CHARLES DARWIN 



>VOLUTION is everywhere at work, even 

 in the matter of jokes. Once in the House 

 of Commons, Disraeli, who prided him- 

 self on his scholarship as well as his 

 Hyperion curl, interrupted a speaker and 

 sharply corrected him on a matter of 



" I would rather be a gentleman than a 

 scholar ! " the man replied. 

 "^7 friend is seldom either," came the 

 quick response. 



When Thomas Brackett Reed was 

 Speaker of the House of Representa- 

 tives, a member once took exception to 

 a rulin S of the "Czar," and having in 

 mind Reed's supposed presidential as- 

 pirations closed his protests with the 

 thrust, " I would rather be right than 

 president." 



" The gentleman will never be either," 

 came the instant retort. 

 But some years before the reign of the 

 American Czar, Gladstone, Premier of 

 England, said, " I would rather be right 

 and believe in the Bible, than excite a 

 body of curious, infidelic, so-called sci- 

 entists to unbecoming wonder by tracing 

 their ancestry to a troglodyte." 



157 



