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Show BLUNDERS. <br><br> Most of Sir Boyle Roche's sayings have become household words; but it may not be unpleasant to the reader to hear two or three of them. It was he who gave utterance to the profound aphorism, "Single misfortunes never come alone, and the greatest of all possible misfortunes is generally followed by a much greater." "Sir," said he one day in the Irish House of Commons, "I do not see why we should put ourselves out of the way to serve posterity. What has posterity done for us?" He was interrupted by a burst of laughter, and proceeded to explain himself. "I do not mean our ancestors, but those who are to come immediately after them." In these times of short measures, perhaps we should find nothing very absurd in the bill which he introduced, providing that every quart bottle should hold a quart. We seem to need something like that at the present day. It was he who rebuked the shoe-maker from whom he had ordered shoes for his gouty limbs: "I told you to make one longer than the other," said he, "and instead of that, you have made on smaller than the other " the exact opposite. During the troublous times that came upon the country, there was a great insecurity of life, and in a letter to a friend, from his country house, he wrote, "You may judge of our state, when I tell you that I write this with a pistol in each hand a sword in the other." |