When Dr. Johnson visited the University of St. Andrews, he took occasion to inquire of one of the professors into the state of their funds, and being told that they were not so affluent as many of their neighbours, “No matter,” said the doctor drily; “persevere in the plan you have formed, and you will get rich _by degrees_.”
Complaisance is no longer confined to the polite circles. A captain of a vessel was lately called out of a coffeehouse at Wapping by a waterman, with the following address: “An’t please your honour, the tide is waiting for you.”
A hackney coachman, after putting up his horses in the evening, took out the money he had received during the day, in order to make a division between his master and himself. “There,” says he, “is one shilling for master, and one for me;” and so on alternately till an odd shilling remained. Here he hesitated between conscience and self-interest, when the master, who happened to be a concealed spectator, said, “I think, Thomas, you may allow me the odd shilling, as I keep the horses.”
A gentleman dined one day with a dull preacher. Dinner was scarcely over before the gentleman fell asleep, but was awakened by the divine, and invited to go and hear him preach. “I beseech you, sir,” said he, “to excuse me; I can sleep very well where I am.”
Holroyd, king’s plumber, stood in the pit of the theatre at the time that Hatfield fired at King George III., and it was reported that by his lifting up the assassin’s arm at the moment he was firing, the pistol was raised so that the ball went higher than the box his majesty was seated in. Some one observed that “This was a very loyal thing in the plumber.” “Why, yes,” replied a gentlemen present, “it looks like it; but the motive might possibly be selfish; it perhaps arose from Holroyd not choosing that anyone should serve the king with _lead_ except himself.”
As James II. when Duke of York, returned one morning from hunting, he found his brother Charles in Hyde Park without any attendants, at what was considered a perilous time. The duke expressed his surprise at his majesty’s venturing alone in so public a place at so dangerous a period. “James,” replied the monarch, “take care of yourself, and I am safe. No man in England will kill _me_ to make _you_ king.”