"Matrimony."
True (perhaps) of Other Places than Dundee
In the committee on the factory bill, the following sensible question was put to a witness named Peter Stuart, the overseer of the factory at Dundee. Question: "When do your girls marry?" "Whenever they can meet with men!"
Pretending to Make a Will
An old gentleman was one evening amusing the junior members of his family, and a number of their acquaintances, by making up a sort of imaginary will, in which he destined so much to one and so much to another; the eight-day clock to his niece or nephew, the bed to that, the table to a third, and so on. "But what will you leave to me, Mr. K.——?" said a lady, who felt impatient to know what was to be her lot. "I leave you out," replied the testator.
Unusual for a Scotchman
A countryman having read in the newspapers accounts of different bank failures, and having a hundred pounds deposited in a respectable banking company in Aberdeen, he became alarmed for its safety, hastened to town, and, calling at the bank, presented his deposit receipt, and, on demanding his money was paid, as is customary, with notes of the bank; he grasped them in his hand, and having got within reach of the door turned round, and exclaimed, "Noo, sir, ye may braik when ye like."
An Author and His Printer
It is well known to literary people, that, in preparing works for the printer, after the proof sheets have been seen by the author, to go over them again, and clear them of what are called typographical errors—such as wrong spellings, inaccuracies of punctuation, and similar imperfections. In performing this office for a celebrated northern critic and editor, a printer, now dead, was in the habit of introducing a much greater number of commas than it appeared to the author the sense required. The case was provoking, but did not produce a formal remonstrance, until Mr. W——n himself accidentally afforded the learned editor an opportunity of signifying his dissatisfaction with the plethora of punctuation under which his compositions were made to labor. The worthy printer coming to a passage one day which he did not understand, very naturally took it into his head that it was unintelligible, and transmitted it to his employer, with a remark on the margin, that there appeared some "obscurity in it."