It is told of Père Monsabre, the famous Dominican preacher, that one day, as he was on the way to officiate in the church, a message came to him that a lady wanted to see him. She was worrying about an affair of conscience, she felt that she must see him, she feared that she was given up to vanity. That very morning, she confessed, she had looked in her looking-glass, and yielded to the temptation of thinking herself pretty.
Père Monsabre looked at her and said quietly, “Is that all?”
She confessed that it was.
“Well, my child,” he replied, “you can go away in peace, for to make a mistake is not a sin.”
Toast
In the days before the war, days famous for generous but unostentatious hospitality in the South, a brilliant party was assembled at dinner in a country homestead. Across the table wit flashed back and forth, and, when the merry party had adjourned to the broad veranda, the guests began to vie with one another in proposing conundrums.
Mr. Alexander H. Stephens offered one which puzzled the whole company. “What is it that we eat at breakfast and drink at dinner?”
For some time no answer came, and the bright eyes of the Southern orator began to sparkle with triumph, when Colonel Johnston, taking up the Commonplace Book of the hostess which lay conveniently by, wrote, impromptu, upon the fly-leaf the following answer:
“What is eaten for breakfast and drunken at dinner?
Is it coffee or eggs—or butter or meats?