Page:Everybody's Book of English wit and humour (1880).djvu/94

 Counsel—"That's no proof, for I have got one just like it in my pocket."

Witness—"I don't doubt that, as I had more than one of the same sort stolen."

Sir Robert Walpole once wanting to carry a question in the House of Lords, and not being quite sure of some of the bishops, prevailed upon the Archbishop of Canterbury to stay at home for two or three days; in the meantime Sir Robert circulated a report that his Grace was dangerously ill. On the day of meeting the House was remarkably crowded with lawn sleeves, not one of whom voted against the minister.

Negligence in reading sometimes produces whimsical coincidences. An old Joe Miller records the story of a clergyman, who, reading to his congregation a chapter in Genesis, found the last sentence in the page to be, "And the Lord gave unto Adam a wife, and she"—turning over two leaves together, he found written, and read it in an audible voice—"was pitched within and without." He had unhappily got into the middle of a description of Noah's ark.

When Milton was blind he married a shrew. The Duke of Buckingham called her a rose. "I am no judge of colours," replied Milton, "and it may be so, for I feel the thorns daily."

A counsellor was one day asked by the judge, why he, as a man of talents and integrity, was always employed in knavish causes, "Why, I have been so much in the habit of losing good causes that I think I had better undertake bad ones."

A Quaker coming to town with his team was laid hold of, and taken before a justice, for riding upon the shafts of his cart, and fined forty shillings. The Quaker, without hesitation, threw down two guineas, when the Justice offered him two shillings change. "Ay," says the Quaker, "but thou hast been at so much trouble, thee mayest keep the two shillings to thyself; only thou write it down on a bit of paper for my satisfaction;" which the Justice