"'With whom, WILLIAM, have you made an appointment?'
"'Have you, WILLIAM, purchased all the house-property in this thoroughfare?'
"Were my risible faculties exercised?—you ask me. Nay. Indeed I was actually apprehensive of a fatal issue.
"So striking was the effect produced upon those in the ancient Cantian highway."
This, Sir, not only gives the sense, but gives it, I venture to claim, in a form fit for the apprehension of the most refined. Judging, too, by the reception it met with at our recent Penny Readings, I am convinced that Mr. CHEVALIER's peculiar humour is thoroughly preserved, for, indeed, many of the audience laughed till I became positively concerned for their safety.
Yours faithfully,
ROBERT BOWDLER SPALDING.
GOOD NEWS INDEED!
That fiendish malefactor, the Influenza Bacillus, has been caught at last! The peculiarity about him, confound him, is said to be his "immobility." Ugh! the hard-hearted infinitesimally microscopic monster! No tears, short-breathings, sighs, no groans, no sufferings, nothing will move him. There he remains, untouched, immobile. But there was one hopeful sign mentioned in the Times of last Saturday—the Bacillus was found "in chains, and in strings." Let the chains be the heaviest possible till he can be tried by a Judge and Jury; and don't resort to "strings" till the supply of chains has failed.