STORIES OF A PARLIAMENTARY HOMORIST.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 451, 27 March 1912, Page 7

STORIES OF A PARLIAMENTARY HOMORIST.

WHAT A PINT OF CHAMPAGNE DID. Sir Wilfrid's pet aversions were militarism and drink, and among the many stories toW in the biography of him edited by tbe Right Hon. G. W. E. Russell, and published by Smith. Elder, and Co., is one that refers to Sir Andrew Clark, Mr. Gladstone's physician. It is said that when he recommended a patient to drink wine, ilic latter expressed some surprise, saying ae thought Sir Andrew Clark was a temperance doctor, to which Sir Andrew Clark replied, "Oh, win° ioes sometimes help you to g.t through work ; for instance, I have often twenty letters to answer ailer :linner, and a pint of champagne is a great help." "Indeed," caid the patient, "does the pint of champagne really help you to answer the twenty letters?" "No ! no !" said Sir Andrew, "but when I've had a pint of champagne, I don't care a ra? whether I answer them or not !"

THE BISHOP'S "STARTLING STATEMENT." Sir Wilfrid's speeches were always popular, for the simple reason that they were anecdotal. He usually forced home a point with a good story. He once told how Dr. Temple, when Bishop of London, went down to speak on Temperance at Exeter, and in illustrating his subject happened to say, "I never was drunk in my life." Whereupon the newspaper posters which came out the nest morning contained the headline, "Startling statement by a Bishop." "In 1860," says Sir Wilfrid in one of his diaries, "I fell into matrimony. I entered the church alone, between a line of volunteer soldiers, and came out of it through the same line along with my wife. This recalls to one's recollection the text inscribed on the tomb of a deceased couple, 'Their warfare is accomplished.' Fortunately my wedding venture did not result in hostilities. "There is sometimes a want of tact. A wife was once complaining to a. clergyman of her husband's unsatisfactory conduct, when he said, 'You should heap coals of fire on his head.' To which she replied, 'Well, I tried boiling water, and that did no good.' " "D'YE KEN JOHN FEEL?" Here are two anecdotes which Sir Wilfrid was fond of relating. "Somebody asked Spurgeon whether a man who played the cornet could be a Christian. 'I don't know,' replied Spurgeon, 'but the man who lived next door could not.' " Yet another one concerning Spurgeon relates how he once asked all who wished to go to Heaven to stand »p, but a sailor kept his seat. Spurgeon asked him if he did not wish to go to heaven ? "Not with such a cre.v as this,"was the reply.

In the days of his youth Sir Wilfrid was very fond of hunting. As a matter of fact, be bought the hounds which John Peel, of "D'ye ken John Peel ?" fame, had hunted and became Master of the Cumberland Foxhounds. And incidentally it might be mentioned that Sir Wilfrid settled the right reading of the old song. "When the famous song of John Peel spread from its native Cumberland all over the foxhunting world, people accustomed to the traditional scarlet thought it impossible that a master of the bounds could have hunted in a. grey coat, and therefore altered 'His coat so grey' to 'His coat so gay.' But the emendatior was at once arbitrary and erroneous. Sir Wilfrid has placed it on record that "His gvey coat is no more a myth than himself, for I well remember the long, rough, grey garment which almost came down to his knees." TALL DOG STORIES. It was during these hunting days that Sir Wilfrid also became acquainted with a Cumberland squire whose improbable stories were a •;ource of much amusement. 'J h s old squire was very fond of telling the story of a favorite steady "Id pointer. One day he lost ttie dog for n 'i:,.e and by and ]>y, when looking for it. climbed over a wall, when up got a covey of partridges, and lo and behold, there was the pointer lying on its back, with all its legs in the a;r. This, he explained,, was occause the dog had tumbled oa itr, back in g:tting over the wall, and, just at that moment getting wind of the partridges, was too steady to alter the position in whMi it was found—. "I hardly know a story to match this," says Sir Wilfrid, "except thai :>f the man who said his dog could point game anywhere, and that one :lay it stood stock still by the s'de Df a man in Hyde Park. This somewhat puzzled him until he found out that the name of the man was Tartn'dce." "JINGO." Apropos of the spirit of militarism which runs through the country at ;imes, Sir Wilfrid mentions the fol.owing : When in IS7B there seemed a posiDility of us going to war with Russia over the Eastern question, birth was given to the popular war song:— don't want to fight, but, by Jingo, tf we do, We've got the sbips, we've got the men, we've got the money too, which a friemi of Sir Wilfrid parodied thus : iVe don't want to fight, but, by Jin j go, if we doWe'll get a shilling income-tax, and a ttHiodering licking too. —"Til-Bits."