of currency, as an Italian count, or, perhaps, the marquis of this or the duke of that.  There is no telling.  But if she takes him for a cent more than Webster rates him at, she gets cheated, depend upon it.  He is not worth the clothes on his back.  He has to cross the street sometimes, to get rid of being dunned by his tailor; and he has been two or three hours trying to find a barber who will trust him.  He’s nothing but a pistareen, and hardly that.

Some people pass themselves off for being very learned, when they are as ignorant as a horse-block.  But, oh! such mistakes as they make sometimes; it is enough to set one into a fit of laughter, only to think of some of them.  I know a miss, who tries to pass herself off for a great reader, when the truth is, she has only dipped up a spoon-full, here and there, from a score or two of authors, and has not the slightest idea about the merits of any of them.  Some one came up with her nicely the other night, at a party.  He had suspicions, I suppose, that she was trying to pass for too much; at all events, he asked her a great many roundabout questions, which she was obliged to answer, and in doing so she let out the secret.  Every body saw what sort of a coin she was, at once.

What fools some folks make of themselves, by attempting to pass for more than they are worth, in the matter of dollars and cents.  It is said, that in the city of New York there are a good many poor fellows that can scarcely get enough money to appear in a respectable suit of clothes, who will buy a dinner in some cheap eating-house for sixpence, and then pick their teeth on the door-steps of the Astor House, to make people think they have dined there.  And that is not any worse than some would-be genteel people manage when the warm season comes on, every year.  They close their front window blinds, and steal into and out of their houses like thieves, or dogs that have just had a flogging, so that their neighbors will think they have gone to Saratoga, or Rockaway, or some other fashionable summer retreat.  They take a good deal of pains to pass for so much more than they are worth—­do they not, little friend?  They only go for pistareens, though, where they are known.

One sometimes comes across a public speaker—­a lawyer—­possibly a preacher—­who displays his eloquence by using all sorts of long and out-of-the-way words.  A man may be listening ever so quietly and innocently, and the first thing he knows, down comes a word about his ears half as long as his arm almost, and half as heavy as a mallet.  That is what the orator calls a knock-down argument; and when he wishes to be particularly convincing and eloquent, he throws at you such brick-bats and bars of iron as incomprehensibility—­epexegetically—­anthropopathically—­so fast that you have scarcely a chance to dodge one before another comes whizzing along.  Of course, you are confounded with the man’s assault and battery, and if you are a thinking person, perhaps fall to musing