“Ah,” he said merrily, to his host, “you knew that I am fond of boiled eggs, but one thing you did not know, that I eat only the white. Permit me to leave the yolk for your poor.”
Art and Artist
On the same day a mediocre actor and a frivolous spendthrift died at Berlin. Some one remarked: “The city has lost to-day two artists of a peculiar kind: the one still owes us art, the other had the art to owe us!”
The Horse-Thief
One day a famous actor, who was seeking his health in the country, missed his horse. He asked a countryman whether there were horse-thieves around.
“Oh no,” said he, “we are all honest people here; but for some days, some actor-fellow from the city has been loafing around here; perhaps he took it.”
Truth and Fiction
A bishop once asked a great actor:
“How is it, that we clergymen, in spite of the great and true subjects we discuss in public, make so little impression, while you gentlemen of the stage, make so much?”
“It is because we actors make fiction sound like truth, while you clergymen make truth sound like fiction.”