Capt. Stone, for abusing Mr. Ludlow by calling him justass, fined £100, and prohibited coming within the patent.

Joyce Dradwick to give unto Alexander Becks 20s., for promising him marriage without her friends' consent, and now refusing to perform the same.

Richard Turner, for being notoriously drunk, fined £2.

Edward Palmer, for his extortion in taking 32s. 7d. for the plank and work of Boston stocks, fined £5, and sentenced to sit one hour in the stocks.

John Withe bound in £10 to good behavior, and not come into the company of his neighbor Thomas Bell's wife alone.

EXTRACTS FROM THE CONNECTICUT BLUE LAWS.

When these free states were colonies

Unto the mother nation,

And in Connecticut the good

Old Blue Laws were in fashion.

The following extracts from the laws ordained by the people of New Haven, previous to their incorporation with the Saybrook and Hartford colonies, afford an idea of the strange character of their prohibitions. As the substance only is given in the transcription, the language is necessarily modernized :

No quaker or dissenter from the established worship of the dominion shall be allowed to give a vote for the election of magistrates, or any officer.

No food or lodging shall be afforded to a quaker, adamite, or other heretic.

If any person turns quaker, he shall be banished, and not suffered to return, but upon pain of death.

No priest shall abide in the dominion: he shall be banished, and suffer death on his return. Priests may be seized by any one without a warrant.

No man to cross a river but with an authorized ferryman. No one shall run on the sabbath-day, or walk in his garden,

or elsewhere, except reverently to and from meeting.

No one shall travel, cook victuals, make beds, sweep house, cut hair, or shave, on the sabbath-day.

No woman shall kiss her child on the sabbath or fasting-day. The sabbath shall begin at sunset on Saturday.

To pick an ear of corn growing in a neighbor's garden shall be deemed theft.

A person accused of trespass in the night shall be judged guilty, unless he clear himself by oath.

When it appears that an accused has confederates, and he refuses to discover them, he may be racked.

No one shall buy or sell lands without permission of the selectmen.

A drunkard shall have a master appointed by the selectmen, who are to debar him the liberty of buying and selling.

Whoever publishes a lie to the prejudice of his neighbor, shall sit in the stocks or be whipped fifteen stripes.

No minister shall keep a school.

Men-stealers shall suffer death.

Whoever wears clothes trimmed with gold, silver, or bone lace, above two shillings by the yard, shall be presented by the grand jurors, and the selectmen shall tax the offender at £300

estate.

A debtor in prison, swearing he has no estate, shall be let out, and sold to make satisfaction.

Whoever sets a fire in the woods, and it burns a house, shall suffer death; and persons suspected of this crime shall be imprisoned without benefit of bail.

Whoever. brings cards or dice into this dominion shall pay a fine of £5.

No one shall read common-prayer, keep Christmas or saintdays, make minced pies, dance, play cards, or play on any instrument of music, except the drum, trumpet, and Jews-harp.

No gospel minister shall join people in marriage; the magistrates only shall join in marriage, as they may do it with less scandal to Christ's church.

When parents refuse their children convenient marriages, the magistrate shall determine the point.

The selectmen, on finding children ignorant, may take them.

away from their parents, and put them into better hands, at the expense of their parents.

A man that strikes his wife shall pay a fine of £10; a woman that strikes her husband shall be punished as the court directs. A wife shall be deemed good evidence against her husband. Married persons must live together, or be imprisoned.

No man shall court a maid in person, or by letter, without first obtaining consent of her parents: £5 penalty for the first offence; £10 for the second; and for the third, imprisonment during the pleasure of the court.

Every male shall have his hair cut round according to a cap.

Paronomasia.

Hard is the job to launch the desperate pun;

A pun-job dangerous as the Indian one.-HOLMES.

Life and language are alike sacred. Homicide and verbicide-that is, violent treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate meaning, which is its life are alike forbidden. Manslaughter, which is the meaning of the one, is the same as man's laughter, which is the end of the other.-IBID.

THE quaint Cardan thus defineth :-" Punning is an art of harmonious jingling upon words, which, passing in at the ears and falling upon the diaphragma, excites a titillary motion in those parts; and this, being conveyed by the animal spirits into the muscles of the face, raises the cockles of the heart."

