TONGUE-TRIPPINGS.

Mataura Ensign, Issue 828, 13 December 1900, Page 4

TONGUE-TRIPPINGS.

AN AMUSING COILECrriON. " Dagonet " has been holding a competition in slipß of the tongue, and his readers have sent in an amusing collection. The following ore sampieß : — ' CLERICAL SUPS. The cricketing clergyman who astonished his audience with " Here endeth the second innings." " I will be surety, &c, and if I bring him not, then let meblame the bear." ".The cock wept and Peter went out and crew bitterly." A clergyman leaving his parish" for Mb health, the curate referred to the fact from the pulpit, and said the whole parish would feel the loss of their " shoving leopard." A clergyman, addressing his congregation, meant to say, " Many of you will have a halfformed wißh in your heartß," but startled the assembly by saying, " Many of you will have a half-warmed fish in your hearts." THEATRICAL SLIPS. Mrs. Langtry is reported to have Baid to her stage lover, " Let us retire and seek a noi=cy coot." An actor at the Queen's, Manchester, turned, " Stand bock, my lord, and let the coffin pass," into " Stand back, my lord, and let the parßon cough." A popular actor-manager, in the excitement of a first night, informed an inquiring friend that the town of wbb " two miles as the fly crows." GENERAL SLIPS. A lady, Bhopping, informed her friend that she did not buy of the local tradespeople, as ahe found it " much cheaper to steal at the doors." A railway traveller rushed into the refreshment room at Rugby and asked the astonished barmaid for a " glass bun and a bath of milk." A young housemaid who had taken service in a family where the husband and wife were fiven to quarrelling, was horrified one day y being thus addressed by her mistress: " Mary, your master is lfl the drawing-room. Go and tight the ligr." - A Bishop walked into Messrs. Drew and Sons, Piccadilly Circus, and paralysed the ■ entire establishment by saying that he wanted a brandy hag to travel with, ; An Edinburgh professor, seeing tbat a number of students in his class wore asleep, exclaimed that he did not think it worth bis while to go on wasting his eloquence on a lot of beery wenches. A nervous', excited young actor once exclaimed. " Dare to haim one -head ot her hair, and the last moment Bhall be your next!" A young officer drilling some Reserves at . Aldershot, and over-anxious not to make a mistake," gave out, " And now • you take seven partridges ftom your couch." The late. Charles' Calvert was playing '* Henry V. " at the Prince's Theatre, Manchester, and he had to say to one of his old Boldiers that instead of going, to battle bo should have " a good soft pillow for tbat good white head; what he did say was " a good white pillow for thnt good Boft head." A curate preaching on Jonah and the whale let fall the following sentence: — " And Jonah, as you know, my brethren, lay three nights in the welly of the bale." A well-known actor in one of his speeches intended to say, •■ Koyul bold Cajsar," but in his excitement , said instead, " Boiled rolled Ctesar, I present thee with thy sword, " Several years ago, at the Earl's Court Exhibition, tbe well-known orchestra of tho Grenadiers' bond was playing a popular waltz. A German gentleman asked a neighbour, after referring to his programme, if that was the " Mabel " waltz that was being performed. Receiving a reply in the affirmative, he exclaimed, " Ach ! den dat must be de gompoaer, God Damfrey himaelluf !" He was playing the Captain in " Dick ■\Vhittington.'* In one scene he was to introduce himself to the Emperor. He bowed and exclaimed, " I am the Shiptain of the Cap !"• Then, quickly correcting himself, said, " I mean I am the bhaptain of the Kip 1" Again, in an instant, he cried :" I should have said the Kip tain of the Shap !" At a concert two artistes could not appear. One had lost his luggage on his journey hither, the other hod injured her throat with a fish bone. The norvous manager said to his audience : " Ladies and gentlemen,— l regret to announce tho two principal'vocalists cannot appear, as Mr. L haß lost Ins tish-brme, and Miss B has swallowed her luggage !" A gentleman skating seeing something glitter on the ice turned back, looked, aud said. " It is only a glutton from above." A gentleman at a penny reading was speaking a few words on the subject of "Bread," and during the evening he held up a small loaf, evidently very old, and greatly astonished the audience by saying, "I can assure you this loaf was born the year my mother was baked. " A clergyman announced, " The collection to-day is in aid of the college for the dem and dutf." Instantly correecting himself, -he said, " I mean duff and dem."