f the passengers: 'Jock! Jock! distu
hear, man? Is that you or your brother?'" And to the same point is the
old nursery rhyme,--

"Ho, Master Teague, what is your story?
I went to the wood, and killed a tory;[5]
I went to the wood, and killed another:
Was it the same, or was it his brother?"[6]

We meet with a very old acquaintance in the pedant who lost a book and
sought for it many days in vain, till one day he chanced to be eating
lettuces, when, turning a corner, he saw it on the ground. Afterwards
meeting a friend who was lamenting the loss of his girdle, he said to
him, "Don't grieve; buy some lettuces; eat them at a corner; turn round
it, go a little way on, and you will find your girdle." But is there
anything like this in "Joe Miller"?--Two lazy fellows were sleeping
together, when a thief came, and drawing down the coverlet made off with
it. One of them was aware of the theft, and said to the other, "Get up,
and run after the man that has stolen our coverlet." "You blockhead,"
replied his companion, "wait till he comes back to steal the bolster,
and we two will master him." And has "Joe" got this one?--A pedant's
little boy having died, many friends came to the funeral, on seeing whom
he said, "I am ashamed to bring out so small a boy to so great a crowd."

An epigram in the _Anthologia_ may find a place among noodle
stories:

"A blockhead, bit by fleas, put out the light,
And, chuckling, cried, 'Now you can't see to bite!'"

This ancient jest has been somewhat improved in later times. Two
Irishmen in the East Indies, being sorely pestered with mosquitoes, kept
their light burning in hopes of scaring them off, but finding this did
not answer, one suggested they should extinguish the light and thus
puzzle their tormentors to find them, which was done. Presently the
other, observing the light of a firefly in the room, called to his
bedfellow, "Arrah, Mike, sure your plan's no good, for, bedad, here's
one of them looking for us wid a lantern!"

Our specimens may be now concluded with what is probably the best of the
old Greek jokes. The father of a man of Cumae having died at Alexandria,
the son dutifully took the body to the embalmers. When he returned at
the appointed time to fetch it away, there happened to be a number of
bodies in the same place, so he was asked if his father had any
peculiarity by which his body might be recognised, and the wittol
replied, "He had a cough."

[Illustrati