From Joe Miller’s Jest Book, which is a pirated but exact version of The Jest Book, selected and arranged by Mark Lemon, except for some Americanized spellings; New York : Hurst & Co., no date; pp. 325-345.
( Jests 1500-1599. )
IN the course of an examination for the degree of B. A. in the Senate House, Cambridge, under an examiner whose name was Payne, one of the questions was, “Give a definition of happiness.” To which a candidate returned the following laconic answer : “An exemption from Payne.”
326A QUAKER (says Hood) makes a pleasure of his business, and then, for relaxation, makes a business of his pleasure.
A FRIEND, crossing Putney Bridge with Theodore Hook, observed that he had been informed that it was a very good investment, and inquired “if such were the case ?” — “I don’t know,” was the answer; “but you ought, as you have just been tolled. ”
AN old gentleman accused his servant of having stolen his stick. The man protested perfect innocence. “Why, you know,” rejoined is master, “that the stick could never have walked off with itself.” — “Certainly not, sir, unless it was a walking-stick. ”
IT is objected, and we admit often with truth, that the wealthy are ready to bestow their money, but not to endure personal inconvenience. The following anecdote is told in illustration : A late nobleman was walking in St. James’s Street, in a hard frost, when he met an agent, who began to importune his Grace in behalf of some charity which had enjoyed his support. “Put me down for what you please,” peevishly exclaimed the Duke; “but don’t keep me in the cold. ”
“DO you believe in the apostolical succession ?” inquired one of Sydney Smith. “I do,” he replied: “and my faith in that dogma dates from the moment I became acquainted with the Bishop of ——, who is so like Judas. ”
NO, Varus hates a thing that ’s base ;
I own, indeed, he ’s got a knack
Of flattering people to their face,
But scorns to do ’t behind their back.
OF a celebrated actress, who, in her declining days, bought charms of carmine and pearl-powder, Jerrold said, “Egad ! she should have a hoop about her, with a notice upon it, ‘Beware of the paint. ’ ”
TWO Oxonians dining together, one of them noticing a spot of grease on the neck-cloth of his companion, said, “I see you are a Grecian. ” — “Pooh !” said the other, “that is far-fetched. ” — “No, indeed,” said the punster, “I made it on the spot. ”
IN the famous trial of the Dean of Asaph, Mr. Erskine put a question to the jury, relative to the meaning of their verdict. Mr. Justice Buller objected to its propriety. The counsel reiterated his question, and demanded an answer. The judge again interposed his authority in these emphatic words: “Sit down, Mr. Erskine; know your duty, or I shall be obliged to make you know it.” Mr. Erskine with equal warmth replied, “I know my duty as well as your lordship knows your duty. I stand here as the advocate of a fellow citizen, and I will not sit down. ” The judge was silent, and the advocate persisted in his question.
A FAIR devotee lamented to her confessor her love of gaming. “Ah ! madam,” replied the reverend gentleman, “it is a grievous sin; — in the first place consider the loss of time. ” — “That ’s just what I do,” said she; “I always begrudge the time that is lost in shuffling and dealing. ”
TO John I owed great obligation;
But John, unhappily, thought fit
To publish it to all the nation :
Sure John and I am more than quit.
JAMES SMITH one night took old Mr. Twiss to hear Mathews in his At Home, to the whole of which the mathematician gave devoted attention. At the close, Mr. Smith asked him whether he had not been surprised and pleased. “Both,” replied Mr. Twiss, “but what does it all go to prove ? ”
GENERAL D—— was more distinguished for gallantry in the field than for the care he lavished upon his person. Complaining, in a certain occasion, to the late Chief-Justice Bushe, of Ireland, of the sufferings he endured from rheumatism, that learned and humorous judge undertook to prescribe a remedy. “You must desire your servant,” he said to the general, “to place every morning by your bedside a tub three-parts filled with warm water. You will then get into the tub, and having previously provided yourself with a pound of yellow soap, you must rub your whole body with it, immersing yourself occasionally in the water, and at the end of a quarter of an hour, the process concludes by wiping yourself dry with towels, and scrubbing your person with a flesh-brush.” — “Why,” said the general, after reflecting for a minute or two, “this seems to be neither more nor less than washing one’s self.” — “Well, I must confess,” rejoined the judge, “it is open to that objection. ”
( Upon the late Duke of Buckingham’s moderate reform. )
FOR Buckingham to hope to pit
His bill against Lord Grey’s is idle ;
Reform, when offered bit by bit,
Is but intended for a bridle.
