August 25, 1827. *
For the Table Book.
TOMMY MITCHESON, OF DURHAM.
The above is a well-known character in Durham, called “the philosopher:” and were his literary attainments to be measured by the books he peruses, they would far exceed those of any gentleman in the place. Tommy reads every thing that he can borrow—legal, medical, theological, historical—true narrative, or romance, it matters little to him;—but Tommy has no recollection. On arriving at the last page of a work he is just as wise as before he commenced. A friend of mine once lent him Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall;” and when Tommy returned the last volume, asked him how he liked it. “It is a nice work.”—“Well, how did you like that part about the boxing match between Crib and Molineux?”—“Oh,” said he, “it was the nicest part in the whole book!” Poor Tommy! I can say this of thee; I have lent thee many a book, and have always had them returned clean and unsoiled! I cannot say this of some of my book borrowers.
T. Q. M.
A MAN-LIKING BIRD.
“I have read of a bird,” says Dr. Fuller, in his Worthies of England, “which hath a face like, and yet will prey upon, a man, who coming to the water to drink, and finding there, by reflection, that he had killed one like himself, pineth away by degrees, and never afterwards enjoyeth itself.”