During his first visit to Paris Herr Lasalle, the distinguished German, presented himself at the house of a well-known lady, to whom he had sent letters of introduction in advance. When the servant opened the door and received his card, she conducted him to the boudoir and told him to be seated, saying, “Madame will come immediately.”
Presently the lady entered. She was in déshabillé, and her feet were bare, covered only with loose slippers. She bowed to him carelessly, and said, “Ah, there you are; good morning.”
She threw herself on a sofa, let fall a slipper and reached out to Lasalle her very pretty foot.
Lasalle was naturally completely astonished, but he remembered that at his home in Germany it was the custom sometimes to kiss a lady’s hand and he supposed it was the Paris mode to kiss her foot. Therefore he did not hesitate to imprint a kiss upon the fascinating foot so near him, but he could not avoid saying, “I thank you, madame, for this new mode of making a lady’s acquaintance. It is much better and certainly more generous than kissing the hand.”
The lady jumped up, highly indignant. “Who are you, sir, and what do you mean?”
He gave his name.
“You are not, then, a corn doctor?”
Unfamiliar Familiarity
Professor Phelps used to tell with glee of the way he gained a reputation for knowing a thing he hated. He took a walk with Professor Newton, who lived in the world of the higher mathematics, and started off at once to discuss an abstruse problem. Mr. Phelps’s mind could not follow, and wandered off to other things. At last he was called back when the professor wound up with “which you see gives us X.” “Does it?” asked Mr. Phelps, politely. “Why, doesn’t it?” exclaimed the professor, excitedly, alarmed at the possibility of a flaw in his calculations. Quickly his mind ran back and detected a mistake. “You are right, Mr. Phelps; you are right,” shouted the professor. “It doesn’t give us X; it gives us Y.” And from that time Mr. Phelps was looked upon as a mathematical prodigy, the first man who ever tripped the professor.