“‘And I,’ said the homeopathist, smiling faintly, ’am glad to meet you as a physician, though I can’t admit you are a gentleman.’”
At a recent dinner in London the conversation turned to the subject of lynching in the United States. It was the general opinion that a large percentage of Americans met death at the end of a rope. Finally the hostess turned to an American, who had taken no part in the conversation, and said:
“You, sir, must have often seen these affairs.”
“Yes,” he replied, “we take a kind of municipal pride in seeing which city can show the greatest number of lynchings yearly.”
“Oh, do tell us about a lynching you have seen yourself,” broke in half a dozen voices at once.
“The night before I sailed for England,” said Eugene Field, “I was giving a dinner at a hotel to a party of intimate friends when a colored waiter spilled a plate of soup over the gown of a lady at an adjoining table. The gown was utterly ruined, and the gentlemen of her party at once seized the waiter, tied a rope around his neck, and at a signal from the injured lady swung him into the air.”
“Horrible,” said the hostess with a shudder. “And did you actually see this yourself?”
“Well, no,” admitted the American apologetically. “Just at that moment I happened to be downstairs killing the chef for putting mustard in the blanc mange.”