* * * * *

THE GATHERER.

A snapper up of unconsidered trifles. 
SHAKSPEARE.

* * * * *

Vivian Grey pronounces school ushers execrable wretches, because they wear pepper and salt pantaloons; Lady Morgan improves upon him, declaring the man who wears a white waistcoat in the morning, or the woman who curtsies at a drawing-room door, out of the pale of society.  It is surprising that people will write such rubbish as this—­more surprising that others will print it—­ most surprising that folks buy it—­and as Cobbett would say, what surprises us “most of all,” is that people read it.

Q.

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ORIGIN OF THE WORD FARM.

Spelman derives this word from the Saxon term fearme, or feorme, which signifies victus, food, or provision, as the tenants and country people anciently paid their rents in victuals and other necessaries of life, but which was afterwards converted into the payment of certain sums of money.  Hence a ferm was originally a place which furnished or supplied its owner or lord with provisions.

P.T.W.

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At an inn in a market town upon the road to Holyhead, a gentleman sat in the kitchen smoking his pipe, and watching with anxiety a fowl that was roasting for his supper.  At length a tall, meagre figure stalked in, and after an earnest and melancholy look at the fowl, retired with a sigh.  Repeating his visit he exclaimed, “That fowl will never be done in time.”  “What do you mean?” said the gentleman, “that fowl is for my supper, and you shan’t touch a bit of it.”  “Oh,” replied the other, “you misunderstand me; I don’t want the fowl; but I am to play Oroonoko this evening, and we cannot begin for want of the jack chain.”

C.C.

* * * * *

THOMAS PAINE.

When Paine’s “Rights of Man,” reached Lewes, where he married a Miss Olive, the women as with one voice, said, “Od rot im, let im come ear if he dast, an we’ll tell him what the Rights of Women is; we’ll toss im in a blanket, and ring im out of Lewes wi our frying pans.”—­Cheetham’s Life of Paine.

* * * * *

EPIGRAM.

Ah, Lucy, ’twas a roguish thought That kindled up that rosy hue; True, ’twas a roguish thought, for I, Thought none so great a rogue as you.

* * * * *

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