P.T.W.

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I asked a poor man, how he did?  He said, he was like a washball, always in decay.—­Swift.

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CAT-FANCIER.

Lady Morgan gives the following anecdote in her Book of the Boudoir.  “The first day we had the honour of dining at the palace of the Archbishop of Taranto, at Naples, he said to me, you must pardon my passion for cats, (la mia passione gattesca) but I never exclude them from my dining-room, and you will find they make excellent company.”  Between the first and second course the door opened, and several enormously large and beautiful Angola cats were introduced by the names of Pantalone, Desdemona, Otello, &c.  They took their places on chairs near the table, and were as silent, as quiet, as motionless, and as well behaved, as the most bon ton table in London could require.  On the bishop requesting one of the chaplains to help the Signora Desdemona, the butler stepped up to his lordship, and observed, “My Lord, La Signora Desdemona will prefer waiting for the roast.”

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ANCIENT FAMILY.

There was much sound truth in the speech of a country lad to an idler, who boasted his ancient family:  “So much the worse for you,” said the peasant, as we ploughmen say, “the older the seed the worse the crop.”

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At North Ferryby, in Yorkshire, the following very instructive lines, are inscribed on a handsome tablet to the memory of Sir T. Etherington, an Alderman of Hull, and late a resident in the above place:—­

“Taught of God we should view losses, sickness, pain, and death, but as the several trying stages by which a good man, like Joseph, is conducted from a tent to a court; sin his disease, Christ his physician, pain his medicine, the Bible his support, the grave his rest, and death itself an angel expressly sent to relieve the worn out labourer, or crown the faithful soldier!”

Louis XIV. was presented with an epitaph by an indifferent poet, on the celebrated Moliere.  “I would to God,” said he, “that Moliere had brought me yours.”

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ON MEMORY.

What an unknown and unspeakable happiness would it be to a man of judgment, and who is engaged in the pursuit of knowledge, if he had but a power of stamping all his own best sentiments upon his memory in some indelible characters; and if he could but imprint every valuable paragraph and sentiment of the most excellent authors he has read, upon his mind, with the same speed and facility with which he read them?—­Watts.

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Upon a stone in St. Margaret’s churchyard, at Lynn, in Norfolk, is the following inscription to the memory of William Scrivenor, Cook to the Corporation, who died in the year 1684:—­