THE MORNING CALL

CANNOT conceive any prospect more agreeable to a weary traveler than the approach to Bedfordshire. Each valley reminds him of Sleepy Hollow; the fleecy clouds seem like blankets; the lakes and ponds are clean sheets; the setting sun looks like a warming pan. He dreams of dreams to come. His traveling cap transforms to a nightcap; the coach lining feels softlier squabbed; the guard's horn plays "Lullaby." Every flower by the roadside is a poppy. Each jolt of the coach is but a drowsy stumble upstairs. The lady opposite is the chambermaid; the gentleman beside her is Boots. He slides into imaginary slippers; he winks and nods flirtingly at Sleep, so soon to be his Although the wheels may be rattling into vigilant Wakefield, it appears to him to be sleepy Ware, with its great bed, a whole county of down, spread "all before him where to choose his place of rest.”

own.

It was in a similar mood, after a long, dusty, droughty dogday's journey, that I entered the Dolphin at Bedhampton. I nodded in at the door; winked at the lights; blinked at the company in the coffeeroom; yawned for a glass of negus; swallowed it with my eyes shut, as though it had been "a pint of nappy »; surrendered my boots; clutched a candlestick; and blundered, slipshod, up the stairs to number nine.

Blessed be the man, says Sancho Panza, who first invented sleep; and blessed be heaven that he did not take out a patent and keep his discovery to himself. My clothes dropped off me; I saw through a drowsy haze the likeness of a four-poster; "Great Nature's second course >>> was spread before me; and I fell to without a long grace!

There's a puff- and so Good-Night!

It would have been gross improvidence to waste more words on the occasion, for I was to be roused up again at four o'clock the next morning to proceed by the early coach. I determined, therefore, to do as much sleep within the interval as I could; and in a minute, short measure, I was with that mandarin, Morpheus, in his Land of Nod.

How intensely we sleep when we are fatigued! Some as sound as tops, others as fast as churches. For my own part I must have slept as fast as a Cathedral,- as fast as Young Rapid wished his father to slumber; - nay, as fast as the French veteran who dreams over again the whole Russian campaign while dozing in his sentry box. I must have slept as fast as a fast post coach in my four-poster- or rather I must have slept "like winkin," for I seemed hardly to have closed my eyes when a voice cried, Sleep no more!"

It was that of Boots, calling and knocking at the door, whilst through the keyhole a ray of candlelight darted into my chamber. "Who's there? »

"It's me, your honor, I humbly ax pardon-but somehow I've oversleeped myself, and the coach be gone by!"

"The devil it is!-then I have lost my place!"

"No, not exactly, your honor. She stops a bit at the Dragon, t'other end of the town; and if your honor wouldn't object to a bit of a run

"That's enough

come in. Put down the light—and take up that bag-my coat over your arm and waistcoat with it-and that cravat."

Boots acted according to orders. I jumped out of bed-pocketed my nightcap-screwed on my stockings-plunged into my trousers- rammed my feet into wrong right and left bootstumbled down the back stairs- burst through a door, found myself in the fresh air of the stable yard holding a lantern, which, in sheer haste, or spleen, I pitched into the horsepond. Then began the race, during which I completed my toilet, running and firing a verbal volley at Boots, as often as I could spare breath for one.

"And you call this waking me up-for the coach ?-My waistcoat! - Why I could wake myself — too late — without being called. Now my cravat - and be hanged to you! - Confound that stone! — and give me my coat. A nice road for a run. I suppose you How many gentlemen-may you do a week? If I-run -a foot-further

keep it on purpose.

I'll tell you what. I paused for wind, while Boots had stopped of his own accord. We had turned a corner into a small square; and on the opposite side certainly stood an inn with the sign of the Dragon, but without any sign of a coach at the door. Boots stood beside me, aghast, and surveying the house from the top to the bottom; not a wreath

of smoke came from the chimney; the curtains were closed over every window, and the door was closed and shuttered. I could hardly contain my indignation when I looked at the infernal somnolent visage of the fellow, hardly yet broad awake-he kept rubbing his black-lead eyes with his hands, as if he would have rubbed them out.

