WISDOM OF A WIT.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2454, 15 July 1922, Page 1

WISDOM OF A WIT.

MR. MURPHY’S MAXIMS. “There are many things we may laugh al to keep up our spirits,” said Mr Patrick Francis Murphy, a New York business man and humorist, in the course of a speech to the American Luncheon Club at the Savoy Hotel. “A good speech requires tact and power of endurance on the part of the audience,” he said solemnly, and proceeded to make a speech of which the audience could only complain that it should have lasted at least twice as long. Here are some of the epigrams which kept h'is hearers in roars of laughter: — “Praise is pleasing not only to "the receiver but to the giver. The one receives it as the reward of merit, and the other gives it to show his magnanimity and command of language. “Whenever you see two men laughing together, you may be sure that some misfortune has happened tr. a third. “Like Jonah in the belly of the whale, I have travelled much and seen little. “Providence has bestowed modesty yin some people, and on others a disposition for public life. “As we wander through a cemetery we wonder where all the sinners are buried. “Many men in public life adopt the method of that old statesman who said that he did not exactly forgive his enemies, but lie did his best to put them in a position where he could sympathise with them. “Two parties are like two jealous lovers paying court to the same woman. They hate each other and love their country. “England has led Ireland up to the altar of freedom, but without orange blossoms. “It never enters the mind of an Englishman to.think about the superiority of his countrymen. He takes it for granted. “Golf is a game of honour played in the garden of lies.”