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“Ah! indeed, Sir,' said I, in a tone of interest; | time, and then replied, 'Dat ish too low; you gif 'what is the general type of disease?' me sextee zent, and you take him; I no zell him for less!'

Typhoid type, Sir. Have got some drefful bad cases of typhoid on hand now: one of 'em is particularly uncommon: drefful, Sir, drefful!'

"May I inquire what there is peculiar in the case you have mentioned, Dr. C—?'

"The buyer was not certain whether he understood him rightly or not; but found, on questioning him, that sixty cents was really the figure, so he replied, 'Well, being as it's you, I'll do it ;' and he "Certingly, certingly: it's the pulse: that's dref-actually bought the wheat at fifteen cents per bushful, Sir, drefful! Sixty at the wrist and ninety-el less than he first offered for it. You can imagine seven at the forehead! drefful, Sir, drefful!' "I thought it was 'drefful!'"

MR. SPRAGUE, of Bayou Sara, West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, had been rather careless in his manner of bringing up his sons. One Sunday morning Parson Butler, an old Baptist clergyman of the neighborhood, in riding to town met Billy and Sammy Sprague going into the woods, evidently for the purpose of hunting. Feeling certain that any thing like direct remonstrance with the young gentlemen themselves would scarcely turn them from their ways, he waited until after "preaching," and sought the old gentleman. After recounting the circumstance of meeting Billy and Sammy as he had done, he closed an affecting appeal by inquiring of their father why they had not been "brought up in the fear of the Lord?"

"Fear of the Lord, Parson-fear of the Lord! Why, they hey! They're so 'feard of him now they dassent go out Sunday without double-bar'l'd shotguns on their shoulders!"

"IN the beautiful village of Waterloo this summer I was particularly amused with the words of a follower of Izaak Walton, which I consider too good to be lost. The little fellow's name was Le Grand, with a companion who answered to the decidedly classical sobriquet of 'Hank.' Le Grand and Hank, fully equipped, started for a fishing excursion. After the absence of an hour or more, Le Grand made his appearance with his basket well filled with fish. He asked all his friends to look at his fish, of which he seemed quite proud. When upon being interrogated as to how many he caught, he reluctantly replied: 'None: but I would have caught them, only Hank had the best place! The incident fully illustrates how many things we are sure we could do if we only had the right place."

"THE anecdote in a recent Drawer of the girl who knew that it must be true because her father read it in a bound book, proves conclusively the truthfulness of printers and bookbinders.

As one

of the latter, who not only reads but binds Harper, permit me to cancel a portion of my indebtedness by the following installment:

"Two bookbinders in our village' quarreled and came to high words. One of them at length said, Your countenance shows what you are; you can't look an honest man in the face.' To which the reply was made, 'I can look you in the face.'

AN Illinois dealer in wheat writes to the Drawer: "The anecdote in the Drawer of the July number of the Irishman who paid six shillings for flannel that was offered at five cents less, reminds me of a like case which I witnessed here--and, I think, better still.

"An old German offered for sale a load of wheat, and was told by a buyer that, owing to the late depression in prices, he could only give him seventyfive cents per bushel. He thought it over for some

how difficult it was for me to keep my countenance long enough to get out of sight so as to give vent to my laughter. Doubtless the honest old German thinks to this day that he made at least five cents by setting a price."

And the Drawer wishes to add that he finds something more difficult to imagine-and that is, how any honest man could take advantage of a German's ignorance of the language, and so cheat him out of fifteen cents on a bushel of wheat. We would rather be the cheated than the cheat in such an operation, and though we put the story in the Drawer, we would not put any wheat into our garner that was got by such a bargain.

"RIDING one night over the P. W. and B. Railroad, the passengers were much amused by the prattle of a little girl whose age might be expressed with a single figure. The train stopped at a well-known place, opposite to some rather dilapidated-looking buildings. The moon was shining brightly, making the surrounding objects quite distinct. Our prattler, after gazing out of the window for a few moments, withdrew her head, and turning to her mother, said, Ma, wasn't this place built before any body was born?'"