"Yes, you may well look-you have overslept yourself with a vengeance. The coach must have passed an hour ago—and they have all gone to bed again!

"No, there be no coach, sure enough," soliloquized Boots, slowly raising his eyes from the road, where he had been searching for the track of recent wheels, and fixing them with a deprecating expression on my face. "No, there's no coach—I ax a thousand pardons, your honor-but you see, sir, what with waiting on her, and talking on her, and expecting on her, and giving notice on her, every night of my life, your honor- why I sometimes dreams on her- and that's the case as is now!"

Complete.

THEODORE HOOK

(1788-1841)

CHEODORE EDWARD HOOK, one of the great "wits" of the times

of the Georges, left little that belongs to permanent literature. His celebrity rests largely on his "improvisations," but in his essays, sketches, and novels there are frequent flashes of the brilliancy which made him such a favorite at court that he was appointed Governor of Mauritius, where he remained from 1812 to 1817. As a result of a defalcation for which he may not have been responsible, he was recalled to England and imprisoned. Some of his best work was done in jail; and he would have been fortunate had he remained there, as on his release he spent the rest of his life largely in the attempt to work all day and drink all night,- dying as a result of it, August 24th, 1841, "done up in purse, in mind, and in body too," as he said of himself just before his death. It is said that he is the original of Thackeray's "Mr. Wagg."

THE

ON CERTAIN ATROCITIES OF HUMOR

HERE is one class of people who, with a depravity of appetite not excelled by that of the celebrated Anna Maria Schurman, who rejoiced in eating spiders, thirst after puns. If you fall in with these, you have no resource but to indulge them to their hearts' content; but, in order to rescue yourself from the imputation of believing punning to be wit, quote the definition of Swift, and be, like him, as inveterate a punster as you possibly can, immediately after resting everything, and hazarding all, upon the principle that the worse the pun the better.

In order to be prepared for this sort of punic war (for the disorder is provocative and epidemic), the moment any one gentleman or lady has, as they say in Scotland, "let a pun," everybody else in the room who can, or cannot do the same, sets to work to endeavor to emulate the example. From that period all rational conversation is at an end, and a jargon of nonsense succeeds, which lasts till the announcement of coffee, or supper, or the carriages, puts a happy termination to the riot.

Addison says, "One may say of a pun as the countryman described his nightingale, that it is vox et præterea nihil, a sound, and nothing but a sound"; and in another place he tells us that "the greatest authors in their most serious works make frequent use of puns; the sermons of Bishop Andrews, and the tragedies of Shakespeare are full of them; if a sinner was punned into repentance as in the latter, nothing is more usual than to see a hero weeping and grumbling for a dozen lines together"; but he also says, "it is indeed impossible to kill a weed which the soil has a natural disposition to produce. The seeds of punning are

in the minds of all men, and though they may be subdued by reason, reflection, and good sense, they will be very apt to shoot up in the greatest genius that is not broken and cultivated by the rules of art."

Here is something like a justification of the enormity; and, as the pupil is to mix in all societies, he may as well be prepared.

Puns may be divided into different classes; they may be made in different ways, introduced by passing circumstances, or by references to bygone events; they may be thrown in anecdotically, or conundrumwise. It is to be observed that feeling, or pity, or commiseration, or grief are not to stand in the way of a pun-that personal defects are to be made available, and that sense, so as the sound answers, has nothing to do with the business.

If a man is pathetically describing the funeral of his mother, or sister, or wife, it is quite allowable to call it a "black-burying party," or to talk of a "fit of coffin"; a weeping relative struggling to conceal his grief may be likened to a commander of "private tears"; throw in a joke about the phrase of "funerals performed," and a re-hearsal; and wind up with the anagram real-fun, funeral.

I give this instance first, in order to explain that nothing, however solemn the subject, is to stand in the way of a pun.

It is allowable, when you have run a subject dry in English, to hitch in a bit of any other language which may sound to your liking. For instance, on a fishing party. You say fishing is out of your line; yet, if you did not keep a float, you would deserve a rod; and if anybody affects to find fault with your joke, exclaim, "Oh, vous bête ! » There you have line, rod, float,