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New Zealand Herald, Volume V, Issue 1434, 22 June 1868, Page 4

Old Jokes.—There is scarcely a modern illustration of witty or humorous Irish simplicity which is not, at least, as old as the Platonio philosopher of Alexandria, Hierocles, who lived five centuries before tho Christian era. At that early period men laughed at the simpleton who resolve d never to go into the water until ho had learned to swim; or at him who wished himself as speechless as tho sick man from whom he could obtain no reply, in order that he might return the invalid's incivility: or at that other who attempted to keep his horse alive without food, and who failed just at the last luoment of succeßs by the obstinate brute dying. Greeks laughed long before Irishmen at their respectively alleged fellow countrymen who carried a brick about as a sample of the house he had to sell. The Hibernian who shut his eyes before a looking-glass, that he might see how he looked when he was asleep : who bought a crow to test the truth of the assertion that the bird lived a couple of centuries; who, in a shipwreck clung to an anchor, to save himself from' drowning; and who remarked to u friend who readenied the asserted fact of his reported death, that the fact had been vouched for by one who was more worthy of credit than he who denied it—that Hibernian is an old Greek in modern guise, and that Greek, an in the story of Amphitryon, is believed to be indebtod to a Hindoo predecessor, who may probably turn and " Chin-chin" to tho original I Inventor of the story in Fekin ! '