Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 December 1898 — ANECDOTE AND INCIDENT [ARTICLE]

ANECDOTE AND INCIDENT

Two cannle_Seots, walking to Auchtermuchty, saw an uncouth figure standing In a distant field. After gazing Intently one said: “It's never moving, so it’s a tatta (potato) bogle” (scarecrow. “It’s no a tatta bogle,” replied the other; “it’s a man working by the day.” David Hume, the historian, once made an offer of marriage to a lady who refused him, but whose friends shortly afterward conveyed to him the Intelligence that she had changed her mind. “So have I,” replied David, laconically, “so have I.” And he lived and died in single blessedness. George IV. became convinced, by dint of long imagining and saying so, that he had led the Life Guards at Waterloo. “Did. I not, Arthur?” he said, at a court dinner, to the Duke of Wellington. Most men would have been embarrassed. Not so the Iron Duke. He simply answered: “I have often heard your Majesty say so.” Bob Ingersoll was recently talking with an old colored woman in Washington on religious matters. “Do you really believe, aunty,” said he, “that people are made of dust?” “Yes, sah; de Bible say dey Is, and I believe it.” “But what is done In wet weather, when there’s nothing but mud?” “Den I s'pects dey make infidels and sich truck.” The distinction between the parish rector and the curate in the old days Is illustrated by a story of an old rector. Returning to his parish after his autumn holiday, and noticing a woman at her cottage door with her baby in her arms, he asked: “Has that child been baptized?” “Well, sir,” replied the courtesylng mother, “I shouldn’t like to say as much as that, but your young man came and did what he could.” Two Irish laborers, old-time friends, met on the street in San Francisco recently, and after a cordial hand-shake one of them inquired: “An’ where have yees be’n, Moike?” “Workin’ on the farrums in Southern California,” was the reply, “and O’im moighty glad ter git back.” “What happened yees thare?” was the next inquiry. “Th’ weather. It was too doombed hot. Why, whin Oi was a-workin’ near Frisno th’ t’ermom'ter marked wan hundred an’ sixteen dagrals in th’ shade.” “Is that so? Will, be bivens, they didn't make yees worruk in th’ shade, did they?” Lady Blessington, who was accorded the name of “the gorgeous,” when Prince Louis Napoleon, the last emperor of the French, was an exile in London, was remarkably courteous to him, extending her hospitality in the most lavish way. After his accession to the throne of France she was in Paris for a season, and somewhat naturally looked forward to an invitation to the Tuileries. Time passed and none came. But at a sumptuous ball given elsewhere the emperor passed in the full splendor of his triumph. Catching sight of his benefactress, he smiled and asked: “Ah, Lady Blessington! You remain in Paris for a time?” “Yes, sire,” said she; “and you?” When Mark Twain was first introduced to Gen. Grant the later shook hands in a perfuctory manner and immediately relapsed into his customary atltude of reticence, says the Ladies’ Home Journal. There was an awkward pause fit grew longer and longer as the humorist tried to think of something bright to say. Finally, as if in sheer desperation, Twain looked up, with an assumed air of great timidity, and said: “Mr. President, I—l feel a little bit embarrassed. Do you?” The President could not help smiling, and Mark took advantage of the chance the incident presented to give place to others. Ten years later, when statesman and humorist met again, Gen. Grant, with a twinkle in his eye, said, before Twain had the chance to utter a word: “Mr. Clemens, I don’t feel at all embarrassed. Do you?” The captain of a vessel which was bringing to America, in the fall of 1796, a mysterious passenger who had come aboard at Hamburg, watched the latter so closely that at last the passenger said one day. “Sir, this is not the first occasion upon which I have observed the attentive scrutiny you bestow upon me. May I inquire the reason?” “Sir,” responded the candid captain, “you took passage on my ship as a Dane; I don’t believe you’re anything of the kind.” The passenger smiled; the smile was full of perspicacity and confidence, and was followed with: “Pray tell me, then, what you believe me to be?” At this question Capt. Ewing fidgeted, hesitated, and finally blurted out: “Well, to be honest, I think you are a gambler. You’ve well-nigh ruined yourself at home, and are now coming to fleece the fools you’ll find on shore.” The young man’s smile broadened; the next minute he turned grave again, lowered his voice, and replied: “Captain Ewing, as you have studied me during this voyage, so I have studied you. I have come to the conclusion that you are a man to be trusted. I am Louis Philippe, Due d’Orleans,. eldest son of that Louis Philippe d’Orleans who was slain by the guillotine on the seventh of November, almost three years ago.”