Excerpt from The Book of Clerical Anecdotes: A Gathering From Many Sources of the Antiquities, Humours, and Eccentricities of "the Cloth" Bookmaking is, in a great measure, merely pouring from one vessel into. Another. This is essentially the case with compilations in general, and with collections of anecdotes in particular. We are told of an Irishman, who, on relating what he called an excellent story, was informed by one of his hearers that the same joke occurred in a work pub lished many years ago. Confound those ancients, said the Hibernian they are always stealing one's good thoughts. Even this angry exclamation was not entirely original and something very similar has already been remarked by one of those same ancients, Pereant guz' ante me mea dz'xerz'nt That, however, is a very illiberal feeling, and certainly quite out of place in a retailer of other men's jokes. Let us rather thank those who have committed to print any flashes of wit or points of humour which came to their knowledge, and thus have planted a fair garden, into which bookmakers may wander, to cull those flowers that best suit their taste and purpose. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.