" Good Resolutions " and What Came of Them.

Otago Witness, Issue 1639, 21 April 1883, Page 27

" Good Resolutions " and What Came of Them.

One fine evening in the last century the poefc Chapelie and a French duke of his acquaintance supped together, and having tarried long ot the wine, naturally began to grow moral, to lament the brevity of this life, and to insist that nothing was more desirable than relitfion, which alone could purchase for them a happy hereafter. Unfortunately tho prospect of devoting a whole lifetime to well-doing, seemed somewhat unattractive, and both began to envy the early martyrs who had gained a blissful immortality by a brief moment of suffering, and, having had another bottle, they resolved with fervent tears to go to Turkey and earn the palms of martyrdom.

" We will be taken while preaching," said the poet, "and led before the Pasha, , who will command us to abjure our faith. I will reply firmly ;so will Your Grate ; I will be impaled ; so will Your Grace, and there will be, both of us in Paradise." " "

" Hold on," exclaimed his companion ; "as a Marshal of France, duke, and peer, it will be my place to speak to the Pasha, be impaled and go to heaven first— not a base-born clod like you !"

" What do I care if you are a Marshal of France, duke, and peer ?" screamed the indignant poet, snapping his fingers under His Grace's nose.

Then the duke threw his plate at the poet, and the poet fell upon the duke, and the table upon both of them, and there was a rare scene when they were separated and undertook to explain what they had been fighting about.