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A small bent old man with sunken cheeks got up and walking across the room leaned against the cigar case. "Did you ever hear this one?" he asked, looking about. Obviously no answer could be given and the bent old man launched into a vile pointless anecdote of a woman, a miner, and a mule, the crowd giving close attention and laughing uproariously when he had finished.
Pathos seems to us better than tragedy, anecdote than wit. Longfellow was and is, except in metropolitan centres, our favorite "classical" poet; the poetical corner and the daily poem of the newspapers represent what most of us like when we do go in for verse. The truth is that many of the intelligent in our population skip poetry in their reading just because it is poetry.
We were much diverted with this anecdote, which the teacher related in English so good, that we certainly could not have supposed him a native but for the colour of his face and the foreign accent in his tone.
Bob Sawyer; who, enlivened with the brandy, and the breakfast, and the talking, gradually ripened into a state of extreme facetiousness, and related with much glee an agreeable anecdote, about the removal of a tumour on some gentleman's head, which he illustrated by means of an oyster-knife and a half-quartern loaf, to the great edification of the assembled company.
We shall not answer for the truthfulness of this anecdote, although there is nothing improbable about it; for certain it is that these birds defend their nests with courage and fury, and we know of more than one instance of persons being severely wounded who made the attempt to rob them. The ospreys, as already stated, feed exclusively on fish.
But the whole of Napoleon's "Correspondence" refutes the anecdote. Besides, it was not Napoleon's habit to go into winter quarters in July, or to rest before he had defeated the enemy's main army. At Smolensk the question wore another aspect.
I need not detain the reader with the details of the capitulation of Ulm, which have already been published, but I may relate the following anecdote, which is not generally known. A French general passing before the ranks of his men said to them, "Well, comrades, we have prisoners enough here." "yes indeed," replied one of the soldiers, "we never saw so many . . . collected together before."
But what a tragedy the whole suggests, in its combination of gayety with grief, and in the thought of laughter that must be created at the cost of sighs, of merriment in which every grin has been purchased by a groan! An anecdote which we once read, always, when we recall it, deeply affects us.
Of her humble piety an anecdote is related, with great applause, by catholic writers. When the sovereigns of Castile were at confession, it was usual for the priest to kneel at the same time with themselves. The first time she attended this duty, after her elevation to the throne, she knelt; but the priest, Fernando de Talavera, quietly seated himself beside her.
They wish to measure wit with you, and expect an adroit, a brilliant, or a profound answer. Many narratives, doubtless, have suffered in the translation, since a promising anecdote sometimes heralds a flat speech. But Saadi's replies are seldom vulgar. His wit answers to the heart of the question, often quite over the scope of the inquirer.
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