"Sartain!—Bill and Jo Smith and I play together. Bill took my cross-gun, and owes me—"
"Very well: Mr. Smith has three boys, William, Joseph, and Henry. Who is the father of William, Joseph, and Henry Smith?"
"Mr. Smith!" exclaimed James, instantly; "Mr. Smith: guess I know that!"
"Certainly, James. Very well, then. Now, this is exactly the same thing. You see, as we have been reading, that Noah had three sons, like Mr. Smith; but their names were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now, who was the father of Noah's three sons?"
James hesitated a minute, with his finger in his mouth; and then, as if the difficult question had been suddenly solved in his mind, he exclaimed:
"I know now: Mr. Smith!"
Perhaps some of our readers have heard of that rare compound of all that was quaint, curious, and ridiculous, Lord Timothy Dexter, of Newburyport, Massachusetts. He was an ignorant, eccentric old fellow, who, having made himself a rich man, conceived the original idea of setting up for a lord. Accordingly he proclaimed himself "Lord Timothy Dexter," bought a magnificent mansion, and set up an equipage in splendid style. Every thing that he did and every thing he had about him was original. He sent a ship-load of warming-pans to the East Indies; he filled his gardens with sprawling wooden statues; his dress was a mixture of the Roman senator and a Yankee militia-captain; the ornaments of his mansion were of the most unique stamp; and his literary compositions were more original than all the rest put together. He wrote in the most heroic disregard and defiance of the common laws of etymology and syntax. Here is a specimen of his style, and an illustration of his powers as a philosopher: "How great the SOUL is! Don't you all wonder and admire to see and behold and hear? Can you all believe half the truth, and admire to hear the wonders how great the soul is?—that if a man is drowned in the water, a great bubble comes up out of the top of the water—the last of the man dying in the water; this is mind—the SOUL, that is the last to ascend out of the deep to glory. Only behold!—past finding out! The bubble is the soul! When a man dies in his bed in a house, you can't see his soul go up, but when he is drowned, then you can see his soul go up like a kite or a rocket!"
There is a very amusing story told of a curious fowl called "The Adjutant," in the East Indies. They are as solemn-faced a creature as the owl, the "Bird of Minerva." Sometimes they become great favorites with the soldiers and officers of the army stationed there, and numerous, and not unfrequently ridiculous, were the tricks which the wicked wags played upon them. Sometimes the soldiers would take a couple of half-picked beef-bones, tie them strongly together, at each end of a stout cord, and then throw both where some two or three "Adjutants" would be sure to try to rival each other in the first possession of the desiderated luxury; the consequence of which competition would be, that two of the ravenous birds would attack the treasure at one and the same time: the one would swallow one (for they have most capacious maws) and the other the other. Then there was trouble! Each saw before him a divided "duty," the "line" of which, while it was sufficiently defined (and con-fined) was very far from being convenient to follow, so far as the practice was concerned. But each, in the consequent struggle, rose into the air; a pair of aërial Siamese-twins, with no power of severing their common ligament; so that very soon down they came, an easy prey to their ingenious tormentors. But the funniest trick was this: A soldier would take a similar unconsumed beef-bone; carefully scoop out a long cavity in it, establish therein a cartridge and fusee, with a long leader, lighted, and then throw it out for the especial benefit of the feathered victim. It was of course swallowed at once, and then, like a snake with a big frog in its belly, the uncouth bird would mount upon some post, or other similar eminence, and with one leg crossed like a figure-four, over the other, it would stand, in digestive mood, and with solemn visage, until suddenly the secret mine would explode, and the unsuspicious "Adjutant" would be "reduced to the ranks" of birds "lost upon earth."