RETORTS AND THRUSTS

Opunake Times, 19 August 1932, Page 3

RETORTS AND THRUSTS

STORIES OF CELEBRITIES. LAMB'S MISERABLE WEATHER "Go to the d—1!" said Lord Thurlow when storming at his old valet. "Pray give me a character my lord," replied the fellow drily "People like, you know, to have characters from their acquaintance. '' Charles Bannister, leaving a coffee-house on a cold and windy night, said that he never saw such a wind. "Saw such a wind!" replied a friend. "What was it like?" "Like!" answered Charles "like to blow my hat off!" Dr. Mead, the celebrated physician, was assailed in a pamphlet by Dr. Woodward. The doctors met, and a fight with swords ensued. Mead disarmed his adversary and ordered him to beg for his life. "Never." said Woodward, "never, till I am your patient!" Lord North, who had a perfect antipathy to music, asked why he did not subscribe to the Ancient Concerts, was told that his brother, the Bishop of Winchester did. "Ay/' replied his lodrship, "if I was as deaf as my brother I would subscribe too."

Having to review some bulky memoirs of Lord Burleigh and his times, Lord Macaulay began his notice fVith ,the delicately satirical statement that the book consisted of two thousand closely printed quarto pages, that it occupied fifteen hundred inches cubic measure and that it weighed sixty pounds avoirdupois. When Sir Walter Scott was extending his garden at Abbotford, an old servant was becoming exasperated by digging some very stony ground. Sir Walter saw that the old man's feelings were rather ruffled, and said to hin, "That's grand soil you're working on," "Soil?" replied the gardener sarcastically, "A' think it's the riddlings o' creation." Charles Fox and his friend Mr. Hare both much incommoded by duns, were together in a house when, seeing shabby men about the door, they were afraid the} were bailiffs in search of one of them. Not knowing which was in danger, Fox opened the window and called to them, said, "Pray, gentlemen, arc you fox-hunting or hare-hunting?" The poet Piron was about to enter the drawing room of a man of rartk at the moment his hos was ushering in a titled frienc The latter politely drew back 1 permit Piron to pass. "Come on, your grace," said the master of the house, "he is only a poet.'' Piron immediately exclaimed, "Now that our respective qualities are known, I claim the privr kkge of my rank," and he entered BLre them, at a party in Bath, Quia ■Lsomethinof which caused of delight. A who was brilliancy of his |L"What a ■ that a be playthis Mordship ■yjuted m the fcageHss Krard ■ioble Bnade H with V' simi- ■ o H they ■vdrtuous Husband, Hho Biers.