There is a very general notion, that if you once suffer women to eat of the tree of knowledge, the rest of the family will very soon be reduced to the same kind of aerial and unsatisfactory diet.
DCXLIV.—A-LIQUID.
Porson, once conversing with a party of congenial friends, seemed at a loss for something to cheer the inward man, and drawing his glass mechanically towards him, he took up one bottle, and then another, without finding wherewithal to replenish. A friend observing this, he inquired what the professor was in search of. "Only a-liquid!" answered Porson.
DCXLV.—TOP AND BOTTOM.
The following playful colloquy in verse took place at a dinner-table between Sir George Rose and James Smith, in allusion to Craven Street, Strand, where he resided:—
J.S.—"At the top of the street ten attorneys find place,
And ten dark coal barges are moored:
Fly, honesty, fly, to some safer retreat,
For there's craft in the river, and craft in the street."
Sir G.R.—"Why should Honesty fly to some safer retreat,
From attorneys and barges, od rot 'em?
For the attorneys are just at the top of the street,
And the barges are just at the bottom."
DCXLVI.—A SUGGESTIVE PRESENT.
Jerrold and a company of literary friends were out in the country. In the course of their walk, they stopped to notice the gambols of an ass's foal. A very sentimental poet present vowed that he should like to send the little thing as a present to his mother. "Do," Jerrold replied, "and tie a piece of paper round its neck, bearing this motto,—'When this you see, remember me.'"