Dr. Kirwan, the celebrated Irish chemist, having one day at dinner with him a party of friends, was descanting upon the antiseptic qualities of charcoal, and added, that if a quantity of pulverised charcoal were boiled together with tainted meat, it would remove all symptoms of putrescence, and render it perfectly sweet.  Shortly afterwards, the doctor helped a gentleman to a slice of boiled leg of mutton, which was so far gone as to shed an odour not very agreeable to the noses of the company.  The gentleman repeatedly turned it upon his plate, without venturing to taste it; and the doctor observing him, said, “Sir, perhaps you don’t like mutton?” “Oh, yes, doctor,” he replied, “I am very fond of mutton, but I do not think the cook has boiled charcoal enough with it.”

When the Archbishop of York sent Ben Jonson an excellent dish of fish from his dinner table, but without drink, he said,—­

    “In a dish came fish
    From the arch-bis-
    Hop was not there,
    Because there was no beer.”

Poor-Man-of-Mutton is a term applied to a shoulder of mutton in Scotland after it has been served as a roast at dinner, and appears as a broiled bone at supper, or at the dinner next day.  The late Earl of B., popularly known as “Old Rag,” being indisposed at a hotel in London, one morning the landlord came to enumerate the good things in his larder, in order to prevail on his guest to eat something, when his lordship replied, “Landlord, I think I could eat a morsel of a poor man;” which, with the extreme ugliness of his lordship’s countenance, so terrified the landlord, that he fled from the room and tumbled down stairs, supposing the earl, when at home, was in the habit of eating a joint of a vassal, or tenant when his appetite was dainty.

Swift.—­A gentleman, at whose house Swift was dining in Ireland, after dinner introduced remarkably small hock glasses, and at length, turning to Swift, addressed him,—­“Mr. Dean, I shall be happy to take a glass of hic, haec, hoc, with you.”  “Sir,” rejoined the doctor, “I shall be happy to comply, but it must be out of a hujus glass.”

Swift, having a shoulder of mutton too much done brought up for his dinner, sent for the cook, and told her to take the mutton down, and do it less.  “Please your honour, I cannot do it less.”  “But,” said the dean, “if it had not been done enough, you could have done it more, could you not?” “Oh, yes, sir, very easily.”  “Why, then,” said the dean, “for the future, when you commit a fault, let it be such a one as can be mended.”

DOCTORS.

Making Things Better.—­A rich man sent to call a physician for a slight disorder.  The physician felt his pulse, and said, “Do you eat well?” “Yes,” said the patient.  “Do you sleep well?” “I do.”  “Oh, then,” said the physician, “I must give you something to take away all that.”

Madame de Villecerf, who was brought to death in the flower of her age by the unskilfulness of her surgeon, comforted him thus:  “I do not look upon you,” she said, in dying, “as a person whose error has cost me my life, but as a benefactor, who hastens my entry into a happy immortality.  As the world may judge otherwise, I have put you in a situation, by my will, to quit your profession.”