The Sphinx, Vol. 13, No. 199

              22
THE SPHINX
March 31, 1906
J Stories Worth Repeating fe.
The late Archduke Joseph, was fond of relating how once, during the war with Prussia, his troops had pitched their camp near a Bohemian village, and retired for the night. About midnight he was awakened by the sentry’s challenge “4Halt, who goes there ? ” and directly afterwards an adjutant came in to say that a gipsy was outside insisting on speaking to him in private. The gipsy was a soldier, and on being admitted the Archduke aske:’. him what he had to say. “The enemy is stealing upon us, and wishes to surprise us.” “But the outposts have seen nothing suspicious.” “Because the enemy is still far off but he will soon be here, and then we are undone.”
“Well ! but how do you know this ?” “Will your Highness step to the window ? Do you see the number of birds flying out of the woods to the south ?” “I see them—but what then ?” “What then ? Do not birds sleep at night as well as men ? They would not be on the wing if there was peace in the forest ; but the enemy is coming through the woods, and has alarmed the birds.”
“It is well, my son, now you can go,” was the answer. But the Archuke gave immediate orders to strengthen the outposts, and to rouse the camp. One hour later the fight had commenced, but the camp had been saved from a oomplete surprise by the gipsy soldier.
The Archduke was a great lover of gipsy folk, and wrote a monumental grammar of the Romany language, which was rather an encyclopaedia of gipsy life and lore than a grammar. He was also a great believer in the Kneipp cold water cure, and in herbs, and wrote a compendious treatise on the latter, illustrated with hundreds of drawings by his third daughter, the Archduchess Margaret,who signed each drawing “Margit.”
The youthful scholar who wrote the following essay on “Health” was in the third class of a Sydney private school: “Health means feeling all right, and able to work, and like your meals. If everylxxly lived in good health until they died, the doctors would not get a living. I have never been ill. and 1 never felt any pain except smacking, which •doctors don’t count. The teacher says as the best way to keep healthy is to keep clean, and to keep your feet warm; and she also told that poetry to us. ‘Early to bed and early to rise Makes a man healthy and wealthy and wise.’ When I said that poetry to my father, he answered as he new it before either me or the School but he didn’t believe in it for all that. He said as he was forced to be up early, and forced to lie healthy too else he would get the sack ; and that it was them who laid in in bed and cote the ten o’clock trains who was the wisest and the best off.”
The peculiar genius of the French language and its aptness for expressing subtleties of ideas is well illustrated by the following incident, which happened a short time ago. An Englishman went into a shop in Paris, and intimated his desire to buy a pocket-handkerchief. The shopman brought out a number of flimsy and ornamental wisps of linen, which did not meet the sturdy Briton’s views in the least.
“No, no,” he protested. “What I want is something like this,” and he pulled out an immense white square, and waved it before the astonished shopman.
“Ah !” said the latter, at last. “Voila 1 It is then un mouclioir serieux that monsieur desires !”
It is sufficiently certain that some of the tiny wisps of lace and linen that ladies carry about with them could not, by any stretch of imagination, be described as “serious handkerchiefs.”
An American, in London, takes up a newspaper, and in glancing at a column and a half Leader, in which the writer mentions a deed committed at the instance of the scheming Duke Richard, throws down the paper, and exclaims “Waal if that ain’t journalism for you.”
“What’s that ?” someone asks.
“Why. those newspapers have just caught on to the murder of the Princes in the Tower. Why, the American newspapers had that yeai*s ago !”
Mr. Timidity once had the misfortune to figure as defendant in a libel action, and since then he has been remarkably cautious with his pen. Some little time ago he was obliged to dismiss his servant, and subsequently the lady who thought of engaging the domestic wrote to Mr.
T-----for the girl’s character.
Now, Mr. T—— might have said a good many things, but he remembered that libel suit. A week or so later a lady called upon him in anything but an amiable temper.
“I’ve called for an explanation, Mr. Timidity,” she began. “I engaged a girl solely on yonr recommendation, only to find she’s worthless. You said that, like other
girls, she had her faults-”
“She has, madam.”
“I’m aware of it! But this is also an extract from your letter : ‘In one or two departments she excels.' What do you mean by that, may I ask ?”
“Well, madam, she eats well---”
“Good gracious ! I should think she does !”
“Very well, madam. She also sleeps well—and those are the departments referred to ! ”
A learned professor is so absent-minded that he walked for a mile in the gutter instead of the path, and would have continued if he had not suddenly been brought to a ; halt by seeing the polished back of a brougham in front of i him. He stopped, and, looking at the back of the carriage, came to the conclusion it was a blackboard, So from his pocket he took the piece of chalk, with which he illustrated | his lectures, and began to work out a mathematical problem on the carriage. He had almost covered the surface 1 with figures when the carriage started on its journey again. The professor followed it, and kept on adding figures until the pace became too fast, and he then realized that something was wrong with his blackboard ! He sighed, looked ! about him with a dazed air, and replaced the chalk in his I pocket.
“Love, so says a scientific writer, is controlled by vibration,” remarked young Singleton.
“I guess that’s right,” answered Wedderly with a large, open-faced sign ; “at least that has been my experience.”
“How’s that ?” queried Singleton.
“Well,” explained Wedderly, “I trembled when I proposed to my wife, trembled when I interviewed her father,
trembled at the altar, and she has kept me trembling in my shoes ever since.”
The long-haired caller in the editorial room was indignant. “Poets are born, sir,” lie said to the eminently practical editor.
“Of course they are,” responded the editor, suavely ; “you didn’t imagine I thought they were hatched, did you ?”
“I mean, sir, they are born ; born, sir—do you understand ?”
“I think I do,” and the editor rubbed his chin reflectively ; “but why are they ?”
That was the straw that fractured the spinal column of the camel, and the poet stalked out of the den.
A few evening ago a well-known City man sent his office boy out to his home in the suburbs with a message for his wife to the effect that, lieing detained at the office, she was not to wait dinner for him.
The lad gave the message to the lady herself, who asked him in and regaled him with a piece of cake and a glass of wine.
“So your master is very busy, is he, John ?” she remarked quite casually.
“Yes’m,” replied the I>oy. “And he was in the deuce of a hurry to get on with it, too.”
“Was he ?”
“Rather ! Why, as he got into the cab he threw me the keys and told me to lock up everything safely—he couldn’t even wait to do that himself !”
“Is your name Goodenough ?” asked a bill-collector of a man on whom he was calling
“It is,” answered the man, with a look of surprise. “Then I have a bill against you,” and he handed him a slip of paper.
“That is not my name,” said the man.
“But you said your name was Goodenough.”
“So it is,”’ said the man, as he prepared to close the door ; it’s good enough for me.”
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