CHARLES DARWIN
volution is at work everywhere, even in the matter of jokes. Once in the House of Commons, Benjamin Disraeli, who prided himself on his fine scholarship as well as on his Hyperion curl, interrupted a speaker and corrected him on a matter of history.
"I would rather be a gentleman than a scholar!" the man replied. "My friend is seldom either," came the quick response.
When Thomas Brackett Reed was Speaker of the House of Representatives, a member once took exception to a ruling of the "Czar," and having in mind Reed's supposed Presidential aspirations closed his protests with the thrust, "I would rather be right than President." "The gentleman will never be either," came the instant retort.
But some years before the reign of the American Czar, Gladstone, Premier of England, said, "I would rather be right and believe in the Bible, than excite a body of curious, infidelic, so-called scientists to unbecoming wonder by tracing their ancestry to a troglodyte." And Huxley replied, "I, too, would rather be right—I would rather be right than Premier."
Charles Darwin was a Gentle Man. He was the greatest naturalist of his time, and a more perfect gentleman never lived. His son Francis said: "I can not remember ever hearing my father utter an unkind or hasty word. If in his presence some one was being harshly criticized, he always thought of something to say in way of palliation and excuse."