“ LABBY” STORIES.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LX, Issue 143766, 15 April 1912, Page 3

“ LABBY” STORIES.

A writer in Truth tells some interesting stories about the. late Mr. Labouchere:— • , ,

‘ ‘For many years it was his habit to drop in at Truth office on a Monday or Tuesday morning and order lunch. The meal usually consisted of a chop just warmed through. He ate it without bread, salt, pepper, or drink of any kind, and smoking a cigarette all the time. X have seen him with the chop in one hand and the cigarette in the other, pausing to crack some joke. Voulos, who had to sib on the other side of tho table while he was ■ refreshing himself, used to be- horribly upset by the performance. “But the climax was reached when Lnbbv, at the conclusion of the repast, took out his teeth and laid them beside him on tho table while he corrected his proofs. Youles came into my room one day after this had happened on the pretence of business. ‘I can’t sit there any longer,’ lie said, ‘with those confounded teeth grinning.at me. They get on my nerves.’ . , “As soon as he felt the slightest inconvenience from his teeth ho had them out and set to work on them with the first implement that came to hand. _ I have seen him prodding them about with tho office scissors or battering them with a ruler. ‘Have you got a hammer in "the office, Voules?’ he inquired one day, and, theoarotakcr having produced one, he destroyed about fifty pounds’ worth of dentist’s work, in a few minutes. People tell you that some of Dickens’ characters’ are overdrawn and impossible.’ There is no character in all Dickens’ collection so full of apparently, impossible comic extravagance as was Henry Labouohere in real life.”