“Did ye, sir?” replied the troubled one, much appeased. “Weel, I didna hear; I’ll take fower.”
Mark Twain observed once at a public dinner that he had written a friendly letter to Queen Victoria protesting against a tax being levied in England on his head, on the ground that it was a gas-works. “I don’t know you,” he wrote, “but I’ve met your son. He was at the head of a procession in the Strand, and I was on a ’bus.” Years afterward he met the King at Homburg, and they had a long talk. At parting the King said: “I am glad to have met you again.” That last word troubled Mark, who asked whether the King had not mistaken him for some one else. The reply—“Why, don’t you remember meeting me in the Strand when I was at the head of a procession and you were on a ’bus?” revealed the strength of Royal memories.
An Irishman and an Englishman were recounting feats of physical prowess. The Englishman, by way of showing his strength, said that he was accustomed to swim across the Thames three times before breakfast every morning.
“Well,” said the Irishman, “that may be all right, but it do seem to me that your clothes would be on the wrong side of the river all the time.”
An excess luggage porter at a large railway station said to a “commercial,” “I see your luggage is overweight, sir.” “Ah! your visionary powers are far too acute for me, my friend.” “What did you say, sir?” “I say you can see too well for me.” “Ah! to be sure, sir. I take you——” “Could you see as well now if you had sixpence over one eye?” “Well, I don’t know, sir, but I’m darned well sure I couldn’t see at all if I’d another over t’other one.”
Henry James, the American novelist, lives at Rye, one of the Cinque Ports, but recently he left Rye for a time and took a house in the country near the estate of a millionaire jam manufacturer, retired. This man, having married an earl’s daughter, was ashamed of the trade whereby he had piled up his fortune.