e of things in a miserable marriage of
thirty-two years he seemed exhausted, and wrote, then a renowned composer,
to a friend from London:

"My wife, that infernal woman, has written me such horrible things that I
will not return home again."

At last Haydn separated from his wife and placed her as a boarder with a
schoolmaster in Baden, where she died in 1810. Her memory was always
disagreeable to him, even after her death.

A Chapter on Puns.

BY THEODORE HOOK.

Theodore Hook (1788-1841) belonged to that singularly
fortunate class of writers whose fame was greater while they
lived than after death closed the book of life. To
present-day readers Hook is known only as the subject of
many a merry anecdote, the coiner of epigrams, and one of
the most celebrated practical jokers of his time.

But among his contemporaries Theodore Hook was something
more. Before he was twenty years old farces and comic operas
from his pen had been successfully produced on the London
stage, and he was a pet of London society. When he was
thirty he was the editor of the Tory paper _John Bull_, and
the novels that he published at this period attained a high
degree of popularity.

As a punster Hook had few equals, and "A Chapter on Puns,"
which is herewith reprinted for the readers of THE SCRAP
BOOK, constitutes an excellent specimen of the sort of humor
for which its author was famous.

There is one class of people who, with a depravity of appetite not
excelled by that of the celebrated Anna Maria Schurman, who rejoiced in
eating spiders, thirst after puns. If you fall in with these, you have no
resource but to indulge them to their heart's content; but in order to
rescue yourself from the imputation of believing punning to be wit, quote
the definition of Swift, and be, like him, as inveterate a punster as you
possibly can, immediately after resting everything, and hazarding all,
upon the principle that the worse the pun the better.

In order to be prepared for this sort of _punic_ war (for the disorder is
provocative and epidemic), the moment any one gentleman or lady has, as
they say in Scotland, "let a pun," everybody else in the room who can or
cannot do the same sets to work to endeavor to emulate the example. From
that period all rational conversation is at an end, and a jargon of
nonsense succeeds which lasts till the announcement of coffee, or supper,