The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-08-19
TRUE IRISH BULLS.
They Have a Pungent Flavor Pc.
 cuIiar 10 the Green Isle.
BLUNDERs LINKED WITH WIT.

1 All Nations MIX Metaphors and Fer. petrats Sell. Contradictory Figures 1 of Speech, but the Emerald Brand toIds tae Prize Fer Point and Vieor. In Bulls, Ancient and Modern" J.
 0. Percy, the author, contrasts the 1 English and Irish variety to the ad-
 vantage of the latter. Although the
 most diverting bulls are usually ia
 thered upon Irishmen, they have not
 by any means monopoly. All nations mix metaphors and fall into self con tradictory blunders. Englishmen make
 bulls probably just as often as Irish
 men, but there is a difference. The English ones are seldom amusing
 The Irish ones almost always are. MT. Gladstone never hinted at Irish
 blood in his veins, yet he once warned an M. P. that it was no use for him
 ito shake his head in the teeth of his own words" MT. Balfour has spoken of 'Ean empty theater of unsympathet- ic auditors" Lord Randolph Churchill referred to an item of national credit as "a mere flea bite in the ocean of our expenditure" If further proof be called for it was a Yorkshireman who told a meeting of shareholders in some place of entertainment at Leeds that ''they had been catering for a class which does not exist and which now goes to Bradfod." It was an English chairman of railway company who said ''it would pay better to carry third class passengers for nothing rather than let the tramways get them"
 Why is it. then, that bulls are sup posed to be native to Ireland? 1t can hardly be for the reason that they are supposed to take their name from certain Obadiah Bull. an Irish barris- ter. who practiced in London during the eighteenth century. MT. Percy ac. cepts this derivation, though there Is another which relates the name with the traditional remark of the timid woman who was afraid to cross field full of cows in case one of them might be a bulI'' That has the flavor of the true Irish bull. It is pungent. sharp to the point. The meaning flashes out quick and clear. Other bulls result from lack of oil in the headworkS. Irish bulls are really due to mental quickness, which takes a short cut rather than the high road and relies upon the hearers to show equal agility. That is why they leave an impression, while the bulls of other nations pass unnoticed or fade directly from the mind.
 Here. for example, is a delightful ellipse One woman, describing anoth- CT. said: "She would talk the head off you. I am hoarse listening to her." Most of us have felt that. but t need ed real wit to phrase it so aptly. Quite as funny. though less witty, was the advice given to cyclists in an Irish paper, ''The best way to pass a COW on the road when cycling is to keep be- hind it." One is reminded of the man who said there was only one way to make donkey follow you-that was to go behind and push. The same writ CT on cycling once selected "a shady nook and basked there in the sun- shine" It was he, too. who described some one as having received "a grand reception when he went away"
 In Irish political speeches bulls abound The speakers are carried away by their subjects and their eIo- quence. Images leap to their lips and are uttered before their incongruity has been noticed. Why" asked Sir Thomas Myles in Dublin during the Boer war--"why should Irishmen stand