A Lancashire vicar was asked by the choir to call upon old Betty, who was deaf, but who insisted in joining in the solo of the anthem, and to ask her only to sing in the hymns. He shouted into her ear: “Betty! I’ve been requested to speak to you about your singing.” At last she caught the word “singing,” and replied: “Not to me be the praise, sir; it’s a gift.”
The proprietor of a large drug store recently received this curt and haughty note written in an angular, feminine hand: “I do not want vasioline, but glisserine. Is that plain enough? I persoom you can spell.”
It was in a Maine Sunday-school that a teacher recently asked a Chinese pupil she was teaching to read if he understood the meaning of the words “an old cow.”
“Been cow a long time,” was the prompt answer.
Upon moving into a new neighborhood the small boy of the family was cautioned not to fight with his new acquaintances. One day Willie came home with a black eye and very much spattered with dirt.
“Why, Willie,” said mama, “I thought I told you to count a hundred before you fought!”
“I did, mama,” said Willie, “and look what Tommy Smith did while I was counting!”
“The rolling stone gathers no moss,” quoted the man who had never been outside his home county.
“True,” rejoined the globe-trotter, “but it acquires an enviable polish.”
Curate (who is going to describe his little holiday in Lucerne)--“My dear friends--I will not call you ladies and gentlemen, since I know you too well.”
Daniel Purcell, the famous punster, was desired to make a pun extempore.
“Oh! sir,” said he “the king is no subject.”
Illustrative of “that troublesome Henglish haitch” an American traveler relates the following:
Once I dined with an English farmer. We had ham--very delicious baked ham. The farmer’s son soon finished his portion and passed his plate again.
“I did say ’am,” the lad protested in an injured tone.
“You said _‘am_,” cried the father fiercely. “’Am’s what it should be. ’Am, not _‘am_.”
In the middle of the squabble the farmer’s wife turned to me and, with a deprecatory little laugh, explained:
“They both think they’re sayin’ ’am, sir.”
Passing along Princes Street, Edinburgh, one day a herculean Scots Grey stopped at the post-office and called on a street arab to polish his boots. The feet of the dragoon were in proportion to his height and, looking at the tremendous boots before him, the arab knelt down on the pavement and shouted out to his chum across the road, “Jamie, come ower an’ gie’s a hand, I’ve got an army contract.”