CINDERELLA’S SLIPPER.
A story somewhat similar to that of Cinderella has been handed down from the Greek. It is reported of Rhodopis,—a Thracian slave, who was purchased and manumitted by Charaxus of Mytilene, and afterward settled in Egypt,—that one day, while she was in the bath, an eagle, having flown down, snatched one of her slippers from an attendant, and carried it to Memphis. Psammitichus, the king, at the time, was sitting on his tribunal, and while engaged in dispensing justice, the eagle, settling above his head, dropped the sandal into his bosom. Astonished by the singularity of the event, and struck by the diminutive size and elegant shape of the sandal, the king ordered search to be made for the owner throughout the land of Egypt. Having found her at Naucratis, she was presented to the king, who made her his queen.
CURTAIN LECTURES.
Jerrold, in his preface to the later editions of Mrs. Caudle’s Curtain Lectures, makes this curious statement:—
It has happened to the writer that two, or three, or ten, or twenty gentlewomen have asked him ... What could have made you think of Mrs. Caudle? How could such a thing have entered any man’s mind? There are subjects that seem like rain-drops to fall upon a man’s head, the head itself having nothing to do with the matter.... And this was, no doubt, the accidental cause of the literary sowing and expansion—unfolding like a night-flower—of Mrs. Caudle.... The writer, still dreaming and musing, and still following no distinct line of thought, there struck upon him, like notes of sudden household music, these words—Curtain Lectures.
Nevertheless, this phrase may be traced back more than two centuries, while the idea will be found in the Sixth Satire of Juvenal, who says:—
Semper habet lites, alternaque jurgia lectus,
In quo nupta jacet: minimum dormitur in illo, &c.
Stapylton’s translation of this passage was published in 1647:—
Debates, alternate brawlings, ever were