"He who would make a pun would pick a pocket,” is the stereotyped dogma fulminated by laugh-lynchers from time immemorial; or, as the Autocrat hath it, "To trifle with the vocabulary which is the vehicle of social intercourse is to tamper with the currency of human intelligence. He who would violate the sanctities of his mother tongue would invade the recesses of the paternal till without remorse, and repeat the banquet of Saturn without an indigestion." The "inanities of this

working-day world" cannot perceive any wittiness or grace in punning; and yet, according to the comprehensive definition of wit by Dr. Barrow, the eminent divine, it occupies a very considerable portion of the realm of wit. He says, "Wit is a thing so versatile and multiform, appearing in so many shapes, so many postures, so many garbs, so variously apprehended by several eyes and judgments, that it seemeth no less hard to settle a clear and certain notion thereof, than to make a portrait of Proteus, or to define the figure of the fleeting air. Sometimes it lieth in pat allusions to a known story, or in seasonable application of a trivial saying, or in feigning an apposite tale; sometimes it playeth in words and phrases, taking advantage of the ambiguity of their sense, or the affinity of their sound; sometimes it is wrapped in a dress of humorous expression, sometimes it lurketh under an odd similitude; sometimes it is lodged in a sly question, in a smart answer, in a quirkish reason, in a shrewd intimation, in cunningly, divertingly, or cleverly retorting an objection; sometimes it is couched in a bold scheme of speech, in a tart irony, in a lusty hyperbole, in a startling metaphor, in a plausible reconciling of contradictions, or in acute nonsense; sometimes a scenic representation of persons or things, a counterfeit speech, a mimic look or gesture, passeth for it. Sometimes an affected simplicity, sometimes a presumptuous bluntness, giveth it being. Sometimes it riseth only from a lucky hitting upon what is strange; sometimes from a crafty wresting of obvious matter to the purpose. Often it consisteth of one knows not what, and springeth up one can hardly tell how. Its ways are unaccountable and inexplicable, being answerable to the numberless rovings of fancy and windings of language."

If this definition be true, there is truth as well as wit in the punster's reply to the taunt of the rhetorician that "punning is the lowest species of wit." "Yes," said he, "for it is the foundation of all wit." But, whatever may be said of the practice by those who affect to despise it, it has been much in vogue in all ages. Horne, in his Introduction to the Critical

Study of the Holy Scriptures, tells us that it was a very favorite figure of rhetoric among the Hebrews, and is yet common among most of the Oriental nations. Professor Stuart, in his Hebrew grammar, gives numerous examples of it in the Old Testament, and Winer and Horne point out others in the New Testament, especially in the writings of St. Paul. These cannot, of course, be equivalently expressed in English.

Many of the Greek authors exhibit a fondness for this rhetorical figure, and some of the most excellent puns extant are to be found in the Greek Anthologies. As a specimen, the following is given from Wesseling's Diodorus Siculus :

Dioscurus, an Egyptian bishop, before he began the service, had the common custom of saying etрny as, (irene pasin,) peace be to all. It was notorious that the pious churchman had at home a favorite mistress, whose name was Irene, which incident produced the following smart epigram :

Ειρηνη παντεσσιν επίσκοπος ειπεν επελθών

Πως δύναται πασιν, ήν μόνες ενδον έχει;

(The good bishop wishes peace-Irene-to all;

But how can he give that to all, which he keeps to himself at home?)

A PUN-GENT CHAPTER.

At one time there was a general strike among the workingmen of Paris, and Theodore Hook gave the following amusing account of the affair::- "The bakers, being ambitious to extend their do-mains, declared that a revolution was needed, and, though not exactly bred up to arms, soon reduced their crusty masters to terms. The tailors called a council of the board to see what measures should be taken, and, looking upon the bakers as the flower of chivalry, decided to follow suit; the consequence of which was, that a cereous insurrection was lighted up among the candle-makers, which, however wick-ed it might appear in the eyes of some persons, developed traits of character not unworthy of ancient Greece."