On entering the main building, we saw the Rules and Regulations for the Asylum conspicuously posted up.  I made a few extracts which may be interesting.

Sect.  I. OF VERBAL EXERCISES.

5.  Each Inmate shall be permitted to make Puns freely from eight in the morning until ten at night, except during Service in the Chapel and Grace before Meals.

6.  At ten o’clock the gas will be turned off, and no further Puns, Conundrums, or other play on words, will be allowed to be uttered, or to be uttered aloud.

9.  Inmates who have lost their faculties and cannot any longer make Puns shall be permitted to repeat such as may be selected for them by the Chaplain out of the work of Mr. Joseph Miller.

10.  Violent and unmanageable Punsters, who interrupt others when engaged in conversation, with Puns or attempts at the same, shall be deprived of their Joseph Millers, and, if necessary, placed in solitary confinement.

Sect.  III.  OF DEPORTMENT AT MEALS.

4.  No Inmate shall make any Pun, or attempt at the same, until the Blessing has been asked and the company are decently seated.

7.  Certain Puns having been placed on the Index Expurgatorius of the Institution, no Inmate shall be allowed to utter them, on pain of being debarred the perusal of Punch and Vanity Fair, and, if repeated, deprived of his Joseph Miller.

Among these are the following:—­

Allusions to Attic salt, when asked to pass the salt-cellar.

Remarks on the Inmates being mustered, etc., etc.

Associating baked beans with the benefactors of the Institution.

Saying that beef-eating is befitting, etc., etc.

The following are also prohibited, excepting to such Inmates as may have lost their faculties and cannot any longer make Puns of their own:—­

“——­your own hair or a wig”; “it will be long enough, “etc., etc.; “little of its age,” etc., etc.;—­also, playing upon the following words:  hospital; mayor; pun; pitied; bread; sauce, etc., etc., etc.  See INDEX EXPURGATORIUS, printed for use of Inmates.

The subjoined Conundrum is not allowed:—­Why is Hasty Pudding like the Prince?  Because it comes attended by its sweet;—­nor this variation to it, to wit:  Because the ’lasses runs after it.

The Superintendent, who went round with us, had been a noted punster in his time, and well known in the business-world, but lost his customers by making too free with their names,—­as in the famous story he set afloat in ’29 of four Jerries attaching to the names of a noted Judge, an eminent Lawyer, the Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions, and the well-known Landlord at Springfield.  One of the four Jerries, he added, was of gigantic magnitude.  The play on words was brought out by an accidental remark of Solomons, the well-known Banker. “Capital punishment!” the Jew was overheard saying, with reference to the guilty parties.  He was understood as saying, A capital pun is meant, which led to an investigation and the relief of the greatly excited public mind.