A GENTLEMAN leaving the company, somebody who sat next to Dr. Johnson asked who he was. “I cannot exactly tell you, sir,” replied the doctor, “and I should be 329 loath to speak ill of any person whom I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney. ”
SYDNEY SMITH was annoyed one evening by the familiarity of a young gentleman, who, though a comparative stranger, was encouraged by Smith’s jocular reputation to address him by his surname alone. Hearing the young man say that he was going that evening to see the Archbishop of Canterbury for the first time, the reverend wit interposed, “Pray don’t clap him on the back, and call him Howley.”
LORD NORTH, who had a great antipathy to music, being asked why he did not subscribe to the Ancient Concerts, and it being urged as a reason for it that his brother the Bishop of Winchester did, “Ay,” replied his lordship, “if I was as deaf as my brother, I would subscribe too. ”
A GENTLEMAN afflicted with rheumatism consulted a physician, who immediately wrote him a prescription. As the patient was going away the doctor called him back. “By the way, sir, should my prescription happen to afford you any relief, please to let me know, as I am suffering from a similar affliction, and have tried in vain to cure it. ”
LADY CARTERET, wife of the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, in Swift’s time, one day said to the wit, “The air of this country is very good.” — “Don’t say so in England, my lady,” quickly replied the dean, “for if you do they will certainly tax it.”
“ WHAT ’S fashionable, I ’ll maintain
“ Is always right, ” cries sprightly Jane ;
“ Ah ! would to Heaven,” cries graver Sue,
“ What ’s right were fashionable too. ”
A GENTLEMAN, who was dining with another, praised the meat very much, and inquired who was his butcher. “His name is Addison.” — “Addison !” echoed the guest; “pray is he any relation to the poet ?” — “I can’t say : but this I know, he is seldom without his Steel by his side.”
A TRAVELLER coming up to an inn door, said : “Pray, friend, are you the master of this house ?” — “Yes, sir,” answered Boniface, “my wife has been dead these three weeks. ”
LORD JOHN RUSSELL, remarkable for the smallness of his person as Lord Nugent was for the reverse, was expected at a house where Sydney Smith was a guest. “Lord John comes here to-day,” said Sydney Smith, “his corporeal anti-part, Lord Nugent, is already here. Heaven send he may not swallow John ! There are, however, stomach-pumps in case of accident.”
A VERY dull man, after dinner, had been boring the company with a long discourse, in the course of which he had given utterance to ethical views as old as the hills, as though he had just discovered them. When he had done repeating his truisms, Charles Lamb gravely said : “Then, sir, you are actually prepared to maintain that a thief is not altogether a moral man. ”
( Said to be written by Peter Pindar. )
THEY say, O’Keefe,
Thou art a thief,
That half thy works are stolen or more ;
I say O’Keefe,
Thou art no thief,
Such stuff was never writ before !
A YOUNG lawyer who had been “admitted” about a year, was asked by a friend, “How do you like your new profession ?” The reply was accompanied by a brief sigh to suit the occasion : “My profession is much better than my practice. ”
MR. REYNOLDS, the dramatist, once met a free and easy actor, who told him that he had passed three festive days at the seat of the Marquis and Marchioness of ——, without any invitation. He had gone there on the assumption that as my lord and lady were not on speaking terms, each would suppose the other had asked him, and so it turned out.
