ANECDOTES AND STORIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 299, 15 December 1923, Page 18

ANECDOTES AND STORIES.

MAKING THE BEST OF IT. Applicants for positions under a certain municipal government are required to undergo a physical examination. During the examination of one candidate the physician asked: "What did your grandfather die of?" The applicant looked nonplussed for a moment, and finally admitted that he did not remember, but hastened to add, "But I know that it was nothing serious." RIVALS. A local preacher attempted an exposition of a rather difficult passage in one' of St. Paul's Epistles. He labonred at it for some time while his congregation looked at him with a bored expression Jon their faces. "Perhaps some of you J don't agree with mc," he said at lnegth, ! in a challenging tone, "and I admit if you don't, you are not alone. I've consulted Adam Clarke, and he's agin mc. ; I've looked up Benson's Commentary, and he's agin mc. I turned to Barnes' Notes this morning, and he's agin mc. But what of that? I'm agin them." THE PAUPER'S FOOTMAN. There is a suggestion that H.R.H. tire Prince of Wales is distinctly literary, and might have become a novelist if he had had to make a living. This may be shown by a story he invented at the tender age of nine years. "Once upon a time there was an old couple who lived in a little cottage on the edge of a lonely moor. They were poor, oh! so poor, they hadn't had anything to eat for a day and a half. The man heard his wife moaning. 'What's the 1 matter with you, my dear?' he asked. 'I'm so hungry,' she replied. 'I hardly know what to do.' "Very well, , said her husband, 'I'll see to it.' So he got up, rang the bell for the footman, and when he came in ordered him immediately to bring a plate of bread-and-butter." YOtTXG TENNYSON. | The late Charles Brookfield was described as "a great actor of email parts," Brookfield's mother, who was a friend of Thackeray, told him of the first visit ipaid by Tennyson, then quite a young man, to her house. Mrs. Brookfield's father, a courtly old gentleman with a very bald head, was in the library. "Immediately on entering the library I in which my grandfather was sitting, the long-haired young poet marched up to him, and, without any warning, laid his palm upon the old gentleman's cranium, ' and, after gazing into his face for a few seconds with knitted brows, suddenly rolled forth in rugged Lincolnshire accents: Tou must have done a great many foolish things in your life, with this great bump of benevolence of yours!' In those days the elderly were not used to being patronised by the young, and I believe my grandfather was furious. THE DEACON'S WIFE. Enoch Mellor was a well-known preacher. He was preaching or lecturing some considerable distance from his home. After the service he accompanied one of the deacons to his house for supper. The deacon was very solicitous that Mr. Mellor would stay for the night. Mellor was quite ready to stay, but he noticed that the deacon's wife manifested no enthusiasm on the point. The deacon, however, was so pressing that he at last consented. The deacon's wife went upstairs to fetch the Bible, and Mellor went out into the hall to get his slippers out of his bag. Whilst sitting on a hall chair unlacing his boots, Mrs. 'Deacon,' descending the stairs with the Bible, saw a bald head which she took to be her husband's. So lifting the Bible she brought it down with a resounding smack on his bald pate. 'There, take that,' she said, 'for inviting him to stay the night.'" OBEYING ORDERS. Dr. Joseph Wolff, an expert in Oriental languages, was an extraordinary character. He was said to have contracted careless habits during his travels, which had made him lazy about changing his linen, with the result that snowy expanse of shirt front rarely graced his breast. On one occasion, the doctor, being about to start on a visit to a country house at which he was to be the lion of the party, his wife, who was not accompanying him, determined that this once at least he should do her honour. The visit was to last three days, and so carefully packing three spotless 6hirts in his bag, she bade him at their adieu take particular care to don one of these shirts regularly every evening. The three days passed and her husband returned. '"I hope you did as I told you!' said she. ."Of course I did, my dear,' was the reply. 'I put on a clean shirt every evening, one on the top of the other. I am wearing all four now!" , PAT AND MIKE IN THE WAR. "For many years an English political celebrity has been accustomed in the autumn to repair to a busy little port on the west coast in search of sea fishing. He has regularly employed a hitherto anxiously looking forward to his arrival. On this last visit he was amazed to find the service of his old companion unavailable. " 'I am too busy,' was the response to his remonstrance. 'Got another job' "'What is it?' asked the Englishman After a pause, Pat replied: " 'Well, if you must know, the German Government pay mc five pound a week tor laying mines outside the port' "The Englishman was equally amazed and indignant. He pointed out the enormity of the crime of an Irishman selling himself to a foreign enemy with whom thousands of his fellow-countrv-m . e L r - e <T^ n » Dga - ged in fierce druggie. TVhisht,' sa.d Pat, a humorous smile up his rugged countenance 'The English Government pay mc hrnt>,» Mif c six pounds a week L Uking^hem RIGHT KIND OF OIK. Hocking, the novelist, is a cler<rv man and f o l lowed the cal , atTSsly before he was a novelist He tells 'I story of a man who had turned Tver a new leaf and joined the Church late in 1 fe. He was intensely in earnest and profoundly ignorant. He loved prayer meetmgs and never missed an opp or . "Brc % ° if™ 1 * VOiCe to his FlingsBroad is the way," he cried out on one occasmn. "Oh, Lord, there was a t°me when it weren't near broad enough for mc and I used to find myself head over heels in the dyke." On another" occasion he prayed- "Lord bless the rising generation, fhou knows when I was a lad there weren't no risinc generation." But the gem for originality was, I think the following. (I = as n % present on the occasion.) "Stir us up'" he cried, with uplifted hands "We've been setting so long at ease in Zion that we've got R tiff in the. ji nt « We want ihn', we do. Oh Lord 'ile ~s with the Isle of Patmos.' •