N one occasion, when Power the actor was present, Hood was asked to propose his health. After enumerating the various talents that popular comedian possessed, he requested the company to observe that such a combination was a remarkable illustration of the old proverb, "It never rains but it powers."
J. R. Planché, Recollections.
DREAMED that somebody was dead. It was a private gentleman, and a particular friend; and I was greatly overcome when the news was broken to me (very delicately) by a gentleman in a cocked hat, top boots, and a sheet. Nothing else. "Good God!" I said, "is he dead?" "He is as dead, sir," rejoined the gentleman, "as a door nail. But we must all die, Mr. Dickens, sooner or later, my dear sir." "Ah!" I said; "yes, to be sure. Very true. But what did he die of?" The gentleman burst into a flood of tears, and said, in a voice broken by emotion, "He christened his youngest child, sir, with a toasting fork!"
Charles Dickens, apud J. T. Fields.
SUPPOSE all phrases of mere compliment have their turn to be true. A man is occasionally thankful when he says "thank you."
Stephen Guest, in George Eliot's Mill on the Floss.
ON ATALANTA.