JUDGE CLAYTON was an honest man, but not a profound lawyer. Soon after he was raised to the Irish bench, he happened to dine in company with Counsellor Harwood, celebrated for his fine brogue, his humor, and his legal knowledge. Clayton began to make some observations on the Laws of Ireland. “In my country” (England), said he, “the laws are numerous, but then one is always found to be the key to the other. In Ireland it is just the contrary; your laws so perpetually clash with one another, and are so very contradictory, that I protest I don’t understand them. ” — “True, my lord,” cried Harwood, “that is what we all say. ”
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE was so bad a horseman, that when mounted he generally attracted unfavorable notice. On a certain occasion he was riding along a turnpike road, in the county of Durham, when he was met by a wag, who, mistaking his man, thought the rider a good subject for sport. “I say, young man,” cried the rustic, “did you see a tailor on the road ?” — “Yes, I did; and he told me that, if I went a little further, I should meet a goose. ”
332THE editor of the Evangelical Observer, in reference to a certain person, took occasion to write that he was rectus in ecclesia, i.e., in good standing in the church. The compositor, in the editor’s absence, converted it into rectus in culina, which although not very bad Latin, altered the sense very materially, giving the reverend gentleman a good standing in the kitchen.
( Upon the trustworthiness of —— ——. )
HE’LL keep a secret well, or I ’m deceived,
For what he says will never be believed.
WHEN ladies wore their dresses very low and very short, a wit observed that “they began too late and ended too soon.”
A GENTLEMAN gave a friend some first-rate wine, which he tasted and drank, making no remark upon it. The owner, disgusted at his guest’s want of appreciation, next offered some strong but inferior wine, which the guest had no sooner tasted than he exclaimed that it was excellent wine. “But you said nothing of the first, ” remarked his host. “O,” replied the other, “the first required nothing being said of it. It spoke for itself. I thought the second wanted a trumpeter.
A JUDGE, joking a young barrister, said, “If you and I were turned into a horse and an ass, which would you prefer to be ?” — “The ass, to be sure,” replied the barrister, “I ’ve heard of an ass being made a judge, but a horse never.”
AT an hotel at Brighton, Douglas Jerrold was dining 333 with two friends, one of whom, after dinner, ordered “a bottle of old port.” — “Waiter,” added Jerrold, with a significant twinkle of his eye, “mind now; a bottle of your old port, not your elder port.”
WHEN Dr. H. and Sergeant A. were walking arm-in-arm, a wag said to a friend, “These two are just equal to one highwayman.” — “Why ?” was the response. “Because it is a lawyer and a doctor — your money or your life. ”
“ A PART, ” says Euclid, “ at once may see,
Unto the whole can never equal be ” ;
Yet W——’s speeches can this fact control,
Of them a part is equal to the whole.
BURKE once mentioned to Fox that he had written a tragedy. “Did you let Garrick see it ?” inquired his friend : “No,” replied Burke; “though I had the folly to write it, I had the wit to keep it to myself. ”
DR. MAGINN dining with a friend on ham and chicken, addressed Sukey Boyle, his friend’s housekeeper, thus : “You know, Boyle, what old Ovid, in his ‘Art of Love’ (book iii.), says; I give you the same wish : —
“ ‘ Semper tibi pendeat hamus, ’
May you always have a ham hanging in your kitchen.” The doctor insisted that tea was well known to the Romans, “for,” said he, “even in the time of Plautus it was a favorite beverage with the ladies, —
“ ‘Amant te omnes mulieres.’ ”
Miles Glor., Act i., v. 58.
Observing Sukey Boyle, he said to his friend, “Ah ! John, I see you follow the old advice we both learned at school, 334 Χαρίζον τῇ Ψυζῇ, ‘ Indulge yourself with Sukey. ’ ” There was some hock at dinner, which he thus eulogized : —
“ ‘Hoc tum sævas paulatim mitigat iras,
Hoc minuit luctus mœstaque corda levat.’ ”
Ov. Trist., lib. iv., el. vi., v. 15, 16.
