Overtime

Line items in a bill received by an English lord from an artist in 1865, for repairs and retouchings to a gallery of paintings:

  • To filling up the chink in the Red Sea and repairing the damages of Pharaoh’s host.
  • To cleaning six of the Apostles and adding an entirely new Judas Iscariot.
  • To a pair of new hands for Daniel in the lions’ den and a set of teeth for the lioness.
  • To an alteration in the Belief, mending the Commandments, and making a new Lord’s Prayer.
  • To new varnishing Moses’s rod.
  • To repairing Nebuchadnezzar’s beard.
  • To mending the pitcher of Rebecca.
  • To a pair of ears for Balaam and a new tongue for the ass.
  • To planting a new city in the land of Nod.

From William Shepard Walsh, Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities, 1892.