Another gentleman while driving one day was asked by a lady if some fowls they passed were ducks or geese. One of the latter at the moment lifting up its voice, the gentleman said, “That’s your anser!”
“Well, Tom, are you sick again?” asked a student of his friend, and was answered in English and in Latin, “Sic sum.”
Victor Hugo was once asked if he could write English poetry. “Certainement,” was the reply, and he sat down and wrote this verse:
| “Pour chasser le spleen J’entrai dans un inn; O, mais je bus le gin, God save the queen!” |
In the “Innocents Abroad” of Mark Twain he gives a letter written by his friend Mr. Blucher to a Parisian hotel-keeper, which was as follows:
“‘Monsieur le Landlord: Sir—Pourquoi don’t you mettez some savon in your bed-chambers? Est-ce-que-vous pensez I will steal it? Le nuit passeé you charged me pour deux chandelles when I only had one; hier vous avez charged me avec glace when I had none at all; tout les jours you are coming some fresh game or other upon me, mais vous ne pouvez pas play this savon dodge on me twice. Savon is a necessary de la vie to anybody but a Frenchman, et je l’aurai hors de cette hotel or make trouble. You hear me.—Allons.
Blucher.’”
“I remonstrated,” says Mr. Twain, “against the sending of this note, because it was so mixed up that the landlord would never be able to make head or tail of it; but Blucher said he guessed the old man could read the French of it, and average the rest.”
Productions like the preceding, and like that with which we conclude are continually finding their way into print, and are always readable, curious, and fresh for an idle hour.
Pocahontas and Captain Smith.