ONE of the Kembles made his first appearance on the stage as an opera singer. His voice was, however, so bad, that at a rehearsal the conductor of the orchestra called out, “Mr. Kemble ! Mr. Kemble ! you are murdering the music !” — “My dear sir,” was the quiet rejoinder, “it is far better to murder it outright, than to keep on beating it as you do. ”
SOME one jocularly observed to the Marquis Wellesley, that, in his arrangements of the ministry, his brother, the Duke, had thrown him overboard. “Yes,” said the Marquis; “but I trust I have strength enough to swim to the other side. ”
ONE asked his friend, why he married so little a wife ? “Why,” said he, “I thought you knew, that of all evils we should choose the least. ”
A LABORER’S daughter, who had been in service from her childhood, would frequently wish to be married, that, as she expressed herself, she might rest her bones. Some time afterwards she got married, and her late mistress meeting her, asked her, “Well, Mary, have you rested your bones yet ?” — “Yes, indeed,” replied she, with a sigh, “I have rested my jaw-bones. ”
A CHARTIST at a public meeting, in the course of a speech about the “five points” of the charter, exclaimed, “Gentlemen, is not one man as good as another ?” — 335 “Uv course he is,” shouted an excited Irish chartist, “and a great deal betther. ”
“ MY dart, ” cried Death, “ I cannot find,
So now I ’m quite at sea. ”
Quoth Dr. Bolus, “Never mind, —
There, take this recipe. ”
A WELL-DRESSED fellow walked into a room where they were talking politics, and, stretching himself up to his full height, exclaimed, in a loud voice, “Where is a radical ? Show me a radical, gentlemen, and I ’ll show you a liar !” — In an instant a man exclaimed, “I am a radical, sir !” — “You are ?” — “Yes, sir, I am ! ” — “Well, just you step round the corner with me, and I ’ll show you a fellow who said I could n’t find a radical in the ward. Ain’t he a liar, I should like to know ?”
CURRAN, in describing a speech made by Sergeant Hewitt, said : “My learned friend’s speech put me exactly in mind of a familiar utensil in domestic use, commonly called an extinguisher. It began at a point, and on it went widening and widening, until at last it fairly put the question out altogether.”
A FRIEND of Sydney Smith inquired, “What is Puseyism ? To which the witty canon replied : “Puseyism, sir, is inflexion and genuflexion; posture and imposture; bowing to the east, and curtseying to the west.”
BROUGHAM, speaking of the salary attached to a new judgeship, said it was all moonshine. Lyndhurst, in his dry and waggish way, remarked, “May be so, my Lord Harry; but I have a strong notion that, moonshine though it be, you would like to see the first quarter of it.”
336WHEN at the head of our most gracious king,
Disloyal Collins did his pebble fling, —
“ Why choose, ” with tears the injured monarch said,
“ So hard a stone to break so soft a head ? ”
LORD GREY complains that he cannot succeed in pleasing any party. He should follow the example of duellists, and by going out he would certainly give satisfaction.
AN actor named Priest was playing at one of the principal theatres. Some one remarked to the Garrick Club that there were a great many men in the pit. “Probably clerks who have taken Priest’s orders, ” said Mr. Foote, one of the best punsters as well as one of the cleverest comic satirists of the day.
AFTER a very violent speech from an opposition member, Mr. Burke started suddenly from his seat, and rushed to the ministerial side of the house, exclaiming with much vehemence, “I quit the camp ! I quit the camp !” — “I hope,” said Mr. Sheridan, “as the honorable gentleman has quitted the camp as a deserter, he will not return as a spy. ”
A CAMBRIDGE tutor said to his pupil, “If you go over to Newmarket, beware of betting, for in nine cases out of ten it brings a man to ruin.” — “Sir,” said the youth, “I must really differ from you; so far from ever being the worse for it, I have invariably been the better. ”
WHEN Curran was cross-examining Lundy Foot, the celebrated Irish tobacconist, he put a question at which Lundy hesitated a great deal : “Lundy,” exclaimed Curran, “that ’s a poser, — a deuse of a pinch, Lundy !”
