ANECDOTES AND STORIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 7, 9 January 1926, Page 22

ANECDOTES AND STORIES.

HIS MISTAKE. Sydney Smith, preaching a charity sermon, frequently repeated the assertion that of aU the nations Englishmen were most distinguished for generosity and love of their species. The collection happened to be inferior to his expectations, whereupon he said that he had evidently made a great mistake—that his expression should have been that they were distinguished for the love of their specie. ADVICE GRATIS. Lord Balfour, who is noted for the! ' excellent care he takes of his money,. ! tells the story of a beggar who accosted ; him in Spain with the formula, In : HeaVen's name, give mc alms.' Lord' ; Balfour, who was not in the best of ! humours, due to having been approached ' by a successive stream of professional i 1 beggars, said, "Aren't you ashamed to | I beg —a strong, healthy man like you? 'Go and get a job." The beggar showed ■ no resentment, but doffed his tattered 1 hat, bowed profoundly, and remarked ' in a matter-of-fact tone, "Senor, I asked you for alms, not advice." THE VIOLET. I It is true that the hatred G.B.S. has ' for George Bernard Shaw is negligible. ' It is also true that he recently went to , the United States incognito, very few . cablegrams, indeed, being sent during the six weeks preceding his departure from , ! England in the Gigantic. He escaped, , indeed, into the country where fewer I than 909 cars pass a minute, and attired '■_ in modest plus fours, he tramped the road. At the corner of a road a gentleI man silently overtook him and without : a word gazed inquiringly in his face. ' "You are right 1" said G.B.S. "It is II" , A POOR IMITATION. ! Charlie Chaplin during his visit to ' London naturally took a great interest >in the city in which he was born. In ■ . particular, he wandered much about the ; i East End, and in Whitechapel he came . across a little group of street boys I ovidently greatly amused at something. He stopped and found that one of them in a hard-hitter hat and a cane was '_ doing a Chaplin stunt. Greatly interested, Charlie took the hat and cane [ from the boy and did his famous , shuffle. The boys regarded him with J little interest. "Y'ain't bo bad, j , guVnor," said the Chaplin imitator, , "but, stroof, y'ain't got the feet for it!" j I POLITICAL REPARTEEFew members of the present House of, Commons have fought more fiercely con-, , tested elections than the present Home Secretary, Sir William Joynson-Hicks. '<, At one of his meetings—a particularly rowdy one — a certain individual not ■ over-gifted with good looks, went so far i as to accuse Mr. Joynson-Hicks, as he j then was, of being two-faced. "It is i pretty clear," retorted the future Home Secretary coolly, "that you are not two- j 1 faced." "Why ?" asked the man, taken! ' off his guard. "Because," came the' ' answer, "if you were you would have ' brought the other face here and left that 1 one at home." ; LABOUR AND REFRESHMENT. Not every post-prandial orator has ' the happy knack of holding his audience as interested as Mr. Chauncey M. Depew. It was one of the other sort that had been speaking for half an hour when the toastmaster, having noticed that a guest upon his right was snoring gently, tapped him lightly with his gavel. A second time the diner dozed, and again the hammer brought him back to 'consciousness. Again the snoring became audible, and the toastmaster, losing patience, plied the gavel to more '■ purpose. "Go on," was the sleepy answer, "hit mc again; I can still hear him." HE LACKED KNOWLEDGE. It was a Scottish minister's second Sunday in his newly-appointed parish, and he had reason to complain about the meagre collection. "Mon," replied one of the elders, "they are stingy, vera stingy But" —and he came closer and became more confidential —"the auld meenister, he put three or j four saxpences in the plate hissel', just to gie them a start. Of course he took the saxpences awa' 'with him afterwards." The new minister tried the same plan, but the following Sunday was a repetition of the others, a dismal failure. The entire collection was not only small, but j to his great consternation, his own coins were missing. I "Ye may be a better preacher than the auld meenister," exclaimed the elder, "but if you had half the. knowledge of the world an' o' yer am flock in particular, ye'd ha' done what he did an' glued the saxpences to the plate!" A PREACHER'S PROPOSAL. What i 3 believed to be. the most cautious marriage proposal on record was made by Lorenzo Dow, a rovinor preacher of old western prairie days. Restless and eager, he continually travelled, and was loath to assume any obligation that would hold him to] one spot. His proposal of marriage, ' made in the form of a letter, ran as follows: "If I am preserved, about a year and a half from now I am in hopes of seeing this northern country again; and jf during this time you live and remain single, and find no one that you i like better than you do mc, and would be , willing to give mc up twelve months I , out of thirteen, or three years out of four, ( to travel, and that in foreign lands, and ; never say, 'Do not go to your appoint- 1 _ ment,' etc. —for if you should stand in , the way I should pray God to remove , you, which I believa He would answer— ' fv d r I find no one that l like better . than I do you, perhaps something further , may be said on the subject."