"Pay me that six-and-eightpence you owe me, Mr. Malrooney," said a village attorney. "For what?"—"For the opinion you had of me."—"Faith, I never had any opinion of you in all my life."
MLXXVI.—MONEY'S WORTH.
Whilst inspecting a farm in a pauperized district, an enterprising agriculturist could not help noticing the slow, drawling motions of one of the laborers there, and said, "My man, you do not sweat at that work."—"Why, no, master," was the reply, "seven shillings a week isn't sweating wages."
MLXXVII.—ON MR. GULLY BEING RETURNED M.P. FOR PONTEFRACT.
Strange is it, proud Pontefract's borough should sully
Its fame by returning to parliament Gully.
The etymological cause, I suppose, is
His breaking the bridges of so many noses.
MLXXVIII.—WRITING FOR THE STAGE.
People would be astonished if they were aware of the cart-loads of trash which are annually offered to the director of a London theatre. The very first manuscript (says George Colman) which was proposed to me for representation, on my undertaking theatrical management, was from a nautical gentleman, on a nautical subject; the piece was of a tragic description, and in five acts; during the principal scenes of which the hero of the drama declaimed from the main-mast of a man-of-war, without once descending from his position!
A tragedy was offered to Mr. Macready, or Mr. Webster, in thirty acts. The subject was the history of Poland, and the author proposed to have five acts played a night, so that the whole could be gone through in a week.
MLXXIX.—A COMPARISON.
"An attorney," says Sterne, "is the same thing to a barrister that an apothecary is to a physician, with this difference, that your lawyer does not deal in scruples."