Part 17 (1/2)
J. R. PLANCHe, _Songs and Poems_.
A kind Providence furnishes the limpest personality with a little gum or starch in the form of tradition.
GEORGE ELIOT, _Middlemarch_.
Oil and water--woman and a secret-- Are hostile properties.
_Baradas_, in LORD LYTTON's _Richelieu_.
At a musical _soiree_ in Paris, a lady, possessing a magnificent soprano voice and remarkable facility of execution, sang the great Maestro's well-known aria, ”Una Voce,” with great effect, but overladen with fiorituri of the most elaborate description. Rossini, at its conclusion, advanced to the piano and complimented the lady most highly upon her vocal powers, terminating his encomiums with the cruel inquiry: ”Mais de qui est la musique?”
J. R. PLANCHe, _Recollections_.
_ON A BAD SINGER._
Swans sing before they die; 'twere no bad thing Did certain persons die before they sing.
S. T. COLERIDGE.
”Is life worth living?” That depends upon the liver.
_The World._
_OLD LOVES._
”Then, you liked little Bowes.”-- ”And you liked Jane Raby!”
”But you like _me_ now, Rose?”-- ”As I liked 'little Bowes'!”
”Am I then to suppose----”
”_Hus.h.!.+--you mustn't wake baby!_”
”_Did_ you like little Bowes?”-- ”If you liked Jane Raby!”
AUSTIN DOBSON, _Proverbs in Porcelain_.
Women, when left to themselves, talk chiefly about their dress; they think more about their lovers than they talk about them.
W. HAZLITT, _Characteristics_.
O if billows and pillows, and bowers and flowers, And all the brave rhymes of an elder day, Could be furled together, this genial weather, And carted, or carried on ”wafts” away, Nor ever again trotted out--ah me!
How much fewer volumes of verse there'd be!
C. S. CALVERLEY, _Fly Leaves_.