Notes

New Zealand Tablet, 24 March 1910, Page 462

Notes

The Irony of Circumstance Punch's chief cartoon the week after the elections depicted Mr. Redmond as sovereign at "Westminster, and the inscription ran thus: —Mr. John Redmond: 'Well, if I can't rule in Dublin, I can here!' Parliamentary Wit lan Malcolm, in a gossipy article on the House of Commons in the current number of the Cornhill Magazine, gives some passable specimens of Parliamentary wit. They include the following 'good thing' from Mr. Laboucheve, uttered, when Mr. Gladstone . had scored, a victory in debate

over his somewhat erratic supporter. Said the rather exasperated «Labby,' 'Oh, none of us mind the fact that the G.O.M. has his sleeve full of unexpected trump cards, but we do object to his thinking that the Almighty put them there.' * : ■" "■' - The writer relates how a Canadian, who was a Liberal and a Free Trader, scored off a man in the crowd at a public meeting: , - Man: 'Are you a foreigner ? V Speaker : No, why do you ask Man: ' Because you speak through your nose.' Speaker If you get Tariff Reform you will have to pay through yours.' Man: 'You are a double-faced man, sir.' , Speaker: ' You can't be, or you would not wear that one outside.' The Virtue in a Good Mistake Someone has said that the man who never makes a mistake never makes anything. The Rev. P. J. Mac Corry, Paulist Father, and noted lecturer and orator, is evidently of the same opinion, and as principal speaker at a patriotic function in Chicago the other day he expressed his views on the matter with characteristic terseness and vigor. Denouncing the spirit of ' graft' which is rampant in the land, he said: The science of government has been bedragged in the dust until it reeks of moral turpitude. Greed and graft have laid their filthy hands upon every branch of this government. We need a few men like Benjamin Franklin, your patron saint; like Abraham Lincoln or George Washington. We need half a dozen men with backbone like Theodore Roosevelt.' ' Roosevelt,' he continued, ' has made mistakeshe has made whoppers. But so has everybody who ever amounted to anything. If you have never made a whopper of a mistake I want you to carry it as a secret to your grave. There are some pin-headed, two-legged critics who haven't the brains to contribute to the world's history even one good, whole-souled mistake. The mistakes of thinking men have been stepping-stones in the world's progress.'