PERSONAL ANECDOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 58, 8 March 1913, Page 15

PERSONAL ANECDOTES.

M. FAIJDTERES' "MOT." It is not the custom for retiring Presidents to attend the election of their successor in France. A personal friend, unmindful of this usage, inquired of M. Fallieres whether he intended to be present at Versailles. "Oh, no," he said, laughingly, "it would be like a deceased man hearing his own will read." ROUGH. Judge McCanless, who is one of the thinnest men in America, was one day walking along a street in Kansas City, when he noticed that a dog was following him. After he had gone a block and the dog was still trailing him, he turned to a street gamin and asked: "Boy, what do you suppose that dog is following mc for?" "Well, mister," said the boy, as he looked the judge over from head to foot, "I dunno exactly, but my idea is that he takes you for a bone." HE WAS AGING. yon Molfcke, like General Grant, was a man of few words. It is said that a man who knew him well once made a wager that in proposing a toast to the Kaiser, the old soldier would not use more than eight or nine words. On this occasion, however, it happened that he added to his usual phrase the words "Meine Herren" (Gentlemen). The disconsolate loser Borrowfulh- remarked : "Yon Moltke's aging. He's getting garrulous!" DEGREES IN TRADING. Judge A. A. Adams, of the Indiana Appellate Court, tells a story of a man who was a good horse trader, but through lack of mathematical education was unable to determine his per cent of profits. "This man," relates Judge Adams, "made a good trade, and he was anxious to know his real per cent of profit, so he consulted a school teacher. " T bought a horse the other day for 25 dollars and sold him for 175 dollars; now, what was my per cent profit?" he asked the teacher. " 'That,' replied the teacher, 'was not profit; it was larceny.' " "CHOtATE DID." An amusing anecdote told the other day of the late American Ambassador to Britain, Mr. Whitelaw Reid, is worth repeating. Mr. Reid, Mr. Joseph Choate (who was formerly Ambassador in London) and -Mark Twain were lunching in New York. When the waiter was about to pour out wine for Mr. Choate he shielded his glass. "What, no wine. Choate?" asked Mark Twain. "No," said Choate, "I'm sixty to-day. yet 1 never drank a glass of wine, and never have, tasted tobacco, nor gambled." "Really," said Mark, "I wish I could say that." "Why don't you, Mark?" drawled Reid— "Choate did." BULLFIGHTER'S IDEA OF PERn^. Describing experiences infpa'ih'at the Authors' Club dinner, Mr. Edgar Seligman, amateur champion fencer of England, stated that a diminutive bullfighter known as Minuto had on one occasion, with a companion, to kill six bulls. Minuto's three were small bulls. His friend was injured by the first 'bull. The big bulls towered over Minuto, who asked for a chair and, standing upon it, with his short sword killed the six. afterwards Mr. Seligman invited Minuto to a row in a small boat. Minuto stood aghast. "Would- you have mc risk my life?" he said. "I have a wife and child to support." (Laughter.) MILD OATH. Mrs- Hettie Green talked cheerily in New York the other day: — "Nowadays," she said, "people complain that I dress too plainly, but when I was a girl they complained that I was too elegantly dressed. I was a Quaker in my girlhoo,d, you know, and that is the best religion. "How scrupulous the Quakers are! I remember a quarrel between two little Quaker brothers. At the height of this quarrel, the older brother, exasperated beyond endurance, seized the youngeT by the shoulders, shook him, and hissed: "'Thee little you, thee!' "Then the enormity of his words overcame him, and he added earnestly:— " 'Please, don't tell mother I swore.'" TABLE MANNERS. Alfred Gwynne VartderbUt, dressed after the best English manner in a black, tight, long-tailed morning ceat, dark trousers, grey-topped boots, and a silk hat worn at a rakish backward angle, discussed at the Horse Show his project of living part of the time abroad. "Why shouldn't one live a lot abroad?" he said. "They are not so bad over there. In dress, in books, in plays, in music—really, you know, in nearly everything they are not so bad. "I fear we underrate them. I fear we are all too prone to regard the foreigner as he is regarded in the story of Count Sans Terre. "'Why, count,' cried a friend, 'look at your face. Such rapier cuts. Don't you know that duelling is going out of fashion ?' "'I have not been duelling,' growled the count. 'It's my American wife. She makes mc eat with a fork.'"—"Detroit Free Press." PROFITABLE BLACK ETE. James Gordon Bennett had a way of appearing in the composing rooms of the "New York Herald" at the most unexpected times, and, as his visits often resulted m a general "sha&e up" of the working forces of the paper, they were awaited with fear and trembling by employees. On one of these occasions one of the pressmen, an excellent workman who had been there under the elder Bennett, but was sometimes guilty of a lapse from sobriety, had a black' eye, and was in a quandary as to what excuse he should offer if Mr. Bennett should comment upon it. By a sadden inspiration he seized an ink-roller and daubed some ink on his face, completely covering the discoloration. Presently Mr. Bennett came into the press room, and, with the foreman, Mr. Hays, went through the room, •commenting on every detail and looking very sharply at every -workman. When about to leave he suddenly pointed to the inky pressman and said, "Mr. Hays, what is that man's name?" The man quaked in his shoes-until Mr. Bennett said, slowly, "I want you to give that man three dollars a week more wages. He is the only man in the room jrho looks as if he; had -been -working."