Chapter C: S. CALVERLEY, Verses and Translations

Lauk, sir! Love's all in the fancy. One does
not eat it, nor drink it: and as for the rest--why,
it's a bother.

_Corporal Bunting_, in LYTTON's _Eugene Aram_.

"Mr. O----'s affairs turn out so sadly that he
cannot have the pleasure of waiting upon his
lordship at his agreeable house on Monday
next.--N.B. His wife is dead."

J. C. YOUNG, _Diary_.

Why, the Scotch tunes are just like a scolding,
nagging woman. They go on with the same
thing over and over again, and never come to a
reasonable end. Anybody 'ud think the Scotch tunes
had always been asking a question of somebody as deaf
as old Taft, and had never got an answer yet.

_Bartle Massey_, in GEORGE ELIOT's _Adam Bede_.

_SOUL OF LADY._

Tell me, in this night of snow,
Of happy Almack's, or the Row!
Say in what carriages what fair
Consume the ice in Berkeley Square;
Or who in shops, with doubtful eye,
Explore the silks they never buy;
And how the hair is dressed in town,
And what the shape of boot and gown?

_WINDBAG._

Snow-mantled shadow, would you know
The fashions of the world below?
Still the coiled chignon starward towers,
Still false back-hair falls down in showers;
But now all subtle souls revert
To the abbreviated skirt,
Whose velvet _paniers_ just denote
The gown, that else were petticoat.
Nor is such _naïve_ attire enough:
Elizabeth's archaic ruff
Rings every neck; besides, they rival,
With a High-Gothic-Hat-Revival,
Old Mother Hubbard, and renew
Arcadianly the buckled shoe,
To show, what's just a trifle shocking,
The dimple of a snowy stocking.

W. J. COURTHOPE, _The Paradise of Birds_.

Be virtuous, and you will be eccentric.

MARK TWAIN, _Choice Works_.

_DON'T WE?_

We're informed that, in Happy Japan,
Folks are free to believe what they can;
But if they come teaching,
And preaching and screeching,
They go off to gaol in a van.
Don't you wish _this_ was Happy Japan?

SHIRLEY BROOKS, _Wit and Humour_.

I hope I appreciate the value of children. We
should soon come to nothing without them.
Without them the common school would languish.
But the problem is, what to do with them in a
garden. For they are not good to eat, and there is a law
against making away with them. The law is not very
well enforced, it is true; for people do thin them out
with constant dosing, paregoric, and soothing-syrups, and
scanty clothing. But I, for one, feel it would not be
right, aside from the law, to take the life, even of the
smallest child, for the sake of a little fruit, more or less,
in the garden. I may be wrong; but these are my sentiments,
and I am not ashamed of them.