A DREADFUL FIT OF RHEUMATISM.
Two Cantabs, brothers, named Whiter, one the learned author of Etymologicum Magnum, the other an amiable divine; both were remarkable, the one for being six, the other about five feet in height. The taller was eccentric and often absent in his habits, the other a wag. Both were invited to the same party, and the taller being first ready, slipped on the coat of the shorter, and wended his way into a crowded room of fashionables, to whom his eccentricities being familiar, they were not much surprised at seeing him encased in a coat, the tail of which scarcely reached his hips, whilst the sleeves ran short of his elbows; in fact, it was a perfect strait jacket, and he had not been long seated before he began to complain to every body that he was suffering from a dreadful fit of rheumatism. One or two suggested the tightness of his coat as the cause of his pain; but he remained rheumatic in spite of them, till his brother’s approach threw the whole party into a fit of convulsive laughter, as he came sailing into the room, his coat-tails sweeping the room, en traine, and his arms performing the like service on either side, as he exclaimed, to his astonished brother, “Why, Bob, you have got my coat on!” Bob then discovered that his friends’ hints bordered on the truth, and the two exchanged garments forthwith, to the amusement of all present.
DR. PARR AN INGRATE.
The Doctor was once staying with the late great and good Mr. Roscoe, when many of the most distinguished Whigs were his guests also, out of compliment to whom the Doctor forbore to indulge in his customary after-dinner pipe. At length, when wine and words had circulated briskly, and twilight began to set in, he insisted upon mounting to his own room to have a whiff solus. Having groped his way up stairs, somewhat exhausted with the effort, he threw himself into what he took to be an arm-chair. Suddenly the ears of the party were assailed with awful moans and groans, as of some one in tribulation. Mr. Roscoe hastened to learn the cause, and no sooner reached the stairs’ foot, than he heard the Doctor calling lustily for his man John, adding, in more supplicatory accents, “Will nobody help a Christian man in distress! Will nobody help a Christian man in distress!” Mr. Roscoe mounted to the rescue, but could not forbear a hearty laugh, as he beheld Dr. P. locked in the close embrace of a large old-fashioned grate, which he had mistaken for an arm-chair, and from which he was in vain struggling to relieve himself.
MON DIEU—LE DIABLE.
When Robert the Devil was first produced at Paris, and the opera going folk were on the qui vive for the promised appearance of the Prince of Darkness, a certain Cantab, the facial line of whose countenance bordered on the demoniacal, went to see him make his bow to a Parisian audience, and happened to enter the same loge from whence a Parisian belle was anxiously watching the entrée of Monsieur Le Robert. Attracted by the creaking of the loge door, on suddenly turning her head in its direction, she caught a glimpse of our Cambridge friend, and was so forcibly struck with the expression of his countenance, that she went into hysterics, exclaiming, “Mon Dieu! Le Diable!”