History Jokes: Maximilian I and a beggar

A beggar once asked alms of the Emperor Maximilian I., who bestowed upon him a small coin. The beggar appeared dissatisfied with the smallness of the gift, and on being asked why, he replied that it was a very little sum for an emperor, and that his highness should remember that we were all descended from one father, and were therefore all brothers. Maximilian smiled good-humouredly, and replied: "Go—go, my good man: if each of your brothers gives you as much as I have done, you will very soon be far richer than me."

Xerxes, when he fled from Greece, left
Mardonius all his costly dinner-service of plate.
Pausanias, aware of this, ordered the cooks, after the
death of Mardonius at Plataea, to prepare a dinner
precisely as they would have done for Mardonius.
When this was ready, and the divans
and gold and silver tables had been duly set out,
he told his own servants to prepare a Spartan
dinner. Laughing heartily at the contrast, he
called his generals and said, "Gentlemen, I
wished to point out to you the folly of this Persian
general, who with all this grandeur came to rob
you of your miserable meal."

A Spartan was praising a saying of Hesiod's,
"Not even an ox would be lost if one had not
a bad neighbour," in the hearing of Diogenes, who
cynically replied, "But the Messenians are lost,
and their oxen too; and you are their neighbours."

Duncan Broadfoot was a studious shoemaker, and
much addicted to reading works on astronomy. Ae day
he got into a heated argument wi' Saunders Veitch
regarding the merits and demerits o' the French revolution.
Duncan stood erect. His eyes flashed, and he
placed the fore-finger of his right hand in -the palm of
his left, and thus spoke: "Noo, Saunders, if I was an
inhabitant o' ane o' the maist important planets, and if
ony o' the folk thereon started a revolution, and cam'
to me and advised me to tak' up the sword, gun or
Lochaber ax as the case might be, I wad just eye them
wi' scorn, and most dignified and unmistakable disdain,
and tell them to gang to the deevil wi' baith them and
their revolutions."

At a council of generals early in the war, one remarked able to perform a duty that it was proposed to assign him. " Wounded !" said Jackson. "If it really is so, I think it must have been by an accidental discharge of his duty."