When Lincoln and Douglas stumped Illinois as rival candidates, the latter in one of his speeches declared he remembered his opponent when he served liquor behind a bar. 'That's so,' said Lincoln; 'but the judge has forgotten to mention that while I was serving the liquor on one side of the bar, he was drinking it on the other.' A mild bit of retaliation compared with that inflicted by Brougham upon his fellow-actor Burton. In reply to the first-named asking if he had read the last number of the _Lantern_, a comic paper in which Brougham was personally interested, Burton said he never read the thing unless he was tipsy; a compliment his questioner acknowledged with a bow and, 'Then, Mr Burton, I am sure of one constant reader!' It is well not to shew contempt for a book to its author's face, as newly made Sergeant Murphy learned when dining in company with the author of _Ten Thousand a Year_. He called out across the table: 'Warren, I never had patience to finish that book of yours; tell me what was the end of Gammon?' 'Oh,' said Warren to the lawyer, 'they made him a sergeant, and he was never heard of after.' Charles Dickens turning over the leaves of a literary lady's album, came upon a page bearing the autographs of Daniel O'Connell and Joseph Bonaparte, and over against them read, in Southey's handwriting: Birds of a feather flock together; But _vide_ the opposite page; And thence you may gather, I'm not of a feather With some of the birds in this cage. Underneath the Laureate's lines the novelist wrote: Now if I don't make The completest mistake That ever put man in a rage, This bird of two weathers Has moulted his feathers, And left them in some other cage-- a reflection upon the poet's political inconstancy, that called forth a _quid pro quo_ from one of Southey's admirers, who thought a man had as much right to change his opinions as to alter his style: Put _his_ first work and last work together, And learn from the groans of all men, That if _he_ has not altered his feather, He's certainly altered his pen. Seeing that men of all sorts delight in girding at the professors of law and physic, it is strange that instead of making common cause together, lawyers and doctors rather cherish a mutual antipathy, which finds vent in an amusing interchange of asperities. Cross-examining Dr Warren, a New York counsel declared that a doctor ought to be able to give an opinion of a disease without making mistakes. 'They make fewer mistakes than the lawyers,' responded the physician. 'That's not so,' said the counsellor; 'but doctors' mistakes are buried six feet under ground; a lawyer's are not.' 'No,' replied Warren; 'but they are sometimes hung as many feet above ground.' The advantage was with the doctor.