CURIOUS SLIPS

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 6871, 15 July 1909, Page 2

CURIOUS SLIPS

I In a debate on Disestablishment Gladstone made a curious slip. “ When an Englishman wants to get married, to whom Goes he got To the parish priest. When he wants his child baptised, to whom does he go? To the parish priest. When he wants to got buried, to whom doe, he go?" The House dissolved in laughter, and did not wait tor an answer, and the Speaker good-humouredly added: “As 1 was contrasting tho linglish Church with the Irish, a bull is oeihaps excusable." On a par with this story must bo placed that of the clergyman who lamented the deplorable condition of bu.uub Christian Englishmen "living without Christian burial." Hut bt. Stephen s nas produced nothing quite as rich and rare as this extract irom a peiocation given in the Cape Colony legislature: "Such, Mr Speaker, wastne state ol insecurity upon the eastern frontier that 1 and otner settlers have often gone to our daily avocations leaving our peaceful houiesteaus, our happy wives, our smiling children, to return in the evening to hud our houses burned over our heads, our wive# widows, and our children fatherless." Miraculous, indeed, must have been the good fortune of th« orator in being snared to tell the tale.—h'rom “Bulls," by Wilbur T. Dry, in, the “Windsor Magazine.”