ANECDOTES AND STORIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 76, 29 March 1924, Page 18

ANECDOTES AND STORIES.

AMERICAN COMMENT. The Bolshevist decision to give the new name "Leningrad" to the city which Peter the Great created as Russia's doorway opening into the west, was discussed in the presence of an American visitor. Much to the point was his dr3' comment: "Ah, well! There's more than one Hell Gate in my own country." SAT ON HIS CORONET. A mishap to the great Lord Cromer'a coronet at the coronation of King Edward had dire consequences. He had apparently, in a fit of abstraction, sat on it. This elongated the coronet so much that during the ceremony it wobbled about on the top of his head in a most ludicrous way. BELLE OF THE FUNERAL. One of the best narrators of Irish stories is Lord Carson, who always tells them with the gravest face. One of his best is an Irish -'wake" story. A pretty girl -was invited to the funeral of a friend. When it was over, she was telhow much she enjoyed it. "Sure, it was grand," she said. "They put mc in the second coach with the brother of the corpse, and 1 was the belle of the funeral." NO DIPLOMATIST. Sir Esnie Howard, the new British Ambassador to the United States, "has a jolly family of boys, and the eldest one, when quite young, was taken to visit the late Pope Pius X. The Pontiff, taking him on his knee, asked him what he liked best in Rome of all the wonderful things he had seen. "The delightful youth promptly answered, 'The statue of Garibaldi.' (He had not yet learned diplomacy from his father!)" DANCING BY DEPUTY. Dr. Frederick G. Banting, of Toronto, co-discoverer with Dr. MeLeod of the insulin treatment for diabetes, said, on a recent visit to New York: ''Dancing is all right, but I think you carry it too far here. You dance in the morning and in the afternoon, and you dance all night. You remind mc of a Chinese nobleman who attended a ball in Canton that was given by the officers of an American ship. The night was hot, and the nobleman looked on at the strenuous exercise for a time, and then he laid his hand on the arms of one of his hosts and said softly: "'Why don't you let your servants do this for you?'" ORIGIN OF SPOONERISMS. About twenty years aj?o, "writes 8. correspondent, I was lunching at Oxford with a cousin who had that moment come from one of Spooner's lectures. Ho told mc that, in the middle of a singularly long and fluent sentence, the loefurer suddenly paused, and remarked: "I shalMiave to be very c-ire-ful, or I shall be saying one of those silly things. You know what I mean. But Burely Spoonerisms wer3 fashionable in Oxford long before Spooner arrived to give them a name. For in "Mr. Verdant Green" (Part 11., chapter 9) we find the hero proclaiming lumseli as "grattered and flattified" at being a=ked to propose the health of the ladies who "have joytened our eye" at the Christmas party. A FERVENT PRAYER. Hobart Bosworth, the motion picture =tar has an unlimited number of afterdinner anecdotes. One of them concerns the late Maurice Barrymore. The famous actor had just returned from a long tour on the road, and John Drew, h.:e brother-in-law, called to gTeet him. In honour of the occasion, Mr. Barrymore'e three children, the now famous trio, John, Ethel, and Lionel, were allowed to sit up with their father. Finally bedtime arrived. "Let the kiddies say their prayers at their father's knee" solemnly suggested Mr. Barrymore. "I declare, Barry, this display of paternal affection is deeply touching," commented Mr. Drew, as the children filed over to their father. He soon had hia punishment, and from a most unexpected source. Ethel, the oldest, was first, and Lionel followed. Then came John, who was hardly past the toddling age. "Now I lay mc down to sleep" he prayed and added "and please, God, make Uncle John ft good actor." THE LAIRD'S WEE SPOT. Rational Secretary 3. C. Hinckle* of tie Association Against the Pγoh b'.tioi Amendment, said, in an after-dinner address in Washington: The way prohibitionists go on you'd think it was impossible to take a glass of claret with your luncheon without getting as drunk as a Scotch laird. A Scotch laird to get drunk every Saturday night. Tiien with his servant, Saunders, also very drunk, he -would mount his horse and set off for his castle. While fording the

stream one night the laird fell into the water. Hβ got to his feet and sputtered: "Saunders, mon, something ieli off. Did ye noo hear the splas»V" "Thot I did," admitted Saunders, and he cLmbed into the water up to his waUt. Of course he fotmd his master. ,r \Vhy. laird, it's yourself," lie said. "No, no, Saunders," insisted the laird stoutly. "-It can't be mc, for here I am." Sauudera helped the laird to mount again, but in the darkness faced him the wrong way round. "Thank ye, mon, now give mc the reins." Saunders fumbled around the corse's rear and finally got hi.ld of its tail, and cried in a shocked voice: "Laird, laird, it was the nag-s head that fell off. There's nothing left but the inane." WHY ADVERTISE? One of Bruce Barton's advertising stories runs: A member of my professi n, an advertising man, was in the employ of a circus. It was his function to precede the circus into various com munities, call at the newspaper oillces and make 6ure that the notices Woii.d be flattering, put up on the fence posU and barns pictures of the bearded lady and the mandating snakes and finally to get into touch with the proprietor of some store and contract with him for space on either side of the elephant to be u=ed fur advertising in the parade. Coming to a cross-roads town one time, he found there was only one store. "Why should 1 advertise?" said the proprietor. "I have been here twenty years. There isn't a man, woman or child in these parts that does not know where I am arid what I sell and h..w I do business/ Ti.e advertising man answered very promptly, because in our business if we hesitate we are lost. "\\~hat is that building across the street;' That is the Metliodist Episcopal church." "How long has it been there' ,, "0 s I don't know; ceventy-five years pr'bably." "And yet," * a id the advertising man, "they ring the church boll every Sunday morning."