Miss Flower thought the poems so remarkable that she copied them and showed them to the distinguished Unitarian, the Rev. William Johnson Fox, then already influential as a radical politician of the finer order. As a matter of course, Mr. Fox was too judicious to recommend the publication of poems so juvenile, but he ventured to prophesy a splendid future for the boy, and he kept the transcripts in his possession. To Mr. Browning's great amusement, after the death of Mr. Fox, in 1864, his daughter, Mrs. Bridell-Fox, returned the MS. to the author, who read in maturity the forgotten verses of his childhood. RUFUS CHOATE. AKE the New England climate in summer, you TAKE would think the world was coming to an end. Certain recent heresies on that subject may have had a natural origin there. Cold to-day; hot to-morrow; mercury at 80° in the morning, with wind at southwest; and in three hours more a sea turn, wind at east, a thick fog from the very bottom of the ocean, and a fall of forty degrees of Fahrenheit; now so dry as to kill all the beans in New Hampshire; then floods carrying off the bridges of the Penobscot and Connecticut; snow in Portsmouth in July; and the next day a man and a yoke of oxen killed by lightning in Rhode Island. You would think the world was twenty times coming to an end. But I do not know how it is: we go along; the early and the latter rain falls, each in its season; and seedtime and harvest do not fail; the sixty days of hot corn weather are pretty sure to be measured out to us. The Indian summer, with its bland south-west and mitigated sunshine, brings all up; and on the twenty-fifth of November, or thereabouts, being Thursday, three millions of grateful people, in meeting-houses, or around the family board, give thanks for a year of health, plenty, and happiness. SIR EMPEROR OF CHINA. IR G. STAUNTON related a curious anecdote of old Kien Long, Emperor of China. He was inquiring of Sir George the manner in which physicians were paid in England. When, after some difficulty, his majesty was made to comprehend the system, he exclaimed, “Is any man well in England, that can afford to be ill? Now, I will inform you," said he, "how I manage my physicians. I have four, to whom the care of my health is committed: a certain weekly salary is allowed them, but the moment I am ill, the salary stops till I am well again. I need not inform you my illnesses are usually short." SUGGESTION. "Do you know what made my voice so melodious?'' said a celebrated vocal performer, of awkward manners, to Charles Bannister. "No," replied the other. "Why, then, I'll tell you: when I was about fifteen, I swallowed, by accident, some train oil." "I don't think," rejoined Bannister, "it would have done you any harm if, at the same time, you had swallowed a dancing-master!" THE FORCE OF SATIRE. Jacob Johnson, the publisher, having refused to advance Dryden a sum of money for a work upon which he was engaged, the incensed bard sent a message to him, and the following lines, adding, "Tell the dog that he who wrote these can write more": With leering looks, bull-necked, and freckled face, Johnson felt the force of the description; and, to avoid a completion of the portrait, immediately sent the money. THE ANGLO-FRENCH ALLIANCE. Jerrold was in France, and with a Frenchman who was enthusiastic on the subject of the Anglo-French alliance. He said that he was proud to see the English and the French such good friends at last. "Tut! the best thing I know between France and England is— the sea," said Jerrold. AN EFFORT OF MEMORY. "Would you think it?" said A to B, "Mr. Roscius has taken a week to study a Prologue which I wrote in a day." "His memory is evidently not so good as yours," replied B. A ROWLAND FOR AN OLIVER. Mr. Hawkins, Q. C., engaged in a cause before the late Lord Campbell, had frequently to mention the damage done to a carriage called a Brougham, and this word he pronounced, according to its orthography, Brougham. 'If my learned friend will adopt the usual designation, and call the carriage a Bro'am, it will save the time of the court," said Lord Campbell, with a smile. Mr. Hawkins bowed and accepted his Lordship's pronunciation of the word during the remainder of his speech. When Lord Campbell proceeded to sum up the evidence, he had to refer to the Omnibus which had damaged the Bro'am, and in doing so pronounced the word also according to its orthography. "I beg your Lordship's pardon," said Mr. Hawkins, very respectfully, "but if your Lordship will use the com mon designation for such a vehicle, and call it a 'BussThe loud laughter which ensued, and in which his Lordship joined, prevented the conclusion of the sentence. PROPER DISTINCTION. An undergraduate had unconsciously strayed into the garden of a certain D.D., then master of the college adjoining. He had not been there many minutes, when Dr. entered himself, and, perceiving the student, in no very courteous manner desired the young gentleman to walk out; which the undergraduate, not doing (in the opinion of the doctor) in sufficient haste, Dominie demanded, rather peremptorily, "whether he knew who he was?" at the same time informing the intruder that he was Dr. "That," replied the undergraduate, "is impossible; for Dr. is a gentleman, and you are a blackguard!" TREASON. When Patrick Henry, who gave the first impulse to the ball of the American Revolution, introduced his celebrated resolution on the Stamp Act into the House of Burgesses of Virginia (May, 1765), he exclaimed, when descanting on the tyranny of the obnoxious act, "Cæsar had his Brutus; Charles I. his Cromwell; and George III.” "Treason!" cried the speaker; "Treason, treason!" echoed from every part of the house. It was one of those trying moments which are decisive of character. Henry faltered not for an instant; but rising to a loftier attitude, and fixing on the speaker an eye flashing with fire, continued, "May profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it." |