Among the Humorists and After Dinner Speakers Part 39

A messenger came tearing up to the White House in '63, and hurriedly gaining admission to Mr. Lincoln, informed him in great excitement that a large wagon train had been surprised a short way across the Potomac and a brigadier-general taken prisoner.

"Did they capture the train?" inquired Old Abe.

"No, sir, the regiment came up and saved it," answered the messenger, "but the general, Mr. President, is a prisoner."

"Oh, never mind that," said Lincoln. "I can make a dozen generals in a day, but mules cost $300 apiece."

Two men were riding together one day through Paris. One was exceedingly bright and clever, while the other was correspondingly dull. As is usually the case, the latter monopolized the conversation.

The talk of the dullard had become almost unendurable, when his companion saw a man on the street far ahead yawning.

"Look," he exclaimed, "we are overheard!"

One afternoon Mrs. Murphy appeared at the settlement house, all dressed up in her best bonnet and shawl. A huge black and blue spot disfigured one side of her face, however, and one eye was nearly closed. "Why, Mrs. Murphy, what is the matter?" cried one of the teachers; and then, realizing that she might have asked a tactless question, she hastily turned it off, by saying, "Well, cheer up, you might be worse off." "Sure an' I might," responded the indignant Mrs.

Murphy. "I might not be married at all!"

A young woman in Central Park overheard an old negress call to a piccaninny: "Come heah, Exy, Exy!"

"Excuse me, but that's a queer name for a baby, aunty?"

"Dat ain't her full name," explained the old woman with pride; "dat's jes' de pet name I calls for short. Dat chile got a mighty grand name.

Her ma picked it out in a medicine book--yessum, de child's full name is Eczema."

Sir Richard Beth.e.l.l, afterward Lord Westbury, with a suave voice and a stately manner, nevertheless had a way of bearing down the foe with almost savage wit. Once, in court, he had to follow a barrister who had delivered his remarks in very loud tones. "Now that the noise in court has subsided," murmured Beth.e.l.l, "I will tell your Honor in two sentences the gist of the case."

The resemblance of the Rev. Robert Collyer to Henry Ward Beecher was often remarked. One day, when walking through Central Park, hat in hand, as the day was hot, at a sharp turn in the path he came upon an old lady seated on one of the park benches. At sight of him she jumped to her feet, exclaiming:

"Goodness me! This is not Mr. Beecher?"

"No, madam," Dr. Collyer answered, "it is not. I hope Mr. Beecher is in a cooler place."

It is not necessary that a lawyer should be eloquent to win verdicts, but he must have the tact which turns an apparent defeat to his own advantage. One of the most successful of verdict winners was Sir James Scarlett. His skill in turning a failure into a success was wonderful.

In a breach-of-promise case the defendant, Scarlett's client, was alleged to have been cajoled into an engagement by the plaintiff's mother. She was a witness in behalf of her daughter, and completely baffled Scarlett, who cross-examined her. But in his argument he exhibited his tact by this happy stroke of advocacy: "You saw, gentlemen of the jury, that I was but a child in her hands. What must my client have been?"

He was a young man--a candidate for an agricultural const.i.tuency--and he was sketching in glowing colors to an audience of rural voters the happy life the laborer would lead under an administration for the propagation of sweetness and light. "We have not yet three acres and a cow, but it will come. Old-age pensions are still of the future, but they will come." Similarly every item of his comprehensive program was endorsed by the same parrot cry. Then he went on to talk of prison reforms. "I have not yet personally," he said, "been inside a criminal lunatic asylum." Then there was a voice from the back of the hall, "But it will come."

The judge had had his patience sorely tried by lawyers who wished to talk and by men who wished to evade jury service.

"Shudge!" cried a little German in the jury box.

"What is it?" demanded the judge.

"I t'ink I like to go home to my wife," said the German.

"You can't," retorted the judge. "Sit down."

"But, shudge," persisted the German, "I don't t'ink I make a good shuror."

"You're the best in the box," said the judge. "Sit down."

"What box?" said the German.

"Jury box," said the judge.

"But, shudge," persisted the little German, "I don't speak good English."

"You don't have to speak any at all," said the judge. "Sit down."

The little German pointed at the lawyers to make his last desperate plea.

"Shudge," he said, "I don't make noddings of what these fellers say."

It was the judge's chance to get even for many annoyances.

"Neither can any one else," he said. "Sit down."

A parson, diminutive in size and his head covered with hair of the most fiery hue, officiated one Sunday for a friend in a colliery village near Nottingham. The old-fas.h.i.+oned pulpit had a high desk over which the parson's red head was hardly visible. This was too much for a burly collier seated immediately under the pulpit, who when he heard the text, "I am the Light of the World," exclaimed to the clerk, "Push him up a bit higher, mate; don't let him burn in the socket."

"Biddy," said Pat timidly, "did ye iver think o' marryin'?"'

"Shure, now," said Biddy, looking demurely at her shoe--"shure, now, the subject has niver entered me mind at all, at all."

"It's sorry Oi am," said Pat, and he turned away.

"Wan minute, Pat," said Biddy softly. "Ye've set me thinkin'."

From a French journal comes this little anecdote of a tutor and his royal pupil.