READY WIT.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume X, Issue 1, 7 January 1893, Page 15

READY WIT.

The faculty of being equal to the occasion is a valuable one to its possessor. A young clergyman attended a small party one evening. After participating in several games, one of the young ladies asked if he would say yes to any question he was asked. • I will,' he replied. Then and theie the mischievous girls commenced to try and corner him, but were unsuccessful. At last one, more bold than the rest, dropped on her knees before him and said, * Will you marry me?’ "Oh, yes ; but where is the bridegroom ?’ was the ready answer. Actors often find themselves in positions wheie ready wit saves them from serious embarrassment. At a provincial theatre, the cur tain, when lowered at the end of an act, did not drop the whole length, but remained strqieuded half-way. On the stage lay stretched a solitary dead man. As all endeavours to lower the curtain failed the corpse at length got up, and said in sepulchral tones, •No rest in the grave,’ and dragged the curtain to the floor. But the youngest person on record who pos sesses the ready wit which turns defeat into victory is a child of five living in the pine woods of Florida. Rehearsal being in progress for a Sunday-school concert, her teacher entrusted her with the recitation of a verse The important day came : the church was crowded, and the little girl felt considerably fluttered. When at last she mounted the platform the sea of faces turned expectantly towards her, drove from her mind the verse which she knew so well that sue had been saying it in her sleep. But she was not the child to give way to defeat without a struggle. If she could not think of that verse she could of another, and so while the congregation was hushed to catch the first syllable from her faltering lips, she piped up in a shrill treble :— * Needles ami pin*. Needles and pin*. When you get married the trouble begins. In one respect, at least, her recitation was the success of the afternoon.