Accidental Rhymes.
In President Lincoln's last inaugural address occurs the following instance of involuntary rhyme:—
"Fondly do we hope,
Fervently do we pray,
That this mighty scourge of war
May speedily pass away;
Yet, if it be God's will
That it continue until—"
And here the rhyme ceases. Cicero's prose shows, in places, similar instances of involuntary rhyme.
Cæsar's Wife must be above Suspicion.
No doubt this proverb originated from a passage in Suetonius, which says that "the name of Pompeia, the wife of Julius Cæsar, having been mixed up with an accusation against P. Clodius, her husband divorced her; not, as he said, because he believed the charge against her, but because he would have those belonging to him as free from suspicion as from crime."
Oddly Addressed Letters.
On one occasion a letter arrived by post in London, directed to "Sromfridevi, Angleterre." No such person had ever been heard of; but, on a little consideration, and judging from the sound, it was obvious that the foreign writer of the letter meant Sir Humphrey Davy, and such proved to be the case. Some years since there was returned to the French Dead Letter Office a letter which had gone the round of every seaport in the Levant, and the ambiguity of whose superscription had baffled a legion of postmasters. It was addressed, "J. Dubois, Sultan Crete," and was intended for J. Dubois Surle Tancrede, a quartermaster on board of the ship Tancrede. The name and address had been written just as they had sounded to the ear. A letter addressed as follows arrived safely at its destination:—
Wood,
John,
Mass.
It was for John Underwood, Andover, Massachusetts.