MDXX.—FASHION AND VIRTUE.
"What's fashionable, I'll maintain
Is always right," cries sprightly Jane;
"Ah! would to Heaven," cries graver Sue,
"What's right were fashionable too."
MDXXI.—PROFESSIONAL COMPANIONS.
A gentleman, who was dining with another, praised the meat very much, and inquired who was his butcher. "His name is Addison."—"Addison!" echoed the guest; "pray is he any relation to the poet?"—"I can't say: but this I know, he is seldom without his Steel by his side."
MDXXII.—WHY MASTER OF THE HOUSE.
A traveller coming up to an inn door, said: "Pray, friend, are you the master of this house?"—"Yes, sir," answered Boniface, "my wife has been dead these three weeks."
MDXXIII.—PRECAUTIONARY.
Lord John Russell, remarkable for the smallness of his person as Lord Nugent was for the reverse, was expected at a house where Sydney Smith was a guest. "Lord John comes here to-day," said Sydney Smith, "his corporeal anti-part, Lord Nugent, is already here. Heaven send he may not swallow John! There are, however, stomach-pumps in case of accident."
MDXXIV.—A LATE DISCOVERER.
A very dull man, after dinner, had been boring the company with a long discourse, in the course of which he had given utterance to ethical views as old as the hills, as though he had just discovered them. When he had done repeating his truisms, Charles Lamb gravely said: "Then, sir, you are actually prepared to maintain that a thief is not altogether a moral man."