Page:Everybody's Book of English wit and humour (1880).djvu/92

 "No, that is not our dog barking, it's the one next door."

"Yes."

"It's not necessary to go down and see if the cellar-door is fastened; I know it is."

"Yes."

"That is nobody; only the wind rattling the shutters."

"Yes."

"Well, I think that's about all. You see, my wife asks me those questions every night just as I am getting into bed, and if I had a printed list I could show to her it would save lots of trouble, and besides that, it injures my lungs to answer them. Have the list printed as soon as possible, please."

A lady was once lamenting the ill-luck which attended her affairs, when a friend, wishing to console her, bade her "look upon the bright side."

"Oh," she cried, "there seems to be no bright side."

"Then polish up the dark side!" was the reply.

A gentleman interceded with his bishop for a clergyman, who was in debt, and who had on more than one occasion been imprisoned at the instance of his creditors. He urged the abilities of his friend, which, notwithstanding his delinquencies, were of no small order.

"He is, in fact, my lord, really and truly a St Paul."

"Yes," replied the bishop, sarcastically; "in prisons oft."

Mr Spurgeon was once asked to lash the prevailing folly, the invisible bonnet. This he did in the following words: "I have been requested to rebuke the bonnets of the day." All faces were immediately upturned, and, scanning the ladies of the congregation, he added: "Really I see none!" A more bitter rebuke any other words could not have conveyed.

A doctor's servant-man came to announce a patient who was unfavourably known as a wealthy skinflint, insolent, and overbearing withal, and a notoriously bad payer. The doctor ordered the patient to be shown in, and offered him a chair in