337AN eminent painter, who had suffered, under the common malady of his profession, namely, to paint portraits for persons who neither paid for them nor took them away, sent word to an ugly customer who refused to pay, that he was in treaty for the picture with the landlord of the “Saracen’s Head. ” it was paid for immediately.
TO hear Dash by the hour blunder forth his vile prose,
Job himself scarcely patience could keep ;
He ’s so dull that each moment we ’re ready to doze,
Yet so noisy we can’t go to sleep.
AN Irish post-boy having driven a gentleman a long stage during torrents of rain, was asked if he was not very wet ? “Arrah! I would n’t care about being very wet, if I was n’t so very dry, your honor.”
THE beautiful Lady Coventry was exhibiting to Selwyn a splendid new dress, covered with large silver spangles, the size of a shilling, and inquired of him whether he admired her taste. “Why,” he said, “you will be change for a guinea. ”
A LITTLE boy one day came running home, and said, “O father, I’ve just seen the blackest man that ever was !” — “How black was he, my son ?” — “O, he was as black as black can be ! why, father, charcoal would make a white mark on him !”
HARRY WOODWARD, walking with a friend, met a most miserable object, who earnestly solicited their charity. On Woodward giving a few pence, his friend said, “I believe that fellow is an impostor.” — “He is either the 338 most distressed man, or the best actor, I ever saw in my life,” replied the comedian : “and, as either one or the other, he has a brotherly claim upon me. ”
A POET was once walking with T——, in the street, reciting some of his verse. T—— perceiving, at a short distance, a man yawning, pointed him out to the poet, saying, “Not so loud, he hears you. ”
A GENTLEMAN from Ireland, on entering a London tavern, saw a countryman of his, a Tipperary squire, sitting over his pint of wine in the coffee-room. “My dear fellow,” said he, “what are you about ? For the honor of Tipperary, don’t be after sitting over a pint of wine in a house like this !” — “Make yourself aisy, countryman,” was the reply, “It ’s the seventh I have had, and every one in the room knows it. ”
BARHAM having sent his friend, Sydney Smith, a brace of pheasants, the present was acknowledged in the following characteristic epistle : “Many thanks, my dear sir, for your kind present of game. If there is a pure and elevated pleasure in this world, it is that of roast pheasant and bread sauce; barn-door fowls for dissenters, but for the real churchman, the thirty-nine times articled clerk, the pheasant, the pheasant.” — Ever yours, S. S. ”
THOMSON, the author of the “Seasons,” was wonderfully indolent. A friend entered his room, and finding him in bed, although the day was far spent, asked him why he did not get up. “Man, I hae nae motive, ” replied the poet.
THE surgeon of an English ship of war used to prescribe salt water for his patients in all disorders. Having sailed 339 one evening on a party of pleasure, he happened by some mischance to be drowned. The captain, who had not heard of the disaster, asked one of the tars next day if he had heard anything of the doctor. “Yes,” answered Jack : “he was drowned last night in his own medicine chest. ”
ADMIRAL LEE, when only a post captain, being on board his ship one very rainy and stormy night, the officer of the watch came down to his cabin and cried, “Sir, the sheet-anchor is coming home.” — “Indeed,” says the captain, “I think the sheet-anchor is perfectly in the right of it. I don’t know what would stay out such a stormy night as this.”
“ I ’M very much surprised, ” quoth Harry,
“ That Jane a gambler should marry. ”
“ I ’m not at all, ” her sister says,
“ You know he has such winning ways ! ”
THEODORE HOOK was relating to his friend, Charles Mathews, how, on one occasion, when supping in the company of Peake, the latter surreptitiously removed from his plate several slices of tongue; and, affecting to be very much annoyed by such practical joking, Hook concluded with the question, “Now, Charles, what would you do to anybody who treated you in such a manner ?” — “Do ?” exclaimed Mathews, “if any man meddled with my tongue, I ’d lick him !”
