STORIES OF A PARLIAMENTARY HUMORIST.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 580, 28 June 1913, Page 3

STORIES OF A PARLIAMENTARY HUMORIST.

♦ WHAT A PINT OF CHAMPAGNE DID. Sir Wilfrid's pet aversions were militarism and drink, and among the many stories toM in the biography Df him edited by the Right Hon. G. W. E. Russell, and published by Smith, Elder, and Co., is one that refers to Sir Andrew Clark, Mr. Gladstone's physician. It is; said that when he recommended a patient to drink wine, the latter expressed some surprise, saying ne thought Sir Andrew Clark was a temperance doctor, to which Sir Andrew Clark replied, "Oh, wiiu loes sometimes help you to g:t through work ; for instance, I h:ive often twenty letters to answer alter dinner, and a pint of champagne is a great help." "Indeed," said the patient, "docs the pint of champagna really help you to answer the twenty letters?". "No! no!" said Sir Andrew, "but when I've had a pint of champagne, I don't care a rap whether I answer them or not !" ' THE BISHOP'S "STARTLING STATEMENT." I Sir Wilfrid's speeches were always popular, for the simple reason that they were anecdotal. He usually forced home a point with a good story. He once told how Dr. Temple, when Bishop of London, went down to speak on Temperance at Exeter, and in illustrating his subject happened to say, "I never was drunk in my life." Whereupon the newspaper posters which came out the next morning contained the headline, "Startling statement by a Bishop." "In .1860," says Sir Wilfrid in one of his diaries, "I fell into matrimony. I entered the church alone, between a line of voluntesr soldiers, and came out of it through the same line along with, my wife. This recalls to one's recollection the text inscribed on the tomb of a deceased couple, 'Their warfare is accomplished.' Fortunately my wedding venture did not result in hostilities. . "There is sometimes a want of tact. A wife was once complaining to a clergyman of her husband's unsatisfactory conduct, when he said, 'You should heap coals of fire on his head.' To which she replied, 'Well, I tried boiling water, and that did no good.' " "D'YE KEN* JOHN PEEL ?" Here are two anecdotes which Sir Wilfrid was fond of relating. "Somebody asked Spurgeon whether a man who played the cornet could be a Christian. 'I don't know,' replied Spurgeon, 'but the man who lived next door couM not.' " Yet another one concerning Spurgeon relates how lie once asked all who wished to go to Heaven to stand itp, but a sailor kept his seat. Spurgeon asked him if he did not wish to go to heaven '! "Not with such a crew as this, "was the reply. In the day# ©i hi* youth Sir Wilfrid was very fom4 of hunting. As a matter of fact, )u bought the hounds which John Peel, of "D'ye ken John Peel ?" fame, had hunted and became Master of the Cumberland Foxhounds. And incidentally it might be mentioned that Sir Wilfrid settled the right reading ef the old song. "When the famous song of John Peel spread from its native Cumberland all over tbe foxhunting world, people accustomed to the traditional scarlet thougßt it impossible that a master of the hounds could hunted in a grey coat, and therefore altered 'His coat so grey' to 'His coat so gay.' But the emendatior was at once arbitrary a nd erroneous. Sir Wilfrid has placed it on record that "His grey coat is no more a myth than himself, for I well remember the long, - rough, grey garment which almost came down to his knees." TALL DOG STORIES. It was during these hunting days that Sir Wilfrid also became acquainted with a Cumberland squire whose improbable stories were a source of much amusement. This old squire was very fond of telling the story of a Vtvoritc steady old pointer. One day he lost the dog for a time and by and J»y, when looking for it, climbed over a wall, when up got a covey of partridges, and lo and behold, there was the pointer lying on its back, with all its legs in the air. This, he explained, was oecapsc the dog had tumbled on its back in getting over th« wall, and, just at that moment getting wind of the partridges, was too steady to alter the position in which it was found —. "I hardly know a story to match this," says Sir Wilfrid, "except thai of the man who said his dog could point game anywhere, anil that one day it stood stock still by the side of a man in Hyde Park, t'his somewhat puzzled him until he found out that the name of the man was Partridge." "JINGO." Apropos of the spirit of 'militarism which runs through the country at ,:imes, Sir Wilfrid mentions the ftii.owing : When in 1878 there seemed a posiaility of us going to war with Russia over the Eastern question, birth was given to the popular war song:— We doo't want to tight, but, by Jingo, if we do, We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too, which a friend at Sir Wilfrid paro died thus fie don't want to light, but, by Jingo, if we do, We'll get a shilling income-tax,, and % thundering licking too. —"Tit-Bits."