One in the midst of a crowd of people on the top of the steeple of St. Paul's Church, London, had his pocket picked. "What villains are these," he exclaimed, "to pick a man's pocket in church!" "Nay, sir," said another, "you are but robbed upon the highway."
A scholar was fond of sitting in a study hung around with brown paper, because, he would say, he did sometimes love to sit in a brown study.
"Why are there drums in the wars?" "To stir up the valor of the soldiers." "Strange, for wheresoever the victory falls, the drums are sure to be beaten."
Why does B stand before C? Because a man must B before he can C.
How long is the longest letter in the English alphabet? An L long.
Two men, of whom one was a goldsmith, conspired together to steal a silver bowl. When they had procured it, the goldsmith gilded it over that it might not be known. They were arrested, however, and when the matter came to trial, the judge said, that though the other stole it, yet the guilt of the fact lay upon the goldsmith.
One came upon a sexton making a grave for a great tall fellow by the name of Button, and asked him for whom that extraordinarily long grave was. The sexton answered, that he had made many longer than that, and said it was but a button-hole compared with some graves that he had made.
A man, whose name was You, married a woman of the same name, and was ever after called "Master W."
One was wondering why the people of Æthiopia did not write straight along as the northern people do, and another answered that they wrote under the line, and that was the reason of it.
A dyer, who was an idle drunken fellow, complained to a scholar that he had bad luck in his business, and that usually those things which he took to dye were spoiled. The scholar told him that the only way to have this amended was to reform himself, for he that lived ill could never dye well.