Of rain and hail, of frost and snow, Approved by 300 Ladies, 1807. LORD BYRON'S REPLY. [The following are Lord Byron's own words in reference to the preceding composition:-" This petition, a sprightly little poem, was put into my hands by a lady for whom I entertain a very great respect, accompanied by a wish that I would reply in the Doctor's name. Though by no means adequate to the task, I have endeavoured, in the following lines, to give such answers to the questions as my own trifling experience suggested, more from my dislike to refuse any request of a female than the most distant hope of affording a perspicuous or satisfactory solution of the different queries.— March, 1807."] In all the arts, without exception, From morbid symptoms diagnostic And that at length mankind got rid of 'em, The town to see the veteran Kemble Why fools are oft preferr'd to wise men sleeping, 'Tis known by men of nice precision, That Hymen is the best physician; He will unravel hopes and doubting, And put an end to fits of pouting. 'Five hundred kisses!" oh, ye Gods! For half I'd dare all mortal odds: Though I can never be victorious, To fall in such a cause is glorious; I'll therefore, since I've made beginning, Conclude, with scarce a hope of winning. To make my deities propitious, I'll wish what each in secret wishes; Though much I fear that e'en veracity Can ne'er atone for such audacity. "May each amongst you find a mate Content at home in peace to wait; Grateful for each connubial blessing, And quite enough in spouse possessing; A cheerful, constant, kind, and free one, But Heaven forbid that I should be one!" THE DUMB-WAITER. [FREDERICK S. COZZENS, 1818-69; born in N. Y.; in early life a wine-merchant, and editor of the Wine Press, for which he wrote papers on the culture of the grape and the manufacture of wine. This led him to more popular authorship, and he contributed to Magazines. His first volume was Prismatics, by Richard Haywarde. Then came the Sparrowgrass Papers, his best effort. Afterwards he published Acadia, or a sojourn among the One of his latest and best works is Sayings, Wise and Blue Noses; and a Memorial of Fitz-Greene Halleck. Otherwise.] WE have put a dumb-waiter in our house. A dumb-waiter is a good thing to have in the country, on account of its convenience. If you have company, every thing can be sent up from the kitchen without any trouble; and if the baby gets to be unbearable, on account of his teeth, you can dismiss the complainant by stuffing him into one of the shelves, and letting him down upon the help. To provide for contingencies, we had all our floors deafened. In consequence, you cannot hear anything that is going on in the story below; and when you are in an upper room of the house, there might be a democratic ratification-meeting in the cellar, and you would not know it. Therefore, if any one should break into the basement, it would not disturb us; but to please Mrs. Sparrowgrass, I put stout iron bars on all the lower windows. Besides, Mrs. Sparrowgrass had bought a rattle when she was in Philadelphia; such a rattle as watchmen carry there. This is to alarm our neighbor, who, upon the signal, is to come to the rescue with his revolver. He is a rash man, prone to pull trigger first, and make inquiries afterward. One evening Mrs. S. had retired, and I was busy writing, when it struck me a glass of ice-water would be palatable. So I took the candle and a pitcher, and went down to the pump. Our pump is in the kitchen. A country pump in the kitchen is more convenient; but a well with buckets is certainly most picturesque. Unfortunately our well-water has not been sweet since it was cleaned out. First, I had to open a bolted door that lets you into the basement hall, and then I went to the kitchen door, which proved to be locked. Then I remembered that our girl always carried the key to bed with her, and slept with it under her pillow. Then I retraced my steps; bolted the basement door, and went up into the dining-room. As is always the case, I found, when I could not get any water I was thirstier than I supposed I was. Then I thought I would wake our girl up. Then I concluded not to do it. Then I thought of the well, but I gave that up on account of its flavor. Then I opened the closet doors: there was no water there; and then I thought of the dumb-waiter! The novelty of the idea made me smile; I took out two of the movable shelves, stood the pitcher on the bottom of the dumb-waiter, got in myself with the lamp; let myself down until I supposed I was within a foot of the floor below, and then let go. We came down so suddenly that I was shot out of the apparatus as if it had been a catapult; it broke the pitcher, extin guished the lamp, and landed me in the middle of the kitchen at midnight, with no fire, and the air not much above the zero point. The truth is, I had miscalculated the distance of the descent,-instead of falling one foot, I had fallen five. My first impulse was, to ascend by the way I came down, but I found that impracticable. Then I tried the kitchen door: it was locked. I tried to force it open; it was made of two-inch stuff, and held its own. Then I hoisted a window, and there were the rigid iron bars. If I ever felt angry at anybody it was at myself, for putting up those bars to please Mrs. Sparrowgrass. I put them up, not to keep people in, but to keep people out. I laid my cheek against the ice-cold barriers, and looked at the sky; not a star was visible; it was as black as ink overhead. Then I thought of Baron Trenck and the prisoner of Chillon. Then I made a noise! I shouted until I was hoarse, and ruined our preserving-kettle with the poker. That brought our dogs out in full bark, and between us we made the night hideous. Then I thought I heard a voice, and listened: it was Mrs. Sparrowgrass calling to me from the top of the stair-case. I tried to make her hear me, but the infernal dogs united with howl, and growl, and bark, so as to drown my voice, which is naturally plaintive and tender. Besides, there were two bolted doors and double-deafened floors between us. How could she recognize my voice, even if she did hear it? Mrs. Sparrowgrass called once or twice, and then got frightened; the next thing I heard was a sound as if the roof had fallen in, by which I understood that Mrs. Sparrowgrass was springing the rattle! That called out our