A boy was asked in examination what were the postulates. He replied, ‘There are three postulates: the first is that things which are equal to the same are equal to one another; the second, that things which are greater than the same are greater than one another; the third, that things which are less than the same are less than one another.’
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There was an inland African tribe in a country too hot for sheep, who had therefore no definite idea about a lamb. The missionary who converted them brought the idea somewhat nearer to their comprehension by calling Christ ‘the little woolly pig of God.’
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`Medio tutissimus ibis.’ A boy in examination translated it thus: ‘In the middle of them all stalks the Ibis, most cautious of birds’; and he put a note, as follows: ‘By this translation I have endeavoured to give the full value of the superlative.’
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Jones went to an evening party and said there was a lady there who sang a song (as he at first thought) about an Indian potentate named Sir Cussha Sweesong Twar, but he discovered presently that the song was French (‘Ce que je suis sans toi’).
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I heard the following in a ’bus: ‘She ought never to have been a mother, but she’ll make a rare mother-in-law.’
(Further Selections from The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, 1934).