A LANDED proprietor in the small county of Rutland became very intimate with the Duke of Argyle, to whom, in the plenitude of his friendship, he said; “How I wish your estate were in my country !” Upon which the duke replied : “I ’m thinking, if it were, there would be no room for yours. ”
340AT one of the annual dinners of the members of the Chapel Royal, a gentleman had been plaguing Edward Cannon with a somewhat dry disquisition on the noble art of fencing. Cannon for some time endured it with patience; but at length, on the man remarking that Sir George D—— was a great fencer, Cannon, who disliked him, replied, “I don’t know, sir, whether Sir George is a great fencer, but Sir George is a great fool !” A little startled, the other rejoined, “Possibly he is; but then, you know, a man may be both.” — “So I see, sir, ” said Cannon, turning away.
WHILE Butler, needy wretch, was yet alive,
No generous patron would a dinner give.
See him, when starved to death and turned to dust,
Presented with a monumental bust.
The poet’s fate is herE in emblem shown, —
He asked for bread, and he received a stone.
MRS. POWELL the actress was at a court of assize when a young barrister, who rose to make his maiden speech, suddenly stopped short and could not proceed. The lady, feeling for his situation, cried out, as though he had been a young actor on his first appearance, “Somebody give him the word, — somebody give him the word !”
PORSON was once disputing with an acquaintance, who, getting the worst of it, said, “Professor, my opinion of you is most contemptible.” — “Sir,” returned the great Grecian, “I never knew an opinion of yours that was not contemptible. ”
ONE of the curiosities some time shown at a public exhibition, professed to be a skull of Oliver Cromwell. 341 A gentleman present observed that it could not be Cromwell’s, as he had a very large head, and this was a small skull. “O, I know all that,” said the exhibitor, undisturbed, “but you see this was his skull when he was a boy. ”
A CANTAB, one day observing a ragamuffin-looking boy scratching his head at the door of Alderman Purchase, in Cambridge, where he was begging, and thinking to pass a joke upon him, said, “So, Jack, you are picking them out, are you ?” — “Nah, sar, ” retorted the urchin; “I takes ’em as they come !”
THE late Earl Dudley wound up an eloquent tribute to the virtues of a deceased Baron of the Exchequer with this pithy peroration : “He was a good man, an excellent man. He had the best melted butter I ever tasted in my life.”
EPIGRAM on the occasion of the duel between Tom Moore, the poet, and Francis Jeffrey : —
When Anacreon would fight, as the poets have said,
A reverse he displayed in his vapor,
For while all his poems were loaded with lead,
His pistols were loaded with paper.
For excuses, Anacreon old custom may thank,
Such a salvo he should not abuse ;
For the cartridge, by rule, is always made blank,
Which is fired away at Reviews.
THE Duke of Wellington having had his windows broken by the mob, continued to have boards before the windows of his house in Piccadilly. “Strange that the Duke will not renounce his political errors,” said A’Beckett, “seeing that no pains have been spared to convince him of them.”
342THERE was in Wilkes’s time a worthy person, who had risen from the condition of a bricklayer to be an alderman of London. Among other of his early habits, the civic dignitary retained that of eating everything with his fingers. One day a choice bit of turbot having repeatedly escaped from his grasp, Wilkes, who witnessed the dilemma, whispered, “My lord, you had better take your trowel to it.”
DURING the representation of “Macbeth,” an eminent special pleader graced the boxes of Drury Lane Theatre, to see it performed. When the hero questions the Witches, as to what they are doing : they answer, “a deed without a name.” Our counsellor, whose attention was at that moment directed more to Coke upon Littleton than to Shakespeare, catching, however, the words in the play, repeated, “A deed without a name ! why, ’t is void. ”
THE following lines were addressed to a gentleman notoriously addicted to the vice which has been euphemistically described as “ the postponement of the truth for the purposes of the moment ” : —
Whoe’er would learn a fact from you,
Must take you by contraries ;
What you deny, perhaps is true ;
But nothing that you swear is.
