The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun Part 4

METAPHYSICS.

A SCOTCH blacksmith, being asked the meaning of metaphysics, explained it as follows:--"When the party who listens disna ken what the party who speaks means, and when the party who speaks disna ken what he means himsel'--that is metaphysics."

FORENSIC ELOQUENCE.

THE _Wheeling Gazette_ gives the following, as an extract from the recent address of a barrister "out west," to a jury:--"The law expressly declares, gentlemen, in the beautiful language of Shakspeare, that where no doubt exists of the guilt of the prisoner, it is your duty to fetch him in innocent. If you keep this fact in view, in the case of my client, gentlemen, you will have the honor of making a friend of him, and all his relations; and you can allers look upon this occasion, and reflect with pleasure, that you have done as you would be done by. But if, on the other hand, you disregard the principle of law, and set at nought my eloquent remarks, and fetch him in guilty, the silent twitches of conscience will follow you over every fair cornfield, I reckon; and my injured and down-trodden client will be apt to light on you one of these dark nights, _as my cat lights on a sa.s.serful of new milk_."

A DEFINITION IN POLITICAL ECONOMY.

"WILL you never learn, my dear, the difference between real and exchangeable value?" The question was put to a husband, who had been lucky enough to be tied up to a political economist in petticoats. "Oh yes, my dear, I think I begin to see." "Indeed!" responded the lady.

"Yes," replied the husband. "For instance, my dear, I know your deep learning, and all your other virtues. That's your _real_ value. But I know, also, that none of my married friends would swap wives with me.

That's your _exchangeable_ value.

COULDN'T UNDERSTAND.

"AH, Pat, Pat," said a schoolmistress to a thick-headed urchin into whose muddy brain she was attempting to beat the alphabet--"I'm afraid you'll never learn anything. Now, what's that letter, eh?"

"Sure, and I don't know ma'am," replied Pat.

"Thought you might have remembered that."

"Why, ma'am?"

"Because it has a dot over the top of it."

"Och, ma'am, I mind it well; but sure I thought it was a speck."

"Well, now remember, Pat, it's I."

"You, ma'am?"

"No! no! not U but I."

"Not I, but you, ma'am--how's that?"

"Not U, but I, blockhead!"

"Och, yis, faith; now I have it, ma'am. You mean to say, that not I but you are a blockhead?"

"Fool! fool!" exclaimed the pedagoguess bursting with rage.

"Just as you please," quietly responded Pat, "fool or blockhead--it's no matter, so long as yer free to own it!"

GREAT CALF.

AT a cattle show, recently, a fellow who was making himself ridiculously conspicuous, at last broke forth--"Call these ere prize cattle? Why, they ain't nothin' to what our folks raised. My father raised the biggest calf of any man round our parts."

"I don't doubt it," remarked a bystander, "and the noisiest."

GO IN AND WIN.

"MA, I am going to make some soft soap, for the Fair this fall!" said a beautiful Miss of seventeen, to her mother, the other day.

"What put that notion into your head, Sally?"

"Why, ma, the premium is just what I have been wanting."

"Pray, what is it?"

"A 'Westchester Farmer,' I hope he will be a good looking one!"

NOT HERE.

A CORRESPONDENT from Northampton, Ma.s.s., is responsible for the following:--"A subscriber to a moral-reform paper, called at our post office, the other day, and enquired if _The Friend of Virtue_ had come.

"No," replied the postmaster, "there has been no such person here for a long time."

GENTLEMEN AND THEIR DEBTS.