Page:Everybody's Book of English wit and humour (1880).djvu/86

 a deformed man in a pew beneath, who arose from his seat, and pointed at his own back.

"Think of you?" reiterated the preacher; "why, that you are the most perfect hunchback my eyes ever beheld."

In some parish churches it was once the custom to separate men from women. A clergymnan, being interrupted by loud talking, stopped short, when a woman, eager for the honour of her sex, arose and said, "Your reverence, the noise is not among us."

"So much the better," answered the clergyman, "it will be the sooner over."

Auctioneer—"But, I say, there is nobody else in the room offering a bid for the ancient cabinet. How is it you keep on bidding against yourself?"

Broker—"Well, you see, that is a matter of business. I have got a commission from two different parties to buy the cabinet at any cost, and I don't know yet which of them is to have it."

A dull playwright, about to read one of his compositions in the green-room at Drury Lane, observed that he knew nothing so terrible as reading a piece before such a critical audience.

"I know one thing more terrible," said Mrs. Powell.

"What can that be?" asked the author.

"To be obliged to sit and hear it."

As Lady B L was presiding one evening at the tea-table, one of her ruffles caught the flame of the tea-lamp, and was burned before it could be extinguished.

Lord M, who was of the party, and thought to be witty on the accident, remarked that he "did not think her ladyship so apt to take fire."

"Nor am I, my lord," replied she, with great readiness, "from such sparks as you."

During a heavy shower a business man, carrying a very wet umbrella, entered an hotel to pay a call to someone upstairs.