Chapter C: F. BROWNE, Artemus Ward's Lecture

At morning's call
The small-voiced pug-dog welcomes in the sun,
And flea-bit mongrels, wakening one by one,
Give answer all.

When evening dim
Draws round us, then the lovely caterwaul,
Tart solo, sour duet, and general squall,
These are our hymn.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.

Charles Lamb was sitting next some chattering
woman at dinner. Observing he didn't attend
to her, "You don't seem," said the lady, "to be
at all the better for what I have been saying to you."
"No, ma'am," he answered, "but this gentleman on the
other side of me must, for it all came in at one ear and
went out at the other."

THOMAS MOORE, _Diary_.

Forty times over let Michaelmas pass,
Grizzling hair the brain doth clear--
Then you know a boy is an ass,
Then you know the worth of a lass,
Once you have come to Forty Year.

W. M. THACKERAY.

Men are not troubled to hear a man dispraised,
because they know, though he be naught,
there's worth in others. But women are mightily
troubled to hear any one of them spoken against, as if
the sex itself were guilty of some untrustworthiness.

SELDEN, _Table Talk_.

_'TWAS EVER THUS._

I never rear'd a young gazelle,
(Because, you see, I never tried);
But, had it known and loved me well,
No doubt the creature would have died.
My rich and aged uncle John
Has known me long and loves me well,
But still persists in living on--
I would he were a young gazelle.

I never loved a tree or flower;
But, if I _had_, I beg to say
The blight, the wind, the sun, or shower,
Would soon have wither'd it away.
I've dearly loved my uncle John,
From childhood till the present hour,
And yet he will go living on,--
I would he were a tree or flower!

H. S. LEIGH, _Carols of Cockayne_.

A domestic woman.--A woman like a
domestic.

ANNE EVANS, _Poems and Music_.

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things;
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."

"But wait a bit," the Oysters cried,
"Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!"
"No hurry!" said the Carpenter:
They thanked him much for that.

LEWIS CARROLL, _Through the Looking-Glass_.

Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug, but
when it prescribes pills it may happen to do
more harm.

_Felix Holt_, in GEORGE ELIOT's novel.

I push aside the blinding books;
The reverend pages seem to wink;
Each _letter_ like a _dozen_ looks,
Which _doesn't let a_ student think.
Within my ears I hear a "thrum;"
Before my eyes there floats a haze;
And mocking shadows flit and come,
And make my _nights_ a constant _daze_!

ROBERT REECE, in _Comic Poets_.

Orthodoxy is at a low ebb. Only two clergymen
accepted my offer to come and help hoe
my potatoes for the privilege of using my
vegetable total-depravity figure about the snake-grass,
or quash-grass, as some call it; and these two did not
bring hoes. There seems to be a lack of disposition to
hoe among our educated clergy.