"Who did this?" he demanded. "Was it your husband?"

   "Lor' bless yer, no!" she declared huffily. "W'y, my 'usband 'e 's more like a friend nor a 'usband!"

   Likewise, of the two men who had drunk not wisely

   but too well, with the result that in the small hours they retired to rest in the gutter. Presently, one of the pair lifted his voice in protest:

   "I shay, le's go to nuzzer hotel—this leaksh!"

   Or the incident of the tramp, who at the back door solicited alms of a suspicious housewife. His nose was large and of a purple hue. The woman stared at it with an accusing eye, and questioned bluntly:

   "What makes your nose so red?"

   The tramp answered with heavy sarcasm:

   "That 'ere nose o' mine, mum, is a-blushin' with pride, 'cause it ain't stuck into other folks's business."

   But British wit, while often amiable enough, may on occasion be as trenchant as any French sally. For example, we have the definition of gratitude as given by Sir Robert Walpole—"A lively sense of future favors." The Marquis of Salisbury once scored a clumsy partner at whist by his answer to someone who asked how the game progressed: "I'm doing as well as could be expected, considering that I have three adversaries." So the retort of Lamb, when Coleridge said to him: "Charles, did you ever hear me lecture?". * * * "I never heard you do anything else." And again, Lamb mentioned in a letter how Wordsworth had said that he did not see much difficulty in writing like Shakespeare, if he had a mind to try it. "Clearly," Lamb continued, "nothing is wanted but the mind." Then there is the famous quip that runs back to Tudor times, although it has been attributed to various later celebrities, including Doctor Johnson: A concert singer was executing a number lurid with vocal pyrotechnics. An admirer

   remarked that the piece was tremendously difficult. This drew the retort from another auditor:

   "Difficult! I wish to heaven it were impossible!"

   Americans are famous, and sometimes infamous, for their devotion to the grotesque in humor. Yet, a conspicuous example of such amusing absurdity was given by Thackeray, who made reference to an oyster so large 

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