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The Weaknesses Of The Great

The Weaknesses Of The Great image
Parent Issue
Day
13
Month
April
Year
1882
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

Swift relieved his tense and tragic moods by harnessing hi3 servante with corda - on one occasion he insiated on harnessing his learned and respectable friend Dr. Sheridan- and driving them up and down the stairs and through the rooms of his deanery. Peter the Great sought to unbend himself by beingwheeled over the flower-beds and neat parterres of his host's garden in a wheel-barrow. Cardinal Mazarin is said to have been fond of shutting himself up in a room and jumping over the chairs, arranged in positions varying according to the degrees of difflculty in clearing them. Of this weakness on the part of his Excellency an amusing anecdote is told. On one occasion while engaged in these athleties, hè forget to lock the door. A young courtier inadvertently entering the room, surprised the great man in his undignú fled pursuit. It was an embarrassing position, for Mazarin was, he knew, as haughty as he was eccentric. But the young man was equal to the crisis. Assuming the intensest interest in the próceeding, he exclaimed, with wellfeigned earnestness: "I will bet your Eminence two gold pieces I can beat that jump." He had strack the rigtat chord, and in two minutes he was measuring his leaping powers with the Prime Minister, whom he took care not to beat. He lost his two gold pieces, but he gained before long a mitre! Samuel Clarke relieved his geological pursuits in the same way, and on one occasion seeing a pedantic fellow approadiing, said to the pupil who was sharing his amusement: "Xow we must stop, for a fooi is coming in." Old Burton, the author of the "Anatomie of Melancholy." the only book which go Di. Johnson out of his bed two hous before he intended to rise, found his chief recreation in going down to Follv Bridge at Oxford and listening to the ribaldry of the bargees, "which did cleare away his vapoures, and make. him laugh as he would die." Innocent III., probably the greatest pontifï who ever sat on the throne of St. Peter, relieved his graver amusement of playing at ninepins with the poten tates of Europe by gosiping familiarly with an old monk on a seat at a fountain in the Vatican. He would listen for hoursto, the stories and pointless anecdotes with which his liumble companion, who had traveled a great deal, regaled him.

Article

Subjects
Old News
Ann Arbor Democrat