AFTER DINNER WIT.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2058, 12 June 1890, Page 4

AFTER DINNER WIT.

A schoolmaster, being called on to give a toast, produced this sentiment: ‘ Addition to the friends of Old Engand, subtraction to her wants, multiplication to her blessings, division amongst her foes, and reduction of her debts and taxes.” That needs some beating, but there is a neatness in another toast which makes it worthy of a foremost place among examples of after-dinner wit and wisdom. The sentiment thus expressed was:—‘‘The Press, The Pulpit, and the Petticoat: the three ruling powers of the day. The first spreads knowledge, the second morals, and the third spreads considerably! ” That was a pretty touch in an old American minister’s in reply to a toast offered by a convivial company of ancient chums—- “ My old classmates and friends, you remember the story of Munchausen’s bugle, in which the frost froze up the tunes as he played, bit they were liberated and rang out a long time after, when the thaw set in. So you warm my heart now; and old thoughts, old affections, old dreams, come back upon me like lost music.” At a certain public dinner a preacher was called upon for a toast. The evening was so far advanced that every person present had been toasted already, and also all their friends. But the good man was a person of large sympathies, and, rising, from his seat, said that, without troubling the company with any preliminary observations, he begged to propose the health of 11 All people that on earth do dwell.”

It is related that a physician’s little girl, when called upon fora toast,gave “ The health of papa, and mamma, and all the world.” But she suddenly corrected her sentiment—“ Not all the world, for then papa would have no patients.” As ingenious and novel an afterdinner sentiment as any of the foregoing, was, perhaps, that given by Alphonse Karr when present at a banquet of medical men, where toasts were drunk of certain celebrities, when the president said—“ Monsieur Karr, we now ask a toast from you.” The poet rose, and replied modestly— *• I propose the health of all who are 9 ick,’