"That must be a mistake, Dibble," returned his host, "as you have done so to my knowledge alone these twenty years."
An Extraordinary Case
Being at the levee of Lord Townsend, when that nobleman was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, he thought he saw a person in his Excellency's suite whom he had known to have lived many years a life of expediency in London. To convince himself of the fact, he asked his Excellency who it was.
"That is Mr. T——, one of my gentlemen at large," was the answer. "Do you know him?"
"Oh, yes! perfectly well," said Foote, "and what your Excellency tells me is doubly extraordinary: first, that he is a gentleman; and next, that he is at large."
Mutability of the World
Being at dinner in a mixed company soon after the bankruptcy of one friend and the death of another, the conversation naturally turned on the mutability of the world. "Can you account for this?" said S——, a master builder, who happened to sit next to Foote. "Why, not very clearly," said the other; "except we could suppose the world was built by contract."
An Appropriate Motto
During one of Foote's trips to Dublin, he was much solicited by a silly young man of fashion to assist him in a miscellany of poems and essays which he was about to publish; but when he asked to see the manuscript, the other told him "that at present he had only conceived the different subjects, but had put none of them to paper."
"Oh! if that be the state of the case," replied Foote, "I will give you a motto from Milton for the work in its present state: