Page:Everybody's Book of English wit and humour (1880).djvu/29

 "True," answered Monk Lewis, "there is nothing more pressing than hunger."

"Your horse has a tremendous long bit," said a friend to Theodore Hook.

"Yes," said he, "it is a bit too long.

"My friends," said a builder, whose health had been drunk at a dinner in celebration of the completion of a public hall which he had constructed—"My friends, I would gladly express my feelings did I not feel that I am better fitted for the scaffold than for public speaking."

"Did you present your account to the defendant?" inquired a lawyer of a client.

"I did, your honour."

"And what did he say?"

"He told me to go to the devil."

"And what did you do then?"

"Why then—I came to you."

"I cannot imagine," said Lord Aberdeen, "why the war-party in France are always putting out their tongues at us." "It is very easily explained," replied Lord Brougham:—"it is because they want to lick us."

The celebrated Dr South, the witty chaplain of King Charles II, one day called on his old friend and fellow-collegian, Dr Waterford, who pressed him to stay to dinner. Mrs W., however, thought her arrangements disturbed, and refused to make any addition to the leg of mutton already provided, saying, "she would not be put out of her way—that she would not;" the husband, provoked beyond all patience, declared that, if it were not for the stranger in the house, he would thrash her. Dr South, who heard all this through a thin partition, hallooed out, "Dear doctor! as we have been friends so long, I beseech you not to make a stranger of me on this occasion." [11]

He was a great bore, and was talking to a crowd about the local coming election. He said, "Jones is a good man; he is