Page:Anecdote book.pdf/14



'Thomas,' said a sponging friend of the family to a footman, who had been lingering about the room for half an hour to show him to the door, Thomas, my good fellow, it's getting late, isn't it? How soon will the dinner come up, Thomas?' The very moment you be gone, sir,' was the unequivocal reply.

Sir Thomas Fitzgerald, famous for flogging, had raised a regiment of pardoned peasantry in the sister kingdom, which he called the 'Ancient Irish.' He and his corps were sent on foreign service. On his return he boasted frequently of their bravery, and that no other troops were so forward to face the enemy. 'No wonder,' said Ned Lysaght; 'thanks to your flogging, they were ashamed to show their backs.'

An Irishman being asked, a few days since, to take a mutton chop with a friend, declined the invitation, saying, 'that he had ate so much mutton of late, he was ashamed to look a sheep in the face.'

The editor of an American paper, in describing the rapid sale of his journal, assures those who choose to believe him, that it goes off like greased lightning!

As a canal-boat was passing under a bridge, the captain gave the usual warning by calling aloud, "Look out!" when a little Frenchman, who was in the cabin, obeyed the order by popping his head out of the window, which received a severe bump, by coming in contact with a pillar of the bridge. He drew it back in a great pet, and exclaimed, "Dese Amerikans say, 'Look out!' when dey mean 'Look in!'

'I can't speak in public-never done such a thing in all my life,' said a chap the other night at a public meeting, who had been called upon to hold forth, but if anybody in the crowd will speak for me, I'll hold his hat.'