Part 37 (1/2)

When his feeble love is sated, he will hold thee surely then Something lower than his hookah,--something less than his cayenne.

What is this? His eyes are pinky. Was't the claret? Oh, no, no-- Bless your soul! it was the salmon--salmon always makes him so.

_Bon Gaultier Ballads._

A clergyman had commenced an able discourse, when one of the hearers exclaimed, ”That's Tillotson!” This was allowed to pa.s.s; but very soon another exclamation followed, ”That's Paley.” The preacher then addressed the disturber: ”I tell you, sir, if there is to be a repet.i.tion of such conduct, I shall call on the churchwarden to have you removed from the church.” ”That's your own,” was the ready reply.

MARK BOYD, _Reminiscences_.

College mostly makes people like bladders--just good for nothing but t' hold the stuff as is poured into 'em.

_Bartle Ma.s.sey_, in GEORGE ELIOT's _Adam Bede_.

Werther had a love for Charlotte Such as words could never utter; Would you know how first he met her?

She was cutting bread and b.u.t.ter.

So he sighed and pined and ogled, And his pa.s.sion boiled and bubbled, Till he blew his silly brains out, And no more was by it troubled.

Charlotte, having seen his body Borne before her on a shutter, Like a well-conducted person, Went on cutting bread and b.u.t.ter.

W. M. THACKERAY.

Perhaps the best ill.u.s.tration I can give of [Bagehot's] more sardonic humour, was his remark to a friend who had a church on the grounds near his house:--”Ah, you've got the church in the grounds! I like that. It's well the tenants shouldn't be _quite_ sure that the landlord's power stops with this world.”

R. H. HUTTON, _Memoir of W. Bagehot_.

_ON WIVES._

All wives are bad,--yet two blest hours they give, When first they wed, and when they cease to live.

PALLADAS, trans. by J. H. MERIVALE.

”Yes, my dear curate,” said the Professor, ”what I am enjoying is the champagne that you drink, and what you are enjoying is the champagne that I drink. This is altruism; this is benevolence; this is the sublime outcome of enlightened modern thought. The pleasures of the table, in themselves, are low and beastly ones; but if we each of us are only glad because the others are enjoying them, they become holy and glorious beyond description.”

”They do,” cried the curate rapturously, ”indeed they do. I will drink another bottle for your sake.”

W. H. MALLOCK, _The New Paul and Virginia_.

Some d--d people have come in, and I must stop.

By d--d, I mean deuced.

LAMB to WORDSWORTH.

Ours is so far-advanced an age!