Page:Everybody's Book of English wit and humour (1880).djvu/71

 council, stuck fast. Dr Byles came to his door and saluted the officials with the remark:

"Gentlemen, I have often complained to you of this nuisance without any attention being paid to it, and am very glad to see you stirring in this matter now."

A renowned clergyman once preached rather a long sermon from the text, "Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting." After the congregation had waited about an hour, some began to get weary and went out; others soon followed, greatly to the annoyance of the minister. Another person started, whereupon the parson stopped in his sermon and said: "That's right, gentlemen. As fast as you are weighed, pass out."

Dean Cowper, of Durham, who was very economical with his wine, descanting one day on the extraordinary performance of a man who was blind, he remarked that the poor fellow could see no more than "that bottle."

"I do not wonder at it at all, sir," said a minor canon at the table, "for we have seen no more than that bottle all the afternoon."

A landlord told his tenant that he meant to raise his rent. "I am glad of it, sir," said the tenant, "for I cannot raise it myself."

One day when Colman and his son were walking from Soho Square to the Haymarket, two witlings—Miles Peter Andrews and William Augustus Miles—were coming the contrary way, on the opposite side of the street. They had each sent to Colman a dramatic manuscript for the summer theatre, and being anxious to get the start of each other, in the production of their separate works, they both called out, "Remember, Colman, I am first oar." "Humph," muttered the manager, as they passed on, "they may talk about first oars, but they have not a skull between them."

This reminds one of a witticism of Douglas Jerrold's: Two conceited young authors were boasting that they rowed in the same