Two men declared they could name the prettiest rural drive in all England. The dispute waxing warm, they agreed to write out the route each thought to be the prettiest and hand their respective slips of paper to a third party. They did this, and when the disinterested third party, in the presence of the disputants and a few of their respective friends, opened the sealed papers it was found that one had written: "Coventry to Stratford-on-Avon, by the way of Kenilworth, Leamington, and Warwick." And the other: "Stratford-on-Avon to Coventry, by the way of Warwick, Leamington, and Kenilworth."
Of course a general laugh followed, but when it subsided, one disputant, a little piqued that he had not won beyond further cavil, remarked with some warmth that he could name to the other disputant and his friends there present the amount of a certain nobleman's fortune, doing so in plain terms, in no enigmatical phrase, and yet they, in thirty minutes' time, could not name the amount in pounds sterling. Everybody present knew the nobleman mentioned, and all were desirous of learning the amount of his wealth--a sum which the speaker, through supposed business relations, was thought to be in a position to know.
Challenged to name the sum, the man read the following, from _Macbeth_, Act V., Scene V.:
If thou speak'st false, Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive, Till famine cling thee: if thy speech be sooth, I care not if thou dost for me as much. I pull in resolution; and begin To doubt the equivocation of the fiend, That lies like truth: "Fear not, till Birnam wood Do come to Dunsinane:"--and now a wood Comes toward Dunsinane.--Arm, arm, and out!-- If this, which he avouches, does appear. There is nor flying hence, nor tarrying here. I 'gin to be a-weary of the sun, And wish the estate o' the world were now undone.-- Ring the alarum bell!--Blow wind, come wrack! At least we'll die with harness on our back.
At the end of the half-hour the challenged party gave up. Need they have done so had _you_ been present to help them?
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