Sir John Firebrace
There
is a good story of Sir John Firebrace or rather his family and friends. On the arrival to his house of a son and heir
there was naturally a great gathering together of female relatives and friends
all of whom vied with one another to obtain the first glimpse of the
darling. The nurses, however, found
these visits to be so detrimental to the healthy progress of the child that
they devised a cunning and wily scheme.
They obtained a monkey which they dressed up in baby toggery and placed
him in a berceaunette. This pseudo-infant the ladies were invited in shoals to
come and admire, and as the room was darkened – nominally, for the welfare of
the babe – many came and went without suspecting any treachery. One visitor, however, at last fairly raised a
guffaw among the watchers by crying out in tones of unsuppressed admiration,
“Bless the little creature, what a darling he is; and the very image of his
father!”
Le Dejuener
There
was a story of two Frenchmen at a London coffee house which used to be told
after this fashion. One afternoon a
Frenchman strolled into one of the London coffee houses, and was accosted by
the waiter who inquired of him in the usual way what he would take for
dinner. He gave no definite order, but
merely answered the waiter “Vat you please!”
The waiter, thinking he had met with a man with free and generous
disposition, took care, for the honour of the house, to supply the stranger
with the best of everything, soups, fish, entrees, joints, sweets etc all came
in due course dished up in the choicest manner.
At last the waiter brought on a silver tray the most costly article of
all – the bill. This to his astonishment
the Frenchman refused to pay, saying that he had ordered nothing, and that the
waiter had been supplying him with luxuries according to his own sweet will, he
himself having merely replied to his solicitations “Vat you please”. Nothing could be done, the landlord scolded
the waiter behind the scenes, but let the Frenchman go, telling the waiter at
the same time to let him know should any more of these Mounseers present
themselves. Shortly after, Frenchman No
2, hearing of the success of his fellow countryman, came to the same coffee
house, and seating himself down replied to the waiter’s inquiries after the
same manner – “Vat you please”. The
waiter hurried off as if to order in the courses as before, and soon returned,
not with choice meals, but with his master who learning that there was “another
of them Vat-you-pleases” in the coffee room, had taken down his largest hunting
whip, and was prepared to take summary vengeance. The end was a rapid flight of the foreigner.
Horseradish
Overloading
a man with ornaments when he is in want of the bare necessities of life may be
illustrated by the story of Mr Palmer, sometime Rector of Little Laver, in
Essex, who sent an old woman in his parish a quantity of horse-radish, but
omitted to send the beef. In justice to
Mr Palmer it is suggested that the old lady was basely endeavouring to obtain
beef when she declared that she was so excessively fond of horseradish, and
that the good Rector saw through her little game, and took her at her word.
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