ng elegant compliment from Dr.
Wharton, then at Winchester school:--
If what you advance, dear doctor, be true,
That "wisdom is sorrow," how wretched are you.
DCXXVII.--LIBERAL GIFT.
A COMEDIAN at Covent Garden advised one of the scene-shifters, who had
met with an accident, to try a subscription; and a few days afterwards
he asked for the list of names, which, when he had read over, he
returned. "Why, sir," says the poor fellow, "won't you give me
something?"--"Why, zounds, man," replied the comedian, "didn't I _give_
you the _hint_?"
DCXXVIII.--EASILY ANSWERED.
A CERTAIN Lord Mayor hearing of a gentleman who had had the small-pox
twice, and died of it, asked, if he died the first time or the second.
DCXXIX.--ON THE LATIN GERUNDS.
WHEN Dido mourned, AEneas would not come,
She wept in silence, and was _Di-Do-Dumb_.
DCXXX.--DODGING A CREDITOR.
A CREDITOR, whom he was anxious to avoid, met Sheridan coming out of
Pall Mall. There was no possibility of avoiding him, but he did not lose
his presence of mind. "That's a beautiful mare you are on!" said
Sheridan. "Do you think so?"--"Yes, indeed! how does she trot?" The
creditor, highly flattered, put her into full trot. Sheridan bolted
round the corner, and was _out of sight_ in a moment.
DCXXXI.--BAD HABIT.
SIR FREDERICK FLOOD had a droll habit, of which he could never
effectually break himself. Whenever a person at his back whispered or
suggested anything to him whilst he was speaking in public, without a
moment's reflection, he always repeated the suggestion _literatim_. Sir
Frederick was once making a long speech in the Irish Parliament, lauding
the transcendent merits of the Wexford magistracy, on a motion for
extending the criminal jurisdiction in that county, to keep down the
disaffected. As he was closing a most turgid oration by declaring "that
the said magistracy ought to receive some signal mark of the
Lord-Lieutenant's favor," John Egan, who was rather mellow, and sitting
behind him, jocularly whispered, "_and be whipped at the cart's
tail_."--"And be whipped at the cart's tail!" repeated Sir Frederick
unconsciously, amidst peals of uncontrollable laughter.
DCXXXII.--WHO'S TO BLAME.
KING JAMES used to say, that he never knew a modest man make his way in
a court. As he was repeating this expression one day, a David Floyd, who
was then in waiting at his Majesty's
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