in
the study, touched the advocate on the arm and said:

'Sir--please read some in a _great_ book also, for this is
certainly a big case which I have brought to you.'

Everybody knows the story of the fortune hunter who commanded his
servant to duplicate in the affirmative, when he should be in
conversation, all his assertions. 'I have a fine farm,' said he. 'Faith,
ye mane ye have two on thim,' interpolated his Irishman; and so it went
on, until the master admitted that he had a cork leg. '_Two_ false ligs,
_an' ye know it_,' cried out the man. This is somewhat varied and
enlarged from the old story as given in the _Facetiae_ of Bebel, in which
the nobleman, remarking to his lady-love that he was 'a little out of
sorts,'--'_dixit ille, se pallidulum parumque infirmum_,' was
interrupted by his servant with: 'And no wonder, since you suffer with
such a terrible and incurable quotidian disease!'[5]

If all stories and jests are to be traced to a few originals, perhaps
the many eccentric tales of Jack on horseback may be found in a very old
anecdote of a certain _Venetus insuetus ac nescius equitare_--a Venetian
unaccustomed to and ignorant of riding, who, when mounted on horseback,
having inadvertently spurred the animal, exclaimed, as it reared and
plunged:

'Lord! the waves of the sea are nothing to those on land,'--thinking
that the leaping of his steed was caused by a sudden storm! The
anecdotes of absent-mindedness may find a prototype in a very old
monk-Latin anecdote of a certain doctor who went riding '_cum Palatino
Rheni_,' with the Prince Palatine, and who, on being told that he had no
breeches on, replied: '_Credebam, o princeps, mihi famulum ea
induisse._' 'I thought, oh prince, that my valet had put them on!'
Domine Sampson and the magistrate who appeared un-breeched before
General Washington, are both anticipated in these absent small-clothes.

Many of the capital extravagances contained in 'Baron Munchausen' are
borrowed literally from the old Latin jest-books. The incident of the
wild pig which led about by its tail a blind wild boar, so that when the
former was slain the latter was taken home by simply giving it the tail
to hold, is of very respectable antiquity--as is also the story of the
horse cut in two--attributed by Bebel to a locksmith. The locksmiths, he
tells us in the parenthesis, are the boldest of Major Longbows.

There are many jests current in all languages, quizzing the