AN Irishman was once brought up before a magistrate, charged with marrying six wives. The magistrate asked him how he could be so hardened a villain ? “Please your worship,” says Paddy, “I was just trying to get a good one. ”
THE conversation at Holland House turning on first love, Thomas Moore compared it to a potato, because “it 343 shoots from the eyes.” — “Or rather,” exclaimed Lord Byron, “because it becomes less by pairing. ”
AN acquaintance remarked to Dr. Robert South, the celebrated preacher at the court of Charles the Second, “Ah ! doctor, you are such a wit !” The doctor replied, “Don’t make game of people’s infirmities : you, sir, might have been born a wit !”
SIR JOSEPH JEKYLL wrote the following impromptu, on observing a certain sergeant, well known for his prosiness, bustling into the court of King’s Bench, where he was engaged in a case : —
Behold the sergeant full of fire,
Long shall his hearers rue it ;
His purple garments come from Tyre,
His arguments go to it.
MR. DALE, who it would appear was a short stout man, had a person in his employment named Matthew, who was permitted that familiarity with his master which was so characteristic of the former generation. One winter day, Mr. Dale came into the counting-house, and complained that he had fallen on the ice. Matthew, who saw that his master was not much hurt, grinned a sarcastic smile. “I fell all my length,” said Mr. Dale. “Nae great length, sir,” said Matthew. “Indeed, Matthew, ye need not laugh,” said Mr. Dale, “I have hurt the sma’ of my back.” — “I wunner whaur that is,” said Matthew.
“MR. BROWN, I owe you a grudge, remember that !” — “I shall not be frightened then, for I never knew you to pay anything that you owe.”
“PRAY, my lord,” asked a fashionable lady of Lord 344 Kenyon, “what do you think my son had better do in order to succeed in the law ?” — “Let him spend all his money : marry a rich wife, and spend all hers : and when he has not got a shilling in the world, let him attack the law.” Such was the advice of an old Chief Justice.
IT is too true that there are many patriots, who, while they bleat about the “cause of liberty,” act in so interested a manner that they are evidently looking more after the effects.
WHEN the British ships under Lord Nelson were bearing down to attack the combined fleet off Trafalgar, the first lieutenant of the “Revenge,” on going round to see that all hands were at quarters, observed one of the men, — an Irishman, — devoutly kneeling at the side of his gun. So very unusual an attitude exciting his surprise and curiosity he asked the man if he was afraid. “Afraid,” answered the tar, “no, your honor; I was only praying that the enemy’s shot may be distributed in the same proportion as the prize-money, — the greatest part among the officers. ”
WHEN we heard —— say a thing of some acidity the other night in the House of Commons, the honorable member reminded us of a calf’s head with a lemon in it. — G. A’B. [Gilbert A’Beckett.]
A NAMESAKE of Charles Fox having been hung at Tyburn, the latter inquired of George Selwyn whether he had attended the execution ? “No,” was his reply, “I make a point of never attending rehearsals ! ”
VANE’S speeches to an hour-glass,
Do some resemblance show ;
Because the longer time they run,
The shallower they grow !
ROWLAND HILL rode a great deal, and exercise preserved him in vigorous health. On one occasion, when asked by a medical friend what physician and apothecary he employed, to be always so well, he replied, “My physician has always been a horse, and my apothecary an ass ! ”
A ROMAN Catholic prelate requested Pugin, the architect, to furnish designs, etc., for a new church. It was to be “very large, very handsome, and very cheap” ; the parties purposing to erect being “very poor ; in fact, having only £ ——,” — “Say thirty shillings more,” replied the astonished architect, “and have a tower and spire at once !”
A BEGGAR in Dublin had been long besieging an old, gouty, testy gentleman, who roughly refused to relieve him. The mendicant civilly replied, “I wish your honor’s heart was as tender as your toes. ”
A NATION grown free in a single day is a child born with the limbs and the vigor of a man, who would take a drawn sword for his rattle, and set the house in a blaze, that he might chuckle over the splendor. — S. S. [Sydney Smith.]
THY flattering picture, Phryne, ’s like to thee
Only in this, that you both painted be.