Baron R——, one of the gravest and most decorous judges on the bench, had a younger brother singularly unlike him, who was a perpetual thorn in his side. A scapegrace at school, the youth would learn nothing, and was the torment of his teachers. Having been set a sum by one of the latter, he, after an undue delay, presented himself before the desk and held up his slate, at one corner of which appeared a pile of coppers.
‘What is the meaning of all this, sir?’ said the master.
‘Oh!’ cried the youth, ‘I’m very sorry, sir, but I really can’t help it. All the morning I’ve been working at that sum. Over and over again I’ve tried, but in spite of all I can do, it will not come right. So I’ve made up the difference in halfpence, and there it is on the slate.’
The originality of the device disarmed the wrath of the pedagogue, and young R—— was dismissed with his coppers to his place.
The youngster when grown up boasted an enormous pair of whiskers, of which he was very proud. One day a friend met him walking up Dame Street with one of these cherished bushy adornments shaved clean off, giving a most comical lop-sided appearance to his physiognomy.
‘Hollo, R——!’ he exclaimed, ‘what has become of your whisker?’
‘Lost it at play,’ he replied. ‘Regularly cleaned out last night at the gaming-table of every mortal thing I had—nothing left to wager but my whisker.’
‘And why, man, don’t you cut off the rest, and not have one side of your face laughing at the other?’
‘I’m keeping that for to-night,’ said the scamp with a wink, as he passed on.
The father of the Lord Chancellor—afterwards Lord Plunket—was a very simple-minded man. Kindly and unsuspicious, he was often imposed upon, and the Chancellor used to tell endless stories illustrative of his parent’s guileless nature.