and the mutilated fragment was shown to me by a teacher after some years.
I also was hearing a class read, and we came to the word “Pilgrim.” What, I asked, was a pilgrim?
A. “A man that goos about from place to place.”
Q. “But I go about from place to place: am I a pilgrim?”
A. “No: ’ee’s a good mon.”
And the Vicar remarked sotto voce, “That’s one for you.”