LORD DEWAR’S WIT.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3380, 27 June 1927, Page 8

LORD DEWAR’S WIT.

Lord Dewar delivered another of his delightful speeches packed with humorous epigrams and witty stories when he replied to the toast of “The Guests’’ at the dinner in London recently of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours. He began with a little advice to after-dinner speakers: “Never open your mouth,” he said “until you are absolutely certain your brain is going to work, and then bo sure you know more of your subject than your audience. If I were to attempt to discuss art with this company J would make as much headway as a woodpecker does on an iron telegraph post. Artists in their pictures uplift the beautiful so that all can sec and admire,” he continued. “In church people uplift the mindin the beauty parlour they uplift the face. Some men fail to see beauty in empty bottles and empty stockings.”

Lord Dewar related how “our Poet Laureate when visiting New York refused to give the reporters an interview. The headline in the papers next morning was ‘The King’s canary won’t chirp. ’ ” . Other “Dewarisms” were:

“Motor cars have shown thousands of people in this country how to live beyond their means and how to exterminate the horsefly.” “There is nothing that frightens a horse so much to-day as to see another horse on the road.”

“The slowest motion picture to-day is represented by the taxi-driver undressing himself endeavouring to find change. ’ ’

“Marriage is a committee of two with power to acid to their numbers.” “Marriage is a great institution for those who arc anxious to live in an institution. ’ ’

“I claim,” Lord Dewar said later, “to be an amateur artist, although I may not look like one. When I look at my work I often think of the amateur artist who asked a friend to give his opinion. The subject was a cow in a meadow. The friend said, ‘The ship seems all right, but I think you have made the sea just a little bit too green.’ ”

Lord Dewar concluded with a story against his own countrymen, “There was,” he said, “an Englishman who got lost on a Scotch moor. A search party went out and a voice came through the fog, ‘Hallo ! Hallo ! I’m lost, I’m lost!’ Then another voice was heard to say, ‘Ayre, a’m bearin’ ye, but what’s the reward for findin’ ye?’ ”