OUR correspondence with the South is necessarily limited. A correspondent in North Carolina some months ago sent us the following obituary notice. He says it "looks like a burlesque, but I assure you it is genuine. It is taken from the Macon (Georgia) Journal and Messenger:"

"Departed this life in Macon County, Nov. 30, 1860, E PLURIBUS UNUM, youngest son of John T. and Catharine Oliver, aged 1 year 10 months and 9 days.

"We are seldom called upon to chronicle the death of

such a promising child as E Pluribus. His amiable dis

position and affectionate caresses rendered him the idol of all who knew him; but he is gone, and is an angel now. To the parents of the little boy we say weep not, but endeavor to be resigned to the will of Him who said, 'Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.'

Farewell thou charming little son,
We never shall hear thy voice again;
Farewell little E Pluribus Unum,

May we together in heaven rich blessings share."

VERY fair this is for a boy in Doylestown, Pennsylvania:

"We had in our school a boy of rather dull capacity, and he was particularly puzzled in his English Grammar. For the life of him he could not see into the distinction between nouns and pronouns, etc. On one occasion he was called up, with others of his class, to the Grammar exercise. He came to a word which he pronounced to be a verb. 'Well done!' says the teacher. Now if you will tell me what kind of a verb it is, I shall have hopes of making a grammarian out of you yet.' The boy's eve brightened up with a sudden flash of intelligence, and he roared out at the top of his voice, 'It's an ad-verb!'"

THE BENCH.

AN ENGLISH COURT.

THIS is Westminster Hall. The first thing you look for is a "place," which you find high up in the back seats; and when this has been climbed into, with more or less noise, you find yourself facing the bench. By the bench, of course, I mean the judges. They are peculiar. Their dress is rather startling at first, till you get used to it; but it is nothing to their caps, which are represented by a little black spot on the top of the wig.

But between the back seats and the bench look for the bar, and if you don't exactly see the bar, you will the counsel, which is the same thing. Possibly you may hear them-for they are given to talking; to each other, if they have no better resource; but to the jury, or at all events to the judge, if they can find an occasion: some who, curiously enough, have round noses, round eyes, round mouths, and double chins, are sonorous, emphatic, and what we will call portwiney: others are ponderous, slow, chestspeaking men, but these are mostly tall, lank, and coarsehaired, with terrible noseslong, from the bridge downward, and blunt at the point; some, again, of the sharp, acid, suspicious sort-shriek a great deal; while there are a few-great men these-who are so confidential and communicative, that they seem (using a colloquial phrase) to talk to the jury "like a father."

Well, having seen both Bench and Bar, and wishing to understand what they are both engaged in, let us suppose a case. We will say that an obstinate man, one Bullhead, has his action against a plausible man, one Floater. Now the unconvincible Bullhead, who thinks that he has never yet been taken in, has somehow at various times, and upon the

VOL. XXIII.-No. 138.-3 H*

857

!flimsiest of all possible pretenses, handed over to said Floater sums of money to the amount of-say two hundred pounds: between the possible inconvenience of losing so large a sum of money and the wish to show that his wisdom is equal to his obstinacy, he has brought the little dispute out of his own fryingpan into the judicial fire.

There he stands, or rather leans in the witnessbox, carefully checking off his short answers with his forefinger on the sleeye of his coat, and screwing his face on one side, as if to concentrate all his intellect into the left eye that is so widely open; he looks very untractable, with his stumpy brows knitted closely over his thick, stumpy nose; but what chance can he possibly have against such a cool hand as the defendant, Floater, Esq., with his very white stick-up hair bearing witness to his respectability, and his very black lay-down eyebrows covering the unbarnacled portion of those side-glancing eyes? How gently his jeweled fingers are laid on the edge of the witness-box! how shockingly informal the "document"-of whatever sort-proves to be during his examination-what a respectable man he is! Three letters after his name!

what to make of it; the stout foreman inclines to Of course, and as usual, the jury hardly know the plaintiff in despite of law; but he is evidently puzzled all the same; the thin man with the bridgy nose, the cold man with the round head, and the argumentative juryman with the mutton-chop whisker, all look at it, as they say, "legally," and decide in favor of the defendant. The jocular "party," growing beard, treats it all as good fun, and is ready with the curly red hair and the two tufts of chinto give his verdict for the defendant too, because, as he says, "He is such a jolly old humbug, you know," which mode of settlement, however, is not looked upon as sufficient by his two neighbors, to whom it is a much more serious matter. these is trying to make up his mind, a feat he has One of

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never yet successfully accomplished-so I suppose that, as usual, it will be made up for him by somebody else; as for the other, after three hours' reflection, he has really come to a decision, but, unfortunately, it is entirely opposed to every thing that the judge will tell them in his summing-up, and of course they will all be led by his lordship.

