SPORTING REPARTEE.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XIV, Issue 847, 31 May 1906, Page 22

SPORTING REPARTEE.

It is doubtful, said a biographer, if any repartee ever surpassed in delicacy the reply made by an East Indian servant of the late Lord Dufferin when he was Viceroy of India. “Well, what sort of sport has Lord had?” said the Viceroy one day to his shikaree, or sporting servant, who had attended a young English lord on a shooting excursion. “Oh,” replied the scrupulously polite Hindoo, “the young sahib shot divinely, but Providence was very merciful to the birds !” This story calls to mind one told by the writer of some reminiscences of. Sydney Smith. On; one-occasion-the celebrated physician, Sir Henry Holland, .told the witty divine that he. had failed - to . kill either one of a brace of pheasants . that had risen within easy range near Smith’s house. . “Why,did you pot prescribe for.them?” came the quick reply. Germany is ahead in novelties of a charitable nature. In the town of Haschmann prizes are offered yearly for the men who will marry the ugliest and most crippled women, and for the women over 40 years who have been jilted at least twice. The money was left by a big financier, who, realising that beauty is an attraction hard to overcome, made a provision in his will that out of the income of the fund not less than £l6 shall go with the ugliest girl in any year, and the cripple shall receive £l2. The poor women over 40 who have been jilted by a lover receive, when the funds permit, £lO each; but the trustee can vary ths amount, and, at his discretion, offer a larger prize to some one who will marry an unusually ugly girl, or one to whom nature has been specially unkind.

Mark Twain told the following story at dinner in New York. “There are in the world,” he said, “a good many men like Jonathan Scarborough, of Hannibal. Scarborough was one of those men with nothing evil absolutely known against them, who are yet looked on, and no doubt justly, with suspicion. It was thought of Scarborough that for a poor man he ate too much chicken. And one day the blow fell. He was arrested for chic-ken-stealing. A witness was called to testify to Scarborough’s character. ‘Did you ever know this man to steal poultry?’ said the lawyer for the defence. ‘No, I never did,’ said the witness ; ‘but this is iyhat I do know. If I was a chicken and Jonathan Scarborough was about, I’d roost high!’ ”