Page:Everybody's Book of English wit and humour (1880).djvu/78

 the Provost of Lichfield, and the Rector of Orpington, and one of the King's Chaplains too, and I don't know how many more, and so I thought, and please your honour, I'd get enough."

"Oh, very well!" coolly answered the Dean, who now recollected himself, "I ought to have asked Mr Singlechurch to have stayed and dined with me."

"Who is that lady dressed in black, mamma? " asked Bobby, as he sat with his mother on a steamboat.

"That is a Sister of Charity, my boy," replied his mother.

Bobby pondered deeply for a moment, and then said, "What is she, mamma, Faith, or Hope?"

Apostle—(to countryman) "I see you wear the blue ribbon, sir. You look upon rum as a curse, of course?"

Countryman—There ain't no man in our township what can drink more than I can. I took that blue ribbon for the second biggest hog at the country fair."

Apostle—"You ought to have taken first prize, my friend."

Lord Shaftesbury was fond of a good story, and he used to relate an amusing anecdote in illustration of the way in which eminent men sometimes formed their opinions as to the sanity of their patients. He was sitting one day as chairman of the Lunacy Commission when the alleged insanity of a lady was under discussion, and he took a view of the case adverse to that of his colleagues.

One of the medical men who was there to give evidence crept up to his chair, and said in a confidential tone: "Are you aware, my lord, that she subscribes to the Society for the Conversion of the Jews?"

"Indeed," replied Lord Shaftesbury;" and are you aware that I am the president of that society?"

Another story he was fond of telling was that the editor of a "religious" paper in South America, who had attacked him with great bitterness for the active part he had taken in the anti-slavery agitation, and urged him to look at home, "and consider the condition of the working-classes of his own country." The