Salisbury's Humour 

Salisbury's Humour

I like this: three officers from a ship in the British navy get in trouble with the authorities in Rio, and it becomes an international incident. (Salisbury's larger point is that Prime Minister Palmerston tended to talk tough, but only act on small, sometimes ridiculous matters).

[blockquote]In the afternoon [the three officers] dined at a country inn and drank some liquor, of which the amount has been the subject of some controversy. On their return they are said to have given unmistakable evidence that their hearts were gladdened within them by the good fare of which they had partaken. To this imputation they raise a loud demur, and the dispute is one which it is not easy to decide. On the one hand, one of the well-known phenomena of the happy condition which is ascribed to them is a profound conviction on the part of the subject of it that he is perfectly sober--a conviction which even takes the form of believing that every one else is drunk. On the other hand, Portuguese manners are apt to be stiff; and a Portuguese, not well acquainted with our sailors, may not improbably have imagined that the jovial ways of Jack ashore could only be imputed to an artificial cause....[at a guardhouse] they found a sentry. What passes between gentlemen who have dined and the guardians of the public peace is always a matter of some dispute; and in this instance the usual uncertainty is complicated by the fact that the Englishmen could speak no Portuguese, and the sentry could understand nothing else.[/blockquote]

The Englishmen's account of the matter is that the sentry came up to them, and that thereupon they asked him a civil question, and that he forthwith knocked one of them down with the butt end of a musket. The sentry's account of the matter is that they came up to him flourishing a stick in his face, and making an uncomplimentary remark upon his trousers--which appear to be the sore point of a Brazilian soldier--and that he took them up because they tried to take hold of his legs and throw him over the parapet. It is obvious that he misunderstood them; for if they could not speak Portuguese at all, it is quite clear that they could not have observed intelligibly to him upon his trousers.