My lord will take them in hand kindly, explain away both counsel for plaintiff and for defendant, and read them a great deal of his notes, which are a thousand-fold clearer, fuller, and more accurate than the reporter's "flimsy," although during the trial he has been distinctly seen to write four long letters, has gone twice to sleep, and has made seven recondite legal jokes, including the famous ever-recurring and side-splitting innuendo of

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calling upon the usher to cry silence, or "Sss-h" | Bullhead, who, having diluted his ordinary keenwhenever the somewhat indistinctly speaking junior for the plaintiff rises-there will be no withstanding his clear-headedness.

As you would imagine, these jurors have been in turn led away by the opposing counsel. For the plaintiff; they were made to admire the consummate common sense and discretion of the plaintiff,

ness with that admirable faith in human nature which is the keystone of all commercial transactions in this Arcadian world, has for the first time in his life found his confidence misplaced by the conduct of the defendant. Said the advocate: far be it from him to call Floater, Esq., M.Q.S., by any derogatory appellations; he was not a swindler, he was not a

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859

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rogue, he was not a wolf in sheep's clothing, he was perhaps the victim of a misconception or a want of memory, but a very honorable man all the same-an opinion which the jury would heartily indorse by giving full damages to his discreet and sensible client.

But, said the counsel for the defendant-a foxy man with reddish hair, angular eyes, and a mouth that seems to have a hole punched in each end of it: he would not call Mr. Bullhead a villain of the deepest dye, he would not say that he had laid a plot to blast the happiness of the domestic hearth of his unfortunate, his scrupulously respectable, and he would add his distinguished client; no, not he-far from it, he would suppose that an obtuseness of intellect on the part of the, at all events, short-tempered plaintiff, had led him to imagine, and so forth. And by-the-way, notice how these foxy counsel do cudle themselves up, how they look askance, and wriggle about to show their honesty and straightforwardness-for indeed I suppose we must admit that they are honest and straightforward from their point of view, although they do shake their heads at his lordship whenever a particularly damaging statement is put forward by the opposite side, and although they do paint black with a gray tint, and

find a few spots upon the purest white. Thank goodness, they have the attorneys to throw the blame upon when there happens to be any, and the attorneys sitting under the bar, and putting their heads together, have, I suppose, shoulders broad enough to bear it.

These two do not look ingenuous: here is the smooth and the rough. The rough one never seems to believe a word that is said to him, while the smooth one appears to take in every thing. The one, half shutting his eyes, draws his face down and his forehead up into all the fifty lines of unbelief, while Smoothman drags his cheeks into such a lovely smiling look of faith in every thing you have to propose, that you really begin to wonder how that underhung jaw and knitted brow came into the same company. Well, there is not very much to choose between them.

So we will say that this trial has gone against the angry plaintiff; that it is one more feather in the cap of Foxy, Q.C., and money in the purse to Floater, M.Q.S.; that the jury are aware of having supported the glory of the English nation and the majesty of the law; that the learned judge, disrobed and unwigged, is no longer a good old lady, but a distinguished gentleman.

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"ABOUT forty-five years since, Colonel P, a Revolutionary veteran, but with all his youthful fondness for fun, kept a public house, which was nuch frequented in the long winter evenings by a number of the citizens, for the purpose of enjoying themselves in a social chat.

"On one of these occasions our conversation turned upon feats of activity, especially in jumping; and almost every one present had some tale to tell, either of how far or how high he could jump or had ever jumped.

en in years, had been an uncommonly athletic and active man, listened with much apparent interest to our several tales, and when we had all spoken, he arose, and remarked,

"Well, gentlemen, I suppose you expect me to have something to say?'

"Yes, Colonel; we are anxious to hear you.' "Well, gentlemen, I don't know as you will believe it, but I pledge you my honor it is a fact, that I have seen the time when I could jump-yes, gentlemen, when I could jump-as far as ever I could

"Colonel P, who, although then well strick-in my life!"

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