Several gentlemen at a party contested the honour of having done the most extraordinary thing. A reverend D.D. was appointed to be judge of their respective pretensions. One produced his tailor’s bill, with a receipt attached to it; a cry went through the room, that this would not be outdone; when a second proved that he had arrested his tailor for money lent to him. The palm is his, was the universal outcry; when a third observed, “Gentlemen, I cannot boast of the feats of either of my predecessors; but I have returned to the owners two umbrellas that they had left at my house.” “I’ll hear no more,” cried the arbiter; “this is the very _ne plus ultra_ of honest and unheard of deeds; it is an act of virtue of which I never before knew any person capable: the prize is yours.”
The eccentric Lord Peterborough, though one of the most brilliant of modern military characters, was overshadowed by the Duke of Marlborough. On a temporary return from Spain, where he was commanding, he found all his projects, proposals, and recommendations taken by the ministry _ad referendum_ which disgusted him so much, that he threw himself into a sedan chair to return home, and drawing the curtains all round, sat indulging in his own morose thoughts. As he was passing through the streets, the populace took up an idea that he was the rival general, and gathered round, crying, “God bless the Duke of Marlborough! God bless the Duke of Marlborough!” “Gentlemen,” said his lordship, pushing down one of the windows, “I am not the Duke of Marlborough.” “O yes,” said a spokesman of the multitude, “you are the Duke of Marlborough: we know you well enough.” “Gentlemen,” said Lord Peterborough, “I am not the Duke of Marlborough. Let me down,” he cried to the chairman. Got out of the chair, and now standing,--“I am not the Duke of Marlborough, I tell you, and I will now give you two convincing proofs that I am not; one is, that I have but a single guinea,” and he turned his pockets inside out: “the other is, that I give it you;” and he threw it among them.
“Sir,” said a barber to an attorney who was passing his door, “will you tell me if this is a good seven-shilling piece?” The lawyer pronouncing the piece good, deposited it in his pocket, adding, with great gravity, “if you’ll send your lad to my office, I’ll return the fourpence.”