(A farmer woman wants to visit her son in prison.) Prison warden: “I’m sorry I can’t accommodate your wish, dear lady, two days ago the typhus broke out here.”
Farmer woman: “Oh for God’s sake, how is that possible, how could he have gotten out of there?”
(Some untranslatable wordplay here, with the farmer woman confusing “typhus” [Typhus] and “type” [Typus], as in, “the type of guy who would try to break out of prison.”)
(Fliegende Blätter, Munich, 1873)
Sic Transit Pestilentia 