An examiner at the Edinburgh University had made himself obnoxious by warning the students against putting hats on the desk. The university in the Scottish capital is (or was) remarkable for a scarcity of cloak rooms, and in the excitement of examination hats are, or used to be, flung down anywhere. The examiner announced one day that if he found another hat on his desk he would "rip it up."
The next day no hats were laid there when the students assembled. Presently, however, the examiner was called out of the room. Then some naughty undergraduate slipped from his seat, got the examiner's hat, and placed it on the desk. When the examiner re-entered the hall every eye was fixed upon him. He observed the hat, and a gleam of triumph shot across his face.
"Gentlemen," he continued, "I told you what would happen if this occurred again."
Then he took his penknife from his pocket, opened it, and blandly cut the hat in pieces amidst prolonged applause.
New Style of Riding in a Funeral Procession
The following anecdote is an amusing illustration of the working of a defective brain, in a half-witted carle, who used to range the county of Galloway, armed with a huge pike-staff, and who one day met a funeral procession a few miles from Wigtown.
A long train of carriages, and farmers on horseback, suggested the propriety of his bestriding his staff, and following after the funeral. The procession marched at a brisk pace, and on reaching the kirkyard stile, as each rider dismounted, "Daft Jock" descended from his wooden steed, besmeared with mire and perspiration, exclaiming, "Heck, sirs, had it no' been for the fashion o' the thing, I micht as well hae been on my ain feet." [[7]]
Absence of Humor—Illustrated
Few amusements in the world are funnier than the play of different ideas under similar sounds, and it would be hard to find a thing more universally understood and caught at than a pun; but there really are individuals so made that a word can mean but one thing to them, and even metaphors must go on all-fours. Lord Morpeth used to tell of a Scotch friend of his who, to the remark that some people could not feel a jest unless it was fired at them with a cannon, replied: "Weel, but how can ye fire a jest out of a cannon, man?"