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JOE HUM(E)ANITY.

The “late of” Middlesex, during his visit to Switzerland, happened to be charged, at a cottage half-way up the Jura, three farthings for seven eggs.  Astonished and disgusted at the demand, he vehemently declared that things were come to a pretty

[Illustration:  PASS IN THE MOUNTAINS]

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THE MINISTERIAL TOP.

We understand Sir James Graham has lately been labouring under severe and continued fits of vertigo, produced, as his medical attendants state, by his extraordinary propensity for turning round.

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BERNARD CAVANAGH

AND THE POOR LAW COMMISSIONERS.

It is not generally known that the above gentleman has been officially engaged by the eminent and philanthropic pauper-patrons, to put his principles into practice throughout the whole of the Unions in the United Kingdom.

Knowing the extraordinary appetite of the vulgar for anything approaching the unintelligible and marvellous, we feel sorry to be obliged, by a brief detail of this gentleman’s early life and habits, to divest the present phenomenon of much of its apparent wonder and romance.

Mr. Cavanagh was in infancy rather remarkable for the many sleepless nights he occasioned his worthy parents by his juvenile intimations that fasting at that time was no part of his system.  He progressed rapidly in his powers of consumption, and was indeed a child of

[Illustration:  A FULL HABIT;]

or, as his nurse expressed it, he was alwaist good for three rounds at breakfast, not at all to be sneezed at luncheon, anything but bad at dinner, hearty at tea (another three-rounder), and very consistent at supper.

“Reverse of fortune changes friends”—­reverse of circumstances, alas! too often changes feeds!—­pecuniary disappointments brought on a reduction of circumstances—­reduction of circumstances occasioned a reduction of meals, and the necessity for such reduction being very apparent to a philosophic mind, engendered a reduction of craving for the same.  Perhaps nothing could have proved more generally beneficial than the individual misfortunes of Mr. Bernard Cavanagh, which transferred him to one of those Elysiums of brick and mortar, the “Poor Law Union.”  Here, as he himself expresses it, the fearful fallacies of his past system were made beautifully apparent; he felt as if existence could be maintained by the infinitesimal process, so benevolently advocated and regularly prepared, that one step more was all that was necessary to arrive at dietary perfectibility.  That step he took, it being simply, instead of next to nothing, to live on nothing at all; and now, such was his opinion of the condiments supplied, he declares it to be by far the pleasantest of the two.