Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/34

 when a member of his club, hearing an air mentioned, said, "That always carries me away when I hear it," Jerrold, merely to seize an opportunity, said, "Then can nobody whistle it?" This kind of wit easily rankles, if there be a drop or two of suspicion in our veins; for there is nothing in the tone to announce its discrimination from ill-nature. For instance: Sheridan, soliciting the votes of the shoemakers of Stafford, exclaimed, "May the trade of Stafford be trampled under foot of all the world!" and mortally offended them.

We should like to know how the French attaché felt who, being at a soirée just after the dubious affair of the annexation of Nice and Savoy to France, met Lord Houghton, as he went towards the supper-room, and said, "Je vais prendre quelque chose!" "Vous avez raison," was the reply; "c'est l'habitude de votre pays."

But the French abound in the kind of wit which penetrates like a colorless North light, and sets a contrast in clearness, so that we admire its outlines, scarcely smiling; as when Hippolyte Taine said, "An Englishman would be exceedingly mortified if he had no faith in another life." When the Duke de Choiseul, who was a remarkably lean man, came to London to negotiate a peace, Charles Townsend, being asked whether the French Government had sent the preliminaries of a treaty, answered that he did not know, but they had sent the outline of an ambassador. This preserves the French flavor, which we recognize, for instance, in Ninon de l'Enclos, who, being asked one day by a Parisian lady whether she believed that St. Denys walked all the way