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PRETTY SPEECHES. 
Caustic speeches are sure to draw, and the most 
amiable people, who would not themselves hurt their 
friends’ feelings on any account, chuckle over them as 
much as others. Therefore they are continually chron¬ 
icled; but pretty speeches lack the same pungency, 
and are passed by as insipid; yet there is a fine savor 
about some of them—that said by George the Fourth 
to the officer of marines, for example. 
There was an empty bottle on the table, and the 
King told the servant to “take away that marine.” 
A guest sitting next the King whispered in his ear 
that an officer present belonged to that branch of the 
service. George the Fourth asceidained his name, and 
then, addressing him aloud, asked if he knew why an 
empty bottle was called a 
marine. 
“No, your Majesty,” re¬ 
plied the officer. 
“Because,” said the 
King, “it has done its duty, 
and is ready to do it again.” 
Which was as neat a way 
of getting out of a rather 
awkward phrase as one can 
well imagine. 
Ladies, ho-wever, are the 
fair and proper recipients of 
pretty speeches, and a man 
who gets them is a sort of 
poacher. 
The Due de Nivernois 
made an ingenious one to 
Madame du Barri, who was 
endeavoring to persuade 
him to withdraw his oppo¬ 
sition to some measure she 
had set her heart on. 
“It is of no use, Mon¬ 
sieur le Due,” she said; 
“you are only injuring your 
influence, for the King has 
made up his mind, and I 
have myself heard him say 
that he will never change.” 
“ Ah ! madarne, he was 
looking at you,” replied the 
Duke. 
Could any but a French¬ 
man have ever conveyed 
determined resistance in so 
polite a form ? 
There was an ingenious amount of devotion implied 
in the remark of a love-sick millionaire, when the ob¬ 
ject of his affections became ecstatic over the beauty 
of the evening star. 
“ Oh ! do not, do not praise it like that!” he cried; 
“ I cannot get it for you.” 
It was no wonder that Tom Moore was such a 
general favorite, if he often said such charming little 
things as he wrote. The very prettiest, quaintest 
quip ever penned is in one of his love-songs. The 
lover cannot deny that he has paid homage to others 
before he saw the present object of his affections ; in 
fact, he learned lip-service very early: 
“ That lesson of sweet and enrapturing lore 
I have never forgot, I’ll allow: 
I have had it by rote very often before, 
But never by heart until now.” 
Irish. Wit. —On one occasion the poet Moore—Tom 
Moore, of immortal memory—stayed tine night in the 
house of Mrs. Blake, in a little village in Scotland. 
The lady troubled him all the evening to write for her 
an epitaph, and at length, to be relieved of her impor¬ 
tunity, he wrote: 
“Good Mrs. Blake, in royal state, 
Arrived at length at Heaven’s gate—” 
which he gave her, saying he would finish it in the 
morning. He quite forgot his promise, and was al¬ 
ready in his carriage about to drive off, when she 
came to the door with the sheet of paper he had given 
her, demanding a performance of his promise. “ Oh, 
yes,” said he, with a smile, “ I’ll finish it for you.” 
And he did so, by adding : 
“ But Peter met her with a club, 
A n d knocked her back to Beelzebub.” 
Bad Spelling.— Frequently cases of bad spelling- 
crop out among the professions, and some lamentable I p ee ^ w p ei ^ g p e re plj e d : 
The Coming Explosion. 
instances of weakness in this respect come to light 
among the “ humanitarians.” For instance, a young- 
lawyer in an interior city early one morning locked 
his office and left upon 'it this mysterious legend: 
“ Gon to brexfus.” In a small New England town a 
druggist was surprised and disturbed to receive at the 
hands of a dirty-looking customer the following pre¬ 
scription : “Please give the bare sumphin to fizick 
him 15 cts. worth.’ During the war a letter written 
by a rebel soldier to his sweetheart was captured, 
wherein the writer said : “ We will lick the yanks 
toinorrer if godlemity spares our lives.” Some won¬ 
derful things in the way of directions appear on letters 
passing through the mails; for example, the letter 
directed to a Pittsburg judge, endorsed, “To the 
onerable 
gug.' 
The proprietor of a country store once worked him¬ 
self into a brain fever endeavoring to make intelligible 
the following note given to him by a small boy, the 
son of one of his customers : “ mister Gream Wunt 
you let my boay hev a pare of Easy toad shuz?” 
However, he was probably not more horrified than 
the schoolmaster who received a letter from a man 
who wrote: “I have decided to inter my boy in 
your scull.” 
A Churchwarden’s wife went to church for the 
first time in her life when her husband was made 
churchwarden. Being late, the congregation were 
getting up from their knees when she entered, when 
she said, with a condescending smile, “Pray keep 
your seats, ladies and gentlemen; I think no more of 
of myself than I did before.” 
A young lady, at home from boarding-school for 
the holidays, was asked if she would have some roast 
“No, I thank you; gastro- 
nomical satiety admonishes 
me that I have arrived at 
the ultimate stage of de¬ 
glutition consistent with 
dietetic integrity.” The 
young lady was never asked 
if she would have anything 
after that. 
A Erencli butcher who 
was on his death-bed said 
to Ms wife: “If I die, 
Francoise, you must marry 
our shop boy. He is a good 
young man, and the busi¬ 
ness cannot be carried on 
without a man to look af¬ 
ter it.” “ I have been 
thinking about that al¬ 
ready,” she replied. 
Profane versus Sacred 
Music. —Dominie Thomas 
Campbell, of Glasgow, was 
one day watching a car¬ 
penter making repairs in 
his house. The carpenter 
whistled “ Maggie Sander” 
as he worked, and worked 
in time to the tune. “ Sau- 
ners,” said the dominie, 
presently, “can ye no 
whistle a mair solemn and 
godly tune while ye’er at 
wark ?” “ Ah, well, min¬ 
ister, if it be your will I’ll 
e’n not do it,” said Sauners, 
and changed the tune to 
the “ Dead March in Saul,” 
still planing in time to his music. The dominie 
looked on for some minutes in silence, and then said : 
“ Sauners, I hae anither ward to say till ye. Did the 
gude-wife hire you by the day’s wark or by the job ? ” 
“ The day’s wark was our agreeing, minister.” “Then, 
on the whole, Sauners, I think ye may just as weel 
gae back to whistling Bonnie Maggie Sander.” 
“Grandma, do you know why I can see up in the 
sky so far ?” asked Charlie, a little four-year-old, of 
the venerable lady who sat on the garden seat knitting. 
“No, my dear, what is it?” said grandma, bending 
her eye eager to catch and remember the wise saying 
of the precious little pet. “Because there is nothing 
in the way,” replied the young philosopher, resum¬ 
ing the astronomical research, and grandma her knit¬ 
ting. 
