SMART RETORTS.

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 4, 22 April 1893, Page 6

SMART RETORTS.

At a sale of pictures in a London auction room, two gentlemen were disputing the possession of a picture by a celebrated English painter, which faithfully represented an ass. Each seemed determined to outbid the other. Finally one of them said — “ My dear sir, it is of no use ; I shall not give in. The painting once belonged to my grandfather, and I intend to have it.” “ Oh, in that case,” replied his rival, suavely, “ I will give it up. I think you are fully entitled to it, if it is one of your family portraits ” —at which there was great laughter throughout the room. This retort is about the best on recox-d. On the same level with it we would place Bassompierre’s retort to Louis XIII. The Ambassador was telling the Court how he first entered Madrid. “I was mounted,” he was saying, “ on the very smallest mule in the world,” when the King interrupted him with the remark — “ It must, indeed, have been an amusing sight to have seen the biggest ass in the place mounted on so small .a quadruped ! With a profound obeisance came the rejoinder—“l was your Majesty’s representative.” Lord Cockburn, after a long stroll, sat down on a hillside beside a shep-

herd, and observed that the sheep selected the coldest situation for lying down. “ Mac,” said he, “I think if I were a sheep I should certainly have preferred the other side of the hill.” The shepherd answered : “ Ay, my lord; hut if ye had been a sheep ye would have had mair sense ; ” and Lord Cockburn was afterwards never tired of relating the story, and turning’ the laugh on himself. Curran’s friend was equally tickled by the orator’s retort apropos of the jury system. The friend was bragging of his attachment to the system, and said : “ With trial by jury I have lived, and, by the blessing of God, with trial by jury I will die.” “Oh,” said Curran, in much amazement, “ then you’ve made up your mind to be hanged, Dick ?” The man who was offering gratuitous information at a north country fair was not so pleased. He was disparaging the show of cattle. “ Prize cattle,” he said scornfully. “ Call these ’ere prize cattle P Why, they ain’t nothin’ to what our folks raised. You may not think it, but my father raised the biggest calf of any man round our parts.” “ I can very well believe it,” said a bystander, surveying him from head to foot. The judge who pointed with his cane and exclaimed: “ There is a great rogue at the end of my cane,” was certainly greatly enraged when the man looked hard at him and asked coolly : “At which end, my lord?” The prisoner probably got two years extra for that smart retort.— The Million.