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Read Ebook: The World of Flying Saucers: A Scientific Examination of a Major Myth of the Space Age by Boyd Lyle Gifford Menzel Donald H Donald Howard
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Ebook has 1156 lines and 119693 words, and 24 pages
THE copiousness of the English language perhaps was never more apparent than in the following character, by a lady, of her own husband:--
"He is," says she, "an abhorred, barbarous, capricious, detestable, envious, fastidious, hard-hearted, illiberal, ill-natured, jealous, keen, loathsome, malevolent, nauseous, obstinate, passionate, quarrelsome, raging, saucy, tantalizing, uncomfortable, vexatious, abominable, bitter, captious, disagreeable, execrable, fierce, grating, gross, hasty, malicious, nefarious, obstreperous, peevish, restless, savage, tart, unpleasant, violent, waspish, worrying, acrimonious, blustering, careless, discontented, fretful, growling, hateful, inattentive, malignant, noisy, odious, perverse, rigid, severe, teasing, unsuitable, angry, boisterous, choleric, disgusting, gruff, hectoring, incorrigible, mischievous, negligent, offensive, pettish, roaring, sharp, sluggish, snapping, snarling, sneaking, sour, testy, tiresome, tormenting, touchy, arrogant, austere, awkward, boorish, brawling, brutal, bullying, churlish, clamorous, crabbed, cross, currish, dismal, dull, dry, drowsy, grumbling, horrid, huffish, insolent, intractable, irascible, ireful, morose, murmuring, opinionated, oppressive, outrageous, overbearing, petulant, plaguy, rough, rude, rugged, spiteful, splenetic, stern, stubborn, stupid, sulky, sullen, surly, suspicious, treacherous, troublesome, turbulent, tyrannical, virulent, wrangling, yelping dog-in-a-manger."
HAPPINESS grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers' gardens.
A GENTLEMAN waited upon Jerrold one morning to enlist his sympathies in behalf of a mutual friend, who was constantly in want of a round sum of money.
"Why, just a four and two noughts will, I think, put him straight," the bearer of the hat replied.
THE author of "Alexander the Great," whilst confined in a madhouse, was visited by Sir Roger L'Estrange, of whose political abilities Lee entertained no very high opinion. Upon the knight inquiring whether the poet knew him, Lee answered:--
CXC.--MAIDS AND WIVES.
WOMEN are all alike. When they're maids they're mild as milk: once make 'em wives, and they lean their backs against their marriage certificates, and defy you.--D.J.
AN opulent farmer applied to an attorney about a lawsuit, but was told he could not undertake it, being already engaged on the other side; at the same time he gave him a letter of recommendation to a professional friend. The farmer, out of curiosity, opened it, and read as follows:--
"Here are two fat wethers fallen out together, If you'll fleece one, I'll fleece the other, And make 'em agree like brother and brother."
The perusal of this epistle cured both parties, and terminated the dispute.
"MY notion of a wife at forty," said Jerrold, "is, that a man should be able to change her, like a bank-note, for two twenties."
CC.--NOVEL OFFENCE.
"WHAT is light?" asked a schoolmaster of the booby of a class. "A sovereign that isn't full weight is light," was the prompt reply.
AN editor at a dinner-table being asked if he would take some pudding, replied, in a fit of abstraction, "Owing to a crowd of other matter, we are unable to find room for it."
THE usual place of resort for Dublin duellists was called the Fifteen Acres. An attorney of that city, in penning a challenge, thought most likely he was drawing a lease, and invited his antagonist to meet him at "the place called Fifteen Acres--'be the same more or less.'"
JACOB JOHNSON, the publisher, having refused to advance Dryden a sum of money for a work upon which he was engaged, the incensed bard sent a message to him, and the following lines, adding, "Tell the dog that he who wrote these can write more":--
"With leering looks, bull-necked, and freckled face, With two left legs, and Judas-colored hair, And frowsy pores, that taint the ambient air!"
Johnson felt the force of the description; and, to avoid, a completion of the portrait, immediately sent the money.
A CRITIC one day talked to Jerrold about the humor of a celebrated novelist, dramatist, and poet, who was certainly no humorist.
"Humor!" exclaimed Jerrold, "why he sweats at a joke, like a Titan at a thunderbolt!"
