for meals, and had slices of bread and slices of meat placed by his side.  The inventive faculty being apparently but little developed during the eighteenth century, he was the first person who thought of placing meat between two slices of bread.  Owing to the economy of time thus effected, he was able to ruin himself very satisfactorily, and his name is now familiar all over the world, thanks to the condensed form of food he introduced.

Again, Admiral Edward Vernon was Naval Commander-in-Chief in the West Indies in 1740.  The Admiral was known as “Old Grog,” from his habit of always having his breeches and the linings of his boat-cloaks made of grogram, a species of coarse white poplin (from the French grosgrain).  It occurred to “Old Grog” that, in view of the ravages of yellow fever amongst the men of the Fleet, it would be advisable, in the burning climate of the West Indies, to dilute the blue-jackets’ rations of rum with water before serving them out.  This was accordingly done, to the immense dissatisfaction of the men, who probably regarded it as a forerunner of “Pussyfoot” legislation.  They at once christened the mixture “grog,” after the Admiral’s nickname, and “grog” as a term for spirits and water has spread all over the world, and is used just as much in French as in English.

The origin of the expression “to burke an inquiry,” in the sense of suppressing or stifling it, is due to Burke and Hare, two enterprising malefactors who supplied the medical schools of Edinburgh with “subjects” for anatomical research, early in the nineteenth century.  Their procedure was simple.  Creeping behind unsuspecting citizens in lonely streets, they stifled them to death by placing pitch-plasters over their mouths and noses.  Burke was hanged for this in Edinburgh in 1829.

In our own time, an almost unknown man has enriched the language with a new verb.  A Captain Boycott of Lough Mask House, Co.  Mayo, was a small Irish land-agent in 1880.  The means that were adopted to try and drive him out of the country are well known.  Since that time the expression to “boycott” a person, in the sense of combining with others to refuse to have any dealings with him, has become a recognised English term, and is just as widely used in France as with us.

A less familiar term is a “Collins,” for the usual letter of thanks which a grateful visitor addresses to his recent host.  This, of course, is derived from the Rev. Mr. Collins of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, who prided himself on the dexterity with which he worded these acknowledgments of favours received.  As another example, most bridge-players are but too familiar with the name of a certain defunct Earl of Yarborough, who, whatever his other good qualities may have been, scarcely seems to have been a consistently good card-holder.

There must be quite a long list of similar words, and they would make an interesting study.