Truly Polite.

Otago Witness, Issue 2373, 24 August 1899, Page 61

Truly Polite.

Many of us have heard of that polite Parisian cocher (driver) who, during a long afternoon in which he drove an English lady about the gay capital to see the sights, responded quite unruffled, and without bo much as a muscle twitching, to her constantlyrepeated orders to cochon (pig) drive here or there. Foreigners, indeed, receive our mistakes in. their language much more courteously than we receh c theirs in ours. Two English ladies

in Italy had this fact recently borne in upon I them with especial distinctness. ' In the morning their Italian teacher made a slip in her English, and in reply to an inquiry concerning the oddly-twinkling fire embers in her little brass stove, informed them that the fuel she employed was " small wigs." > They laughed heartily at the mistake, and 1 presently the teacher herself corrected it to ; "twigs," and was amiable enough to laugh also. j But that same day the two ladies went to ses tho homeless cats of the city fed in the cloisters of San Gallo, and were not sure that they had come at the right time. One of them turned to the custodian and inquired in Italian, as she supposed. "'When will the cats ; cat I '"' but what sho really asked was: "When shal) we eat the cats':'" " There is no systematic hour, signorina," he replied to this surprising query, in a manner as politely matter-of-course a.s if it were quite the custom there to serve kittens on toast to foreign ladies . Not a fiickoi of expression showed that he perceived the mistake. j Such a steady countenance in such oirI cumstances, they agreod when they discovered tho mistake themselves, was a rare feat of i courtesy.