neighbor, already wide awake; he came to the rescue with a bull-terrier, a Newfoundland pup, a lantern, and a revolver. The moment he saw me at the window, he shot at me, but fortunately just missed me. I threw myself under the kitchen table, and ventured to expostulate with him, but he would not listen to reason. In the excitement I had forgotten his name, and that made matters worse. It was not until he had roused up everybody around, broken in the basement door with an axe, gotten into the kitchen with his cursed savage dogs and shooting-iron, and seized me by the collar, that he recognized me,-and then he wanted me to explain it! But what kind of an explanation could I make to him? I told him he would have to wait until my mind was composed, and then I would let him understand the matter fully. But he never would have had the particulars from me, for I do not approve of neighbors that shoot at you, break in your door, and treat you in your own house as if you were a jail-bird. He knows all about it, however, somebody has told him-somebody tells everybody every thing in our village. TEN JESTS OF HIEROCLES. [HIEROCLES, "The New Platonist," flourished in Alexandria about the middle of the fifth century.] 1. A YOUNG man, meeting an acquaintance, said, "I heard that you were dead." "But," says the other, "you see me alive." "I do not know how that may be," replied he: "you are a notorious liar; my informant was a person of credit." 2. A man wrote to a friend in Greece, begging him to purchase books. From negligence or avarice, he neglected to execute the commission; but, fearing that his correspondent might be offended, he exclaimed, when next they met, "My dear friend, I never got the letter you wrote to me about the books." 3. A robust countryman, meeting a physician, ran to hide behind a wall: being asked the cause, he replied, "It is so long since I have been sick, that I am ashamed to look a physician in the face." 4. A man, hearing that a raven would live two hundred years, bought one to try. 5. A foolish fellow, having a house to sell, took a brick from the wall to exhibit as a sample. 6. A man, meeting a friend, said, "I spoke to you last night in a dream." "Pardon me," replied the other; "I did not hear you." 7. A man that had nearly been drowned while bathing, declared that he would never enter the water again till he had learned to swim. 8. During a storm, the passengers on board a vessel that appeared in danger, seized different implements to aid them in swimming, and one of the number selected for this purpose the anchor. 9. A wittol, a barber, and a bald-headed man travelled together. Losing their way, Abernethy, the great surgeon, and knowing his repugnance to anything like verbosity, forbore speaking except simply in reply to his laconic inquiries. The consultation, during three visits, was conducted in the following manner: they were forced to sleep in the open air; | A lady having occasion to call upon and, to avert danger, it was agreed to keep watch by turns. The lot fell first on the barber, who, for amusement, shaved the fool's head while he slept; he then woke him, and the fool, raising his hand to scratch his head, exclaimed, "Here's a pretty mistake! Rascal, you have waked the bald-headed man instead of me." First Day.-(Lady enters and holds out her finger.) Abernethy.-"Cut?" Lady.— "Bite." A.-"Dog?" L.-"Parrot." A.-"Go home and poultice it." Second Day.-(Finger held out again.) 4.-"Better?" L.-"Worse." A.-"Go home and poultice it again.' Third Day.—(Finger held out as before.) 4.-"Better?" L.-"Well." A.-"You're the most sensible woman I ever met with. Good-by. Get out." If brevity is the soul of wit, Talleyrand was the greatest of wits. A single word was often sufficient for his keenest retort. When a hypochondriac, who had notoriously led a profligate life, complained to the diplomatist that he was enduring the torments of hell,-"Je sens les tourmens de l'enfer," the answer was, “Déjà?” (Already?) To a lady who had lost her husband, Talleyrand once addressed a letter of condolence in two words :-"O, Madame!" In less than a year the lady had married again; and then his letter of congratulation was, "Ah, Madame!" Could anything be more wittily significant than the "O" and the "Ah" of this sententious correspondence? The prince, in return, doubled the quantity, and sent him forty bottles. This is equal to the joke of Rochester, on the occasion of Charles II.'s crew of rakes writing pieces of poetry and handing them to Dryden, so that he might decide which was the prettiest poet. Rochester finished his piece in a few minutes, and Dryden decided that it was the best. On reading it, the lines were found to be the following: "I promise to pay, to the order of John Dryden, twenty pounds.-ROCHESTER." THE WIDOW. [CHRISTIAN FÜRCHTegott Gellert was born at Hainchen, in Saxony, in 1715. His father was a poor cler gyman with thirteen children. He was sent first to the "Prince's School," and entered the University at Leipsic, where he studied theology. He died in 1769. His most popular piece in Germany, is "The Widow."] DORINDA'S youthful spouse, I never saw before, in all my life, Up to the second story of the house, Whom as herself she loved, and better, There in her chamber, having turned the too,"Better?"-methinks I hear some caviller say, With scornful smile; but let him smile away! arms key, She shut herself with him, and sought relief And comfort in the midst of bitter grief, And held herself as bound, if she would be To weep away the remnant of her life. Forever worthy of bis memory, What more could one desire of a wife? So sat Dorinda many weeks, heart-broken, In all that time, to living creature spoker, Out of her window: and to-day, by chance, Just as she looked, a stranger stood below. Up in a twinkling came the house-maid running, And said, with look of sweetest, half hid cun- "Madam, a gentleman would speak to you, view, Almost as lovely as your blessed one; He has some business with you must be done, Business, he said, he could not trust with me." "Must just make up some story, then," said she, "I cannot leave, one moment, my dear man; In short, go down and do the best you can; Tell him I'm sick with sorrow; for, ah me! "Madam, 't will not do; Fluttering 'twixt memory and hope; the Embracing, with a sudden glow, The image that so long had soothed her woe, 4 |