At a banquet held in a room the walls of which were adorned with many beautiful paintings, a well-known college president was called upon to respond to a toast. In the course of his remarks, wishing to pay a compliment to the ladies present, and designating the paintings with one of his characteristic gestures, he said: “What need is there of these painted beauties when we have so many with us at this table?”
The late Charles Eliot Norton was wont to deplore the modern youth’s preference of brawn to brain. He used to tell of a football game he once witnessed: “Princeton had a splendid player in Poe—you will remember little Poe?” and Professor Norton, thinking of “The Raven” and “Annabel Lee,” said to the lad at his side: “He plays well, that Poe!”
“Doesn’t he?” the youth cried. “Is he,” said Professor Norton, “any relation to the great Poe?”
“Any relation?” said the youth. “Why, he is the great Poe.”
A fire broke out one day in Francis Wilson’s dressing-room at the theater where he was playing.
He had some of his books around him, and in an agony of despair asked himself:
“Which shall I save?” He glanced at his precious Chaucer, at some Shakespearean volumes, when: