A clergyman preaching against lending money on usury, asserted it to be as great a sin as murder. Some time after, he applied to a parishioner to lend him twenty pounds. "What!" said the other, "after declaring your opinion that to lend money on usury, was as bad as murder?" "I do not mean," answered the parson, "that you should lend it to me on usury, but gratis." "That," replied the parishioner, "would, in my opinion, be as bad as suicide."
A CHALLENGE.
A son of Galen, when a company was making merry by ridicule on physicians, exclaimed, "I defy any person I ever attended, to accuse me of ignorance or neglect." "That you may do, doctor, dead men tell no tales."
A QUALIFICATION.
A young nobleman, lately admitted a member of the Board of Agriculture, observed, as he took his seat, that he himself was an extensive farmer. The company knowing his lordship's pursuits to be very different, stared a little at the declaration; but he explained it, by saying, he had sowed a great deal of wild oats.
QUICK WORK.
Mrs. Partington, speaking of the rapid manner in which wicked deeds are perpetrated, said that it only required two seconds to fight a duel.
NON COMMITTAL.
A calm, blue-eyed, self-composed, and self-possessed young lady, in a village "down east," received a long call the other day, from a prying old spinster, who, after prolonging her stay beyond even her own conception of the young lady's endurance, came to the main question which brought her thither: "I've been asked a good many times if you was engaged to Dr. C——. Now, if folks enquire again whether you be or not, what shall I tell them I think?" "Tell them," answered the young lady, fixing her calm blue eyes in unblushing steadiness upon the inquisitive features of her interrogator, "tell them that you think you don't know, and you're sure it's none of your business."