A Frenchman, who had learnt English, wished to be particularly polite, and never neglected an opportunity of saying something pretty. One evening, he observed to Lady R——, whose dress was fawn-coloured, and that of her daughter pink, “Milady, your daughter is de pink of beauty.” “Ah monsieur, you Frenchmen always flatter.” “No madam, I only speak de truth, and what all de world will allow, dat your daughter is de pink, and your ladyship de drab of fashion!” It was with great difficulty that the Frenchman could be made to comprehend his sottise.
AN EAST INDIAN MAJOR LONGBOW.
An old East Indian, who had returned from Calcutta, with a large fortune and a liver complaint, had retired to his native place (Banffshire), and was availing himself one evening of the usual privilege of travellers to a very large extent. His Scotch friends listened to his Major Longbows with an air of perfect belief; till, at last, the worthy nabob happened to say, that in a particular part of India it was usual to fatten horses upon the flesh of sheep’s heads reduced to a pulp and mixed with rice. “Oh,” exclaimed all his auditors with one voice, “Oh, that will never do. We can believe all the rest; but really, feeding horses upon sheep’s heads is too bad.” “Well, gentlemen,” said the man of the East, “I assure you, that my story about the horses is the only bit of truth that I have told you this evening!”
A QUERULOUS MAN.
Mr. Tyers, the proprietor of Vauxhall Gardens, was a worthy man, but indulged himself a little too much in querulous complaints, when anything went amiss; insomuch that, he said, if he had been brought up a hatter he believed people would have been without heads! A farmer once gave him a humorous reproof for his kind of reproach of Heaven; he stepped up to him very respectfully, and asked him when he meant to open his Gardens. Mr. Tyers replied, the next Monday fortnight. The man thanked him repeatedly, and was going away; but Mr. Tyers asked him in return, what made him so anxious to know. “Why, sir,” said the farmer, “I think of sowing my turnips on that day, for you know we shall be sure to have rain.”
IMPROMPTU.
A gentlemen paying a visit one morning to a family in Hanover Square, was shewn into a room, where on a writing desk was a paper, on which a lady had begun to transcribe a song from the opera of Love in a Village: remarking that she had left off at the end of the two following lines,—
In love should there meet a fond pair,
Untutor’d by fashion or art;
he took up a pen, and completed the verse by adding,—