The next morning the coin-giver was awakened by a stentorian voice calling: “Rochester!”
“Rochester!” he exclaimed, sitting up. “Where’s that porter?”
Hastily slipping on his trousers, he went in search of the negro, and found him in the porter’s closet, huddled up, with his head in a bandage, his clothes torn, and his arm in a sling.
“Well,” said the drummer, “you are a sight. Why didn’t you put me off at Syracuse?”
“Wha-at!” gasped the porter, jumping up, as his eyes bulged from his head. “Was you de gemman dat give me a five-dollah gold piece?”
“Of course I was, you idiot!”
“Well, den, befoah de Lawd, who was dat gemman I put off at Syracuse?”
A right reverend prelate, himself a man of extreme good-nature, was frequently much vexed in spirit by the proud, froward, perverse, and untractable temper of his next vicar. The latter, after an absence much longer than usual, one day paid a visit to the bishop, who kindly inquired the cause of his absence, and was answered by the vicar that he had been confined to his house for some time past by an obstinate stiffness in his knee. “I am glad of that,” replied the prelate; “’tis a good symptom that the disorder has changed place, for I had a long time thought it immovably settled in your neck.”