Page:Everybody's Book of English wit and humour (1880).djvu/80

 The visitors declined giving her the trouble, but she insisted. Accordingly the Bible was brought, nicely covered, and on opening it, the old woman exclaimed: "Well, how glad I am you came, here are my spectacles that I have been looking for these three years."

In a cathedral, one day after service, the bellows-blower said to the organist, "I think we have done very well to-day."

"We!" said the organist in no small surprise at the independence of his menial, "how can you pretend to have any merit in the performance? Never let me hear you say such a thing again."

The man said nothing more at the time, but when they were next playing, he suddenly intermitted in his task of inflating the organ. The organist rose in wrath to order him to proceed, when the fellow, thrusting his head out from behind the curtain, asked slily, "shall it be we, then?"

They have sayings at Oxford which would be termed profane anywhere else. For instance, when a tradesman has grown rich by trusting the scholars, they say, that "his faith hath made him whole."

A farmer was elected to a corporalship in a militia company. His wife, after discoursing with him for some time on the advantage which the family would derive from his exaltation, enquired in a doubting tone,

"Husband, will it be proper for us to let our children play with our neighbours' now?"

One of the little urchins eagerly asked: "Are we not all corporals?"

"Tut!" said the mother," hold your tongue, there is no one corporal, but your father and myself!"

A gentleman having appointed to meet his friend on particular business, went to his house and knocked at the door, which was opened by a servant girl. He informed her he wanted her master.

"He is gone out, sir," said she.