"Thy royal will be done-'tis just,"
Replied the wretch, and kissed the dust;

"Since, my last moments to assuage,
Your majesty's humane decree

Has deigned to leave the choice to me,
I'll die, so please you, of old age!"

Marjorie

"Oh, dear," said Farmer Brown one day,
"I never saw such weather!
The rain will spoil my meadow-hay
And all my crops together."

His little daughter climbed his knee;
"I guess the sun will shine," said she.
"But if the sun," said Farmer Brown,
"Should bring a dry September,
With vines and stalks all wilted down,
And fields scorched to an ember'-

"Why then 'twill rain," said Marjorie,
The little girl upon his knee.

Ah, me!" sighed Farmer Brown, that fall,
"Now what's the use of living?

No plan of mine succeeds at all"—

"Why, next month comes Thanksgiving,

แ

And then, of course," said Marjorie,

"We're all as happy as can be.”

"Well, what should I be thankful for?"

Asked Farmer Brown. "My trouble
This summer has grown more and more,
My losses have been double,

I've nothing left"-"Why, you've got me !"
Said Marjorie, upon his knee.

THE WORD-TWISTING OF THE

PUNSTERS

A nephew of Mr. Bagges, in explaining the mysteries of a tea-kettle, describes the benefits of the application of steam to useful purposes. "For all which," remarked Mr. Bagges, "we have principally to thank-what was his name?"? "Watt was his name, I believe, uncle," replied the boy.

Of Dr. Keate many anecdotes are afloat among old Etonians. One was told that is well worth repeating. A boy named Rashleigh, with all the others of his class, was set to write a theme on the maxim: Temere nil facias. When the time came for giving in the papers, Rashleigh appeared without his. "Where is your theme, sir?" asked the formidable Doctor. "I haven't done it, sir," answered Rashleigh. 'Not done your theme, sir?" "No, sir!" persisted he, undaunted by the near prospect of the "apple twigs." "Why, you told me not to do it!" "I told you!" "Yes, sir; you said, Temere nil facias-do nothing, Rashleigh." And the headmaster was so taken by the Latin pun that the apple twigs were allowed to repose on the shelf.

"So old Scrapetill is dead at last," observed David from the interior of his evening paper; "oceans of money, too." "What did he do with it?" queried "Oh, left it here and there," said David.

Dora.

If he

"That scapegrace son gets a quarter of a million. doesn't paint the town red, now, then I'm a Canadian.' "I should think," mused Dora, softly, as she helped herself to another needleful of silk-"I should think that anybody with a quart of vermilion might paint a town very red indeed." And David was so astounded that he put his paper in the fire and laid a fresh stick of wood in the very centre of the plush-covered table.

Punning would not be so bad were it not so infectious. Puns leave germs which lie in idle minds until they fructify and bear a baleful crop of more puns. The other day some of us got to talking about that witty old cynic, Dean Swift, when one of the company took advantage of the opening and gave us this jeu de mot of his: "Why," asked the Dean, "is it right, by the lex talionis, to pick an artist's pocket?" It was given up, of course, and the answer was: 'Because he has pictures.' A silence fell about the table round, until, one by one, we saw it. Then one thoughtful man observed, "It was impossible to give the answer-because the Dean had contrived to reserve the answer to himself. I could not, for instance, say that it is right for me to pick an artist's pocket, because he has picked yours." Here is another conundrum, founded upon a pun, which only the propounder can solve: An old man and a young one were standing by a meadow. "Why," asked the young man, "is this clover older than you?" "It is not," replied the other. "It is, though," returned the man, "because it is pasturage." Thereupon an abstracted looking person, who had not followed the line of remark, and who had not understood the illustration, startled us all with this irrelevant inquiry, "Why can

not a pantomimist tickle nine Esquimaux? Give it up? Why it's because he can gesticulate."

When Jonah interviewed the whale

And haunted his internals,

As erst it is recorded in

The truthfulest of journals,
What monarch did he symbolize?
(A far-fetched joke you'll style it.)
It seems to us he might have been
A sort of paunch's pilot.

"I'd rather not," Augustus said,
The truffles quick rejecting;
"How now, my dear," said she, "what fresh

Conceit are you affecting?

I do not wish t'ruffle you.

Nor yet to make a pun, Gus;
But then I surely thought that you
Were fond of any fun-Gus."

"In St. Mary's Church, Nottingham, England, on the tombstone of Mary Angell are these lines:

'Sleep on in peace, await thy Maker's will,

Then rise unchanged, and be an Angell still.'

The stone is an old one, and the punning epitaph is according to the spirit of the times, when so many queer inscriptions were put on monuments.”

A young minister of high-church tendencies was called to preside over a congregation that abhorred ritualism and was a stickler for the simplest of services.

He asked Bishop Potter of New York what would be the result if he went in for ritualism just a bit.

"Suppose I should burn a pastille or two during the service, what do you think would happen?" he inquired. "I dearly wish to try the experiment."

"Your congregation would be incensed, your vestrymen would fume, and you would go out in smoke," replied the Bishop.

Gustave Doré bought a villa on the outskirts of Paris, and wrote over the entrance the musical notation, "Do, Mi, Si, La, Do, Re." This being properly interpreted, is "Domicile a Doré."

I saw Esau kissing Kate,

And what's more, we all three saw;
For I saw Esau, he saw me,

And she saw I saw Esau.

Why should girls, a wit exclaimed,
Surpassing farmers be?

Because they're always studying

The art of husbandry.

Sentimental young lady to perfumer: "I don't think you forwarded the scent I meant; it seems entirely different from that I ordered."

Perfumer, who is fond of punning: "Madam, I am sure that what you meant I sent; the scent I sent was the scent you meant, consequently we are both of one sentiment."

A duel was fought in Texas by Alexander Shott and John S. Nott. Nott was shot, and Shott was not. In