LORD NORBURY.
Lord Norbury, happening to drive out in the neighbourhood of Kingstown, was accosted by a poor person in want of employment. His lordship asked him many questions, and, amongst others, his name, and what business he followed. He said, “his name was Pew, and he was a labourer.” “Why, Pew,” replied his lordship, “you should have had a permanent situation in the church.”
LENIENT JUDGMENT.
There was once a man of a peculiarly gentle temper—a man of mere milk—a perfect Nathaniel, whom nobody could ever provoke to say so much as an ill word of any body. The most atrocious villains who came to the gallows were pitied by this man. He found an excuse for every folly—a pardon for every crime. Somebody, at last, by way of trying his temper, related to him the whole story of Nero—how he killed his mother, set fire to Rome, and would have slain his whole people by one blow if he could. “What—what do you think of that man?” inquired the narrator at last, expecting to hear him pronounced upon as a monster in human shape. “Why,” said the man of sillibub, “I think he must have been a wag!”
TECHNICAL REMARK.
A printer observing two bailiffs pursuing an ingenious but distressed author, remarked, “that it was a new edition of ‘The Pursuits of Literature,’ unbound, but hot-pressed.”
SHERIDAN AND THE GREAT SEAL.
At a canvas, in which Sheridan was engaged at Westminster, soon after the Great Seal of England was so strangely abstracted, the mob saluted him with loud cries of,—“Who stole the Seal? Sherry stole the Seal,” &c.; and one fellow at last exclaimed, “I suppose if there had been a watch at it, he would have stolen it too.” “No,” said Sheridan; “if there had been a watch at it, it probably would not have been stolen at all.”
WELL-SUSTAINED CONVERSATION.
A country gentleman of great taciturnity, and whose servant quite understood all his ways, was one day crossing a bridge, when he took it into his head to look back and ask his attendant if he liked eggs. John answered, “Yes,” and no more passed at that time. Exactly on that day twelvemonth, he happened to cross the same bridge, about the same hour of the day. “How?” cried he to the servant, who rode behind him. John, not behind in one respect, instantly replied, “Poached, sir.” The conversation then dropped.