Exchanging Errors
In the perusal of a very solid book on the progress of the ecclesiastical differences of Ireland, written by a native of that country, after a good deal of tedious and vexatious matter, the reader’s complacency is restored by an artless statement how an eminent person “abandoned the errors of the Church of Rome and adopted those of the Church of England.”
Betting on the Lord’s Prayer
A Western ranchman, as an old story goes, bet a pal five dollars that he could not repeat the Lord’s Prayer correctly. The bet was accepted, and after a few moments’ thought, the challenged party repeated the lines, “Now I lay me down to sleep,” etc. “Well, I swear,” said the loser, as he handed over the V; “I didn’t think you could do it.”
This story has a very old English counterpart, which was originally told as follows:
A reprobate fellow once laid an associate a bet of a guinea that he could not repeat the Creed. It was accepted, and his friend repeated the Lord’s Prayer. “Confound you,” cried the former, who imagined that he had been listening to the Creed, “I had no idea you had such a memory; there’s your money.”
Contradictory Phraseology
Judge Brackenridge, of Western Pennsylvania, used to relate the following:
I once had a Virginia lawyer object to an expression in one of the acts of the Assembly of Pennsylvania, which read, “that the State-house yard in the city of Philadelphia should be surrounded by a brick-wall, and remain an open inclosure forever.”
But I put him down by citing one of the acts of the Legislature of his own State, which is entitled, “A supplement to an act entitled an act making it penal to alter the mark of an unmarked hog.”