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 

 history. 



" I would rather be a gentleman than a 

 scholar ! " the man replied. 

 "My 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 ruling 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 



