"Well, sir," said the other, "and am I not a gentleman?"
"Nay, sir," said Foote, "if you take it in that way, I must only beg your pardon a second time."
Previously to Foote's bringing out his 'Primitive Puppet Show' at the Haymarket Theatre, a lady of fashion asked him, "Pray, sir, are your puppets to be as large as life?"
"Oh dear, madam, no. Not much above the size of Garrick!"
Being at the dinner-table one day when the Cape was going round in remarkably small glasses, his host was very profuse on the excellence of the wine, its age, etc. "But you don't seem to relish it, Foote, by keeping your glass so long before you."
"Oh, yes, my lord, perfectly well. I am only admiring how little it is, considering its great age."
Of an actress who was remarkably awkward with her arms, Foote said that "she kept the Graces at arm's-length."
Of a young gentleman who was rather backward in paying his debts, he said he was "a very promising young gentleman."
An assuming, pedantic lady, boasting of the many books which she had read, often quoted 'Locke Upon Understanding,' a work she said she admired above all things, yet there was one word in it which, though often repeated, she could not distinctly make out; and that was the word ide-a (pronouncing it very long): "but I suppose it comes from a Greek derivation."
"You are perfectly right, madam," said Foote, "it comes from the word ideaousky."
A mercantile man of his acquaintance, who would read a poem of his to him one day after dinner, pompously began:--
"Hear me, O Phoebus! and ye Muses nine! Pray be attentive."
"I am," said Foote. "Nine and one are ten: go on."
A gentleman just married, telling Foote that he had that morning laid out three thousand pounds in jewels for his "dear wife": "Well," said the other, "you have but done her justice, as by your own reckoning she must be a very valuable woman."
Foote and Garrick, supping together at the Bedford, the former in pulling out his purse to pay the reckoning dropped a guinea, which rolled in such a direction that they could not readily find it.
"Where the deuce," says Foote, "can it be gone to?"
"Gone to the Devil, I suppose," said Garrick.
"Well said, David; you are always what I took you for, ever contriving to make a guinea go farther than any other man."