Mr. Miles never moves on a journey,
Mr. Go-to-bed sits up till half-past three,
Mr. Makepeace was bred an attorney.
Mr. Gardener can’t tell a flower from a root,
Mr. Wild with timidity draws back;
Mr. Rider performs all his travels on foot,
Mr. Foote all his journeys on horseback.”
Ward and Lock, who should sell bank safes, are book publishers. Neal and Pray was the title of a house in New England, that was by no means given to devotion. Butcher, Death, Slaughter, Churchyard, and Coffin were the names of so many London surgeons and apothecaries. Partnerships often show a curious conjunction of names; as Lamb & Hare, Holland & Sherry, Carpenter & Wood, Spinage & Lamb, Flint & Steel, Foot & Stocking, hosiers, Rumfit & Cutwell, tailors, Robb & Steel, and, above all, I. Ketchum & U. Cheatham, the immortal names of two New York brokers. Not only business but hymeneal partnerships reveal some singular combinations; as when Mr. Good marries Miss Evil, when George Virtue is united to Susan Vice, and when Benjamin Bird, aged sixty, is wedded to Julia Chaff, aged twenty, showing that, in spite of the old saw, “an old bird” may be “caught by chaff.”
Punning upon names has always been a favorite amusement with those
“Who think it legitimate fun