MDCXXXV.—A PROBLEM FOR TOTAL ABSTAINERS.
Thomas Hood says: "Puny draughts can hardly be called drinking. Pints cannot be deemed potations."
MDCXXXVI.—THE DOG TAX.
Brown drops in. Brown is said to be the toady of Jones. When Jones has the influenza, Brown dutifully catches cold in the head. Douglas Jerrold remarked to Brown, "Have you heard the rumor that's flying about town?"—"No."—"Well, they say that Jones pays the dog-tax for you."
MDCXXXVII.—A PUN WITH AN IRISH ACCENT.
Hood described a good church minister as "Piety parsonified."
MDCXXXVIII.—A NEW WAY WITH ATTORNEYS.
One day a simple farmer, who had just buried a rich relation, an attorney, was complaining of the great expense of a funeral cavalcade in the country. "Why, do you bury your attorneys here?" asked Foote. "Yes, to be sure we do: how else?"—"O, we never do that in London."—"No?" said the other, much surprised; "how do you manage, then?"—"Why, when the patient happens to die, we lay him out in a room over night by himself, lock the door, throw open the window, and in the morning he is gone."—"Indeed!" exclaimed the farmer, with amazement; "what becomes of him?"—"Why, that we cannot exactly tell; all we know is, there's a strong smell of brimstone in the room the next morning."
MDCXXXIX.—THE DOUBT EXPLAINED.
A man with a very short nose was continually ridiculing another, whose nose was remarkably long. The latter said to him one day, "You are always making observations upon my nose; perhaps you think it was made at the expense of yours."