MILTON was asked by a friend whether he would instruct his daughters in the different languages: to which he replied, "No, sir; one tongue is sufficient for a woman."
CCXL.--ON FARREN, THE ACTOR.
IF Farren, cleverest of men, Should go to the right about, What part of town will he be then? Why, "Farren-done-without!"
BEWARE of falling in love with a pair of moustaches, till you have ascertained whether their wearer is the original proprietor.
LORD ERSKINE and Dr. Parr, who were both remarkably conceited, were in the habit of conversing together, and complimenting each other on their respective abilities. On one of these occasions, Parr promised that he would write Erskine's epitaph; to which the other replied, that "such an intention on the doctor's part was almost a temptation to commit suicide."
THE other day, a certain bishop lost his portmanteau. The circumstance has given rise to the following:--
I have lost my portmanteau-- "I pity your grief;" It contained all my sermons-- "I pity the thief."
CCL.--TORY LIBERALITY.
THE house of Mr. Dundas, late President of the Court of Session in Scotland, having after his death been converted into a blacksmith's shop, a gentleman wrote upon its door the following impromptu:--
"WHY, pray, of late do Europe's kings No jester to their courts admit?" "They're grown such stately solemn things, To bear a joke they think not fit. But though each court a jester lacks, To laugh at monarchs to their faces, Yet all mankind, behind their backs, Supply the honest jesters' places."
AN old offender being asked whether he had committed all the crimes laid to his charge, answered, "I have done still worse! I suffered myself to be apprehended."
DR. BYRON, of Manchester, eminent for his promptitude at an epigram, being once asked how it could happen that a lady rather stricken in years looked so much better in an evening than a morning, thus replied:--
CCXC.--HUMAN HAPPINESS.
YOU beat your pate, and fancy wit will come: Knock as you will, there's nobody at home.
CCC.--AN UNRE-HEARSED EFFECT.
WHIG and Tory scratch and bite, Just as hungry dogs we see; Toss a bone 'twixt two, they fight; Throw a couple, they agree.
BISHOP WARBURTON, going to Cirencester to confirm, he was supplied at the altar with an elbow-chair and a cushion, which he did not much like, and calling to the churchwarden said, "I suppose, sir, your fattest butcher has sat in this chair, and your most violent Methodist preacher thumped the cushion."
NATURE descends down to infinite smallness. Mr. Canning has his parasites; and if you take a large buzzing blue-bottle fly, and look at it in a microscope, you may see twenty or thirty little ugly insects crawling about it, which doubtless think their fly to be the bluest, grandest, merriest, most important animal in the universe, and are convinced that the world would be at an end if it ceased to buzz.--S.S.
"NATURE has written 'honest man' on his face," said a friend to Jerrold, speaking of a person in whom Jerrold's faith was not altogether blind. "Humph!" Jerrold replied, "then the pen must have been a very bad one."
"The dawn is overcast; the morning lowers, And heavily, in clouds, brings on the day."
The audience upon this began to vociferate "Prologue! prologue! prologue!" when Wignell, finding them resolute, without betraying any emotion, pause, or change in his voice and manner, proceeded as if it were part of the play:--
"Ladies and gentlemen, there has been no Prologue spoken to this play these twenty years-- The great, the important day, big with the fate Of Cato and of Rome."
DETERMINED beforehand, we gravely pretend To ask the opinion and thoughts of a friend; Should his differ from ours on any pretence, We pity his want both of judgment and sense; But if he falls into and flatters our plan, Why, really we think him a sensible man.
"Then as like as two chips Are his head and his lips.--AMARILLIS."
CCCL.--SELF-KNOWLEDGE.
To John I owed great obligation, But John, unhappily, thought fit To publish it to all the nation; Sure John and I are more than quit.
A CLEVER literary friend of Jerrold, and one who could take a joke, told him he had just had "some calf's-tail soup."--"Extremes meet sometimes," said Jerrold.
GARRICK was on a visit at Hagley, when news came that a company of players were going to perform at Birmingham. Lord Lyttelton said to Garrick, "They will hear you are in the neighborhood, and will ask you to write an address to the Birmingham audience."--"Suppose, then," said Garrick, without the least hesitation, "I begin thus:--
Ye sons of iron, copper, brass, and steel, Who have not heads to think, nor hearts to feel--"
THE toilette of a woman is an altar erected by self-love to vanity.
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