I see I see I know not what:
I see a dash above a dot,
Presenting to my contemplation
A perfect point of admiration!

An old gentleman named Gould, having married a young lady of nineteen, thus addressed his friend Dr. G. at the wedding festival:

So you see, my dear sir, though eighty years old,
A girl of nineteen falls in love with old Gould.

To which the doctor replied,—

A girl of nineteen may love Gould, it is true,
But believe me, dear sir, it is Gold without U.

When Percy first published his collection of Ancient English Ballads, he was rather lavish in commendation of their beautiful simplicity. This provoked Dr. Johnson to say one evening, at the tea-table of Miss Reynolds, that he could rhyme as well and as elegantly in common narrative and conversation. "For instance," said he,

"As, with my hat upon my head,

I walked along the strand,

I there did meet another man

With his hat in his hand.

Or, to render such poetry subservient to my own immediate

use,

I therefore pray thee, Renny dear
That thou wilt give to me,

With cream and sugar softened well,
Another cup of tea.

Nor fear that I, my gentle maid,

Shall long detain the cup,

When once unto the bottom I

Have drank the liquor up.

Yet hear, alas! this mournful truth,

Nor hear it with a frown;

Thou canst not make the tea as fast

As I can gulp it down."

Mr. Fox, the great orator, was on one occasion told by a lady that she "did not care three skips of a louse for him." He immediately took out his pencil and wrote the following:

A lady has told me, and in her own house,
That she cares not for me "three skips of a louse."
I forgive the dear creature for what she has said,
Since women will talk of what runs in their head.

Barty Willard, who formerly lived in the northern part of Vermont, was noted for his careless, vagabond habits, ready wit, and remarkable facility at extempore rhyming. Sitting one day in a village store, among a crowd of idlers who always gathered about him on his arrival, the merchant asked Barty "why he always wore that shocking bad hat." Barty replied that it was simply because he was unable to purchase a new

one.

"Come," said the merchant; "make me a good rhyme on the old hat immediately, without stopping to think, and I'll give you the best castor in the store." Whereupon Barty threw his old tile on the floor, and began

Here lies my old hat,

And, pray, what of that?

:

'Tis as good as the rest of my raiment:
If I buy me a better,

You'll make me your debtor

And send me to jail for the payment.

The new hat was adjudged, by the "unanimous vote of the house," to belong to Barty, who wore it off in triumph, saying, "it was a poor head that couldn't take care of itself."

An Oxford and Cambridge man, who had had frequent disputes concerning the divinity of Christ, chancing to meet in company, the former, with a serio-comical air, wrote the following lines and handed them to the latter:

Tu Juda similis Dominumque Deumque negasti;
Dissimilis Judas est tibi-poenituit.

[You, Judas like, your Lord and God denied;
Judas, unlike to you, repentant sighed.]

Whereupon the "heretic" retorted,

Tu simul et similis Judæ, tu dissimilisque; Judæ iterum similis sis, laqueumque petas. [You are like Judas, yet unlike that elf;

Once more like Judas be, and hang yourself.]

The common phrase Give the Devil his due, was turned very wittily by a member of the bar in North Carolina, some years ago, on three of his legal brethren. During the trial of a case, Hillman, Dews, and Swain (all distinguished lawyers, and the last-named President of the State University) handed James Dodge, the Clerk of the Supreme Court, the following epitaph:Here lies James Dodge, who dodged all good,

And never dodged an evil:
And, after dodging all he could,

He could not dodge the Devil!

Mr. Dodge sent back to the gentlemen the annexed impromptu reply, which may be considered equal to any thing ever expressed in the best days of Queens Anne or Bess:

Here lies a Hillman and a Swain;

Their lot let no man choose:

They lived in sin, and died in pain,

And the Devil got his dues! (Dews.)

A lady wrote with a diamond on a pane of glass,—
God did at first make man upright; but he

To which a gentleman added,—

Most surely had continued so; but she

A lady wrote upon a window some verses, intimating her design of never marrying. A gentleman wrote the following lines underneath :

The lady whose resolve these words betoken,

Wrote them on glass, to show it may be broken.

Sir Walter Raleigh having written on a window,-
Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall,-

Queen Elizabeth, the instant she saw it, wrote under it,—
If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all.

Perhaps the most delicate flattery ever uttered was that of the ambassador, who, being asked by a beautiful queen, upon his introduction to her court, whether a celebrated beauty in his own country was the handsomest woman he had ever seen, replied, "I thought so yesterday."

A party of gentlemen at Lord Macclesfield's, one evening, agreed to amuse themselves by drawing tickets on which various uncomplimentary devices were written. These were extemporaneously turned into compliments by Cowper as follows:

Vanity.-Drawn by Lord Macclesfield.

Be vain, my lord, you have a right;
For who, like you, can boast this night,
A group assembled in one place
Fraught with such beauty, wit and grace?

Insensibility.-Mr. Marsham.

Insensible can Marsham be?

Yes and no fault you must agree;
His heart his virtue only warms,
Insensible to vice's charms.

Inconstancy.-Mr. Adams.

Inconstancy there is no harm in,
In Adams where it looks so charming:
Who wavers as, he well may boast,
Which virtue he shall follow most.

Impudence.-Mr. St. John.

St. John, your vice you can't disown:
For in this age 'tis too well known,
That impudent that man must be
Who dares from folly to be free.

Intemperance.-Mr. Gerard.

Intemperance implies excess:

Changed though the name, the fault's not less;
Yet, blush not, Gerard, there's no need,-

In all that's worthy you exceed.

A Blank was drawn by Mr. Legge.

If she a blank for Legge designed,
Sure Fortune is no longer blind;
For we shall fill the paper given
With every virtue under heaven.

Cowardice.-Gen. Caillard.

Most soldiers cowardice disclaim,
But Caillard owns it without shame;
Bold in whate'er to arms belong,
He wants the courage to do wrong.

A traveller, upon reading the inscription affixed to the gates of Bandon, (a town in Ireland originally peopled by English Protestants,)

Jew, Turk or Atheist enter here;

But let no Papist dare appear,

wrote the following smart reply underneath:

He who wrote this wrote it well;

The same is written on the gates of hell.

At one of Burns' convivial dinners he was requested to say grace; whereupon he gave the following impromptu:Lord, we do thee humbly thank

For that we little merit.

Now Jean may take the flesh away,
And Will bring in the spirit.

Refractory Rhyming.

WHEN Canning was challenged to find a rhyme for Julianna, he immediately wrote,―

Walking in the shady grove

With my Julianna,

For lozenges I gave my love
Ipecacuanha.

Ipecacuanha lozenges, though a myth when the stanza was written, are now commonly sold by apothecaries.

Three or four wits, while dining together, discussed the difficulty of finding rhymes for certain names. General Morris challenged any of the party to find a happy rhyme for his name; and the challenge was instantly taken up by John Brougham, whose facility at extempore rhyming is proverbial:

All hail to thee, thou gifted son!

The warrior-poet Morris!
'Tis seldom that we see in one

A Cæsar and a Horace.