MANUSCRIPT SERMONS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 682, 14 May 1875, Page 4

MANUSCRIPT SERMONS.

There are manuscript sermons existing a couple of centuries old, in the margin “ hem hem ” is written to indicate where the preacher, after raising bis strain to a certain height which would seem to authorise the relief might cough, merely for the eftect of the thing. M. Peugnot states that he had seen in the manuscript sermons ot an old preacher these words in different parts of the margin : —“Here, fall back in your seat,” “startup,” “use your handkerchief,” “ shout here like the very deviland Balzac says that an old cleric of his time, teaching all young students how to construct a sermon, confined himself to observing, “ Shako the pulpit stoutly ; gaze at the cvucific fiercely; say what you can to the purpose, and you’ll not preach badly.” The Abbe Boisrobort used to say that a clever preacher ought to know when to cough, spit, and sneeze with effect, as any one may bo the means of extricating him from a difficulty.

A miserly old lady kept an inn. One day a poor tramp called on her for something to cat. Some bones that had been pretty well picked wore placed before him. After the man had finished his dinner, a little son of the landlady, noticing that the tramp found it very difficult to make much of a dinner, put somemonoy into his hands as he stepped out of the door. When the boy’s mother came in, he asked how much it was worth to pmk those old bones, “Sixpence, my dear,” said the old lady, expecting to receive the money. “ I tliought so,” replied the boy, “ and I gave the man a sixpence for doing it,”