Too Gory for Him

An actor recently from London relates how, while riding on a "'bus," he overheard an amusing protest from an American passenger who was "of the cloth." The American, he was afterward told, was a bishop visiting one of his English friends among the clergy. The Briton was showing his friend and different phases of London life, and also London town itself, from the top of a 'bus.

Two of lower class of Londoners, who sat in front of the churchman, were engaged in noisy argument, interlanding their conversation profusely with cockney slang and frequent introduction of that much used adjective among that class of people, "bloody." One stated that he was "bloody sure that the bloody bloke would come to some bloody bad end."

The defender of the discussed one declared that he was "bloody glad to inform him that the boy was now a-goin' to some bloody school or other, and was a-gettin' bloody good."

The loud conversation was annoying, not to say painful, to the bishop, who was not used to hearing that powerfully graphic old English word, which is so indiscriminately made use of by certain classes of British to qualify their adjectives and adverbs. Every time the word was uttered he winced as if with a little twitch of pain. At last he leaned depreatingly toward the offenders and said in conciliatory tones:

"My dear friends, cannot you contrive to make your conversation a trifle more anemic?" - N. Y. Chipper.