attente one-Dux, hamor clam pati; sum parates, homine, ices, jam, etc. Sideror hoc."

In a similar dialect to this, Dean Swift and Dr. Sheridan used to correspond. In this way:

"Is his honor sic? Præ letus felis pulse."

The Dean once wrote to the Doctor:

"Mollis abuti,

No lasso finis,

Has an acuti,

Molli divinis."

To which the Doctor responded:

"I ritu a verse o na Molli o mi ne,
Asta lassa me pole, a lædis o fine;
I ne ver neu a niso ne at in mi ni is,
A manat a glans ora sito fer diis.

De armo lis abuti, hos face an hos nos is

As fer a sal illi, as reddas aro sis,

Ac is o mi Molli is almi de lite,

Illo verbi de, an illo verbi nite."

At this the Dean settles the whole affair by

"Apud in is almi de si re,

Mimis tres I ne ver re qui re;

Alo' ver I findit a gestis,

His miseri ne ver at restis."

Sydney Smith proposed as a motto for a wellknown fish-sauce purveyor the following line from Virgil (Æn. iv. 1):

"Gravi jamdudum saucia curâ.”

When two students named Payne and Culpepper were expelled from college, a classmate wrote:

"Pania perire potest; Culpa perennis est."

And Dr. Johnson wrote the following epitaph on his cat:

"Mi-cat inter omnes."

66

A gentleman at dinner helped his friend to a potato, saying "I think that is a good mealy one." 'Thank you," was the reply, "it could not be melior."

Another gentleman while driving one day was asked by a lady if some fowls they passed were ducks or geese. One of the latter at the moment lifting up its voice, the gentleman said, "That's your anser !"

"Well, Tom, are you sick again?" asked a student of his friend, and was answered in English and in Latin, "Sic sum."

Victor Hugo was once asked if he could write English poetry. Certainement," was the reply, and he sat down and wrote this verse:

"Pour chasser le spleen

J'entrai dans un inn;

O, mais je bus le gin,

God save the queen!"

In the "Innocents Abroad" of Mark Twain he gives a letter written by his friend Mr. Blucher to a Parisian hotel-keeper, which was as follows:

666

'MONSIEUR LE LANDLORD: Sir-Pourquoi don't you

mettez some savon in your bed-chambers? Est-ce-quevous pensez I will steal it? Le nuit passée you charged me pour deux chandelles when I only had one; hier vous avez charged me avec glace when I had none at all; tout les jours you are coming some fresh game or other upon me, mais vous ne pouvez pas play this savon dodge on me twice. Savon is a necessary de la vie to anybody but a Frenchman, et je l'aurai hors de cette hotel or make trouble. You hear me.—Allons. BLUCHER.'

"I remonstrated," says Mr. Twain, "against the sending of this note, because it was so mixed up that the landlord would never be able to make head or tail of it; but Blucher said he guessed the old man could read the French of it, and average the rest."

Productions like the preceding, and like that with which we conclude are continually finding their way into print, and are always readable, curious, and fresh for an idle hour.

POCAHONTAS AND CAPTAIN SMITH.

(JAMESTOWN, A.D. 1607.)

"Johannes Smithus, walking up a streetus, met two ingentes Ingins et parvulus Ingin. Ingins non capti sunt ab Johanne, sed Johannes captus est ab ingentibus Inginibus. Parvulus Ingin run off hollerin, et terriffificatus est most to death. Big Ingin removit Johannem

H

ad tentem, ad campum, ad marshy placem, papoosem, pipe of peacem, bogibus, squawque. Quum Johannes examinatus est ab Inginibus, they condemnati sunt eum to be cracked on capitem ab clubbibus. Et a big Ingin was going to strikaturus esse Smithum with a clubbe, quum Pocahontas came trembling down, et hollerin, 'Don't ye duit, don't ye duit!' Sic Johannes non periit, sed grew fat on corn bread et hominy."

O

LINGUISTIC VERSE.

NE of the most curious efforts in the

way of teaching a language was that attempted by a work published originally in Paris, in 1862, entitled "O Novo Guia em Portuguez e Inglez. Par Jose de Fonseca e Pedro Carolina," or the New Guide to Conversation in Portuguese and English. Mr. G. C. Leland writes us that Fonseca "manufactured" this work by procuring a book of French dialogues, which he put word by word into English"-(by the aid of a dictionary)" of which he knew not a word, and what is strangest, did not learn a word, even while writing his Guide. That he really humbugged his bookseller appears from this that he induced the poor victim to publish a large English dictionary!" This book has been reprinted, as a literary curiosity, and may be had at Quaritch's, 15 Piccadilly, London, under the title of "A New Guide to the English," by Pedro Carolina; Fonseca having taken