Take, yourself----

Off to a dusty library of bookshelves, chiefly empty, and the remainder having an occasional medical treatise in the original Latin, with diagrams of the human frame, no fire, rain pouring, damp mist over the landscape, no pens, ink, or even paper to tear up into fanciful shapes, and nothing for company except busts of celebrated people, looking like the upper part of the ghosts of half-washed chimney-sweepers.

After a time, they only resemble one thing, a collection of several homicidal criminals.

Sit before a bust, any bust, under the above circ.u.mstances.

You wonder to what you would have condemned this hideous creature had he been brought up, in his lifetime, before you, as a magistrate.

On every feature is stamped Ruffian. This man _must_ have been hung, were there any justice in the world.

No. This bust is of the late venerable and excellent Archbishop Snuffler.

Is it possible. And all these other savage-looking creatures?... "Are,"

says my informant in the damp library who only comes in for a minute, "Archbishops, Bishops, celebrated Philanthropists, Doctors, and men of science."

And here they are perched up aloft, like overgrown cherubs, whose wings have been taken off by some surgical operation.

_Happy Thought._--If you want to be revenged on somebody, and don't mind expense, have his portrait painted with all his defects glaringly rendered, and present it, as a mark of esteem, to his family.

On his fiftieth birthday give him a bust of himself to be placed in his hall. Depend upon it you've punished him.

Jenkyns Soames, our Professor of Scientific Economy, was talking of the Zoological Gardens.

"I dispute," says he, "the fact of the Hyaena laughing."

"Why?"

"Why? Solvitur ambulando, or rather non ambulando, for I've stood in front of his cage for half an hour, and I've never seen him laugh once."

This was repeated to Mrs. Boodels.

"Yes," says she, "that's very probable. But when Mr. Jenkyns _went away_ * *"

Milburd tried to cap this by asking as a conundrum "why the Hyaena wouldn't laugh in your face?"----

As Mrs. Boodels rose, the ladies had to go out too, so no one stopped for the answer. He caught me alone in a corner and told me what it was.

I think he said that it was because the Hyaena was an _Hy-brid_ animal.

He explained that he meant "_high-bred_."

_Happy Thought._--To say, "Oh, that's very old." This has the same effect on a conundrum-maker as the most brilliant repartee.

Unless it leads him to come to you three times a day ever afterwards, with fresh ones, all hot as it were from the baker's, and ask you perpetually, "Well, is _this_ old?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: JO MILLER, (_Bringing more Material for Joke_).]

CHAPTER XIII.

MUSIC--MEDFORD--MILBURD'S SONG--CONSEQUENCE--OPINIONS--NOTE-- COMPLIMENTS--EPIGRAM--THE DAMP FIREWORK.

Milburd asks Medford to accompany him in a "little thing of his own."

The ladies have taken their turn at the piano, and Medford himself has favoured us with half an hour's worth of his unpublished compositions.

Milburd announces his song as "A WAITING GAME."

(_Suggested by "A Dreary Lot is Mine."_)

A waiting game is mine, Fair maid, A waiting game is mine; One day I shall not be afraid To ask, then hear "I'm thine!"

And when that word I've spoo-o-ken, Ere yet I am quite grey, Ne'er will it, dear, be bro-o-o-ken For ever and a day!

Mrs. Boodels wants to know if he won't kindly sing it to her through her ear-trumpet. He promises to do so, one day when they are alone.

SECOND VERSE.

A waiting game is mine, fair maid, A waiting game is mine, I'll stay until my debts are paid, The contract _then_ I'll sign.

Unless you've fifty thousand pounds, To bring me as a dower, If so .... those are sufficient grounds For wedding--now--this hour.

n.o.body asks him to sing again. Mrs. Frimmely says, "She only cares for French songs. English comic songs," she adds, "are _so vulgar_." Settler for Milburd. Glad of it.

After this Milburd says he's got another; a better one.

We say, sing it to-morrow.

_Happy Thought (expressed in a complimentary manner)._--A good song, like yours, is better for keeping.

_Note to Myself._

The age for compliments is gone. The courtly and polished Abbe, who would have said the above epigrammatically when it would have been considered remarkably witty, has pa.s.sed away. No one believes in compliment. It has no currency, except done in a most commonplace way.

But the epigrammatic compliment, the well-prepared impromptu, the careful rehea.r.s.ed inspiration, is out of date. Now-a-days there are no wits, and no appreciation of The Wits. Conversation is damped by a bon-mot. An awful silence follows the most brilliant _jeu de mot_, as sombre as the darkness after a forked flash, or as the gardens at the Crystal Palace after the last bouquet of fireworks.

Conversation is like a boot. When damped it loses its polish.

[The above remarks occasioned by no one having taken any notice of my epigram, and Milburd only replying to it by saying, "Oh! bosh!"]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

I've just tried to draw a firework in my pocket-book. It doesn't exactly express my idea. But is a very good sketch of a joke which has failed.

This evening I am melancholy.