MR. POTTS RECEIVES A LECTURE ON TEMPERANCE.
Toward ten o’clock, Mr. Potts might have been seen making his way down Broadway, with a peculiarly oscillating motion. He had just reached the corner of Murray-street, and was felicitating himself that the troubles of the day were over, when he found his progress checked by a strong hand fastened upon his collar. He looked up with a stupid stare, and was half sobered by the sight of Mr. Briggs, in his well-known fur-trimmed wrapper. That worthy gentleman’s special hobby was Temperance, and he never failed to trot it out on all available occasions. Mr. Potts clearly furnished such an occasion. In vain he protested that he had drunk only a single glass “o’ bran’y-’n-w-r-r.” Mr. Briggs had an infallible test of a man’s sobriety; If he could say “National Intelligencer,” he was sober: if not, not. Mr. Potts’s nearest approach to these sounds was, “Na-s-nl’ntl-n’sr.” From the fact of his present condition, Mr. Briggs leaped to the conclusion that his conduct in the morning was owing to the same cause, and proceeded to set forth the enormity and danger of such a course, to the great edification of a group who soon gathered around. After being kept for half an hour shivering in the cold, Mr. Potts was suffered to escape. He saw that he was under a cloud, and was at a loss what to do, till the lucky thought struck him, of securing our intervention to “set the matter straight with old Briggs:” whence our acquaintance with all the facts of the case, of which so many contradictory accounts have been circulated about town.
A LEAF FROM PUNCH.
“Now, then, Granny, I’ve eaten the Plums, and if you don’t give me Sixpence, I’ll swallow the Stones!”
