The following occurs in Dr. Latham’s _English Language_. Speaking of the genitive or possessive case, he says,— “In the plural number, however, it is rare; so rare, indeed, that whenever the plural ends in s (as it always does) there is no genitive.” Byron says,— I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs, A palace and a prison _on each hand_. (He meant a palace on one hand, and a prison on the other.) Dr. Johnson, in his Dictionary, defines a _garret_ as “a room on the highest floor in the house,” and a _cock-loft_ as “the room over the garret.” For the sake of comparison, we recur to the favorite pasture of the genuine thorough-bred animal:— An Irish member of Parliament, speaking of a certain minister’s well-known love of money, observed, “Let not the honorable member express a contempt for money,—for if there is any one office that glitters in the eyes of the honorable member, it is that of purse-bearer: a pension to him is a compendium of all the cardinal virtues. All his statesmanship is comprehended in the art of taxing; and for good, better, and best, in the scale of human nature, he invariably reads pence, shillings, and pounds. I verily believe,” continued the orator, rising to the height of his conception, “that if the honorable gentleman were an undertaker, it would be the delight of his heart to see all mankind seized with a common mortality, that he might have the benefit of the general burial, and provide scarfs and hat-bands for _the survivors_.” The manager of a provincial theatre, finding upon one occasion but three persons in attendance, made the following address:—“Ladies and gentlemen—as there is nobody here, I’ll dismiss you all. The performances of this night will not be performed; but _they will be repeated_ to-morrow evening.” A Hibernian gentleman, when told by his nephew that he had just entered college with a view to the church, said, “I hope that I may live to hear you preach my funeral sermon.” An Irishman, quarrelling with an Englishman, told him if he didn’t hold his tongue, he would break his impenetrable head, and let the brains out of his empty skull. “My dear, come in and go to bed,” said the wife of a jolly son of Erin, who had just returned from the fair in a decidedly how-come-you-so state: “you must be dreadful tired, sure, with your long walk of six miles.” “Arrah! get away with your nonsense,” said Pat: “it wasn’t the _length_ of the way, at all, that fatigued me: ’twas the _breadth_ of it.” A poor Irishman offered an old saucepan for sale. His children gathered around him and inquired why he parted with it. “Ah, me honeys,” he answered, “I would not be afther parting with it but for a little money to buy something to put in it.” A young Irishman who had married when about nineteen years of age, complaining of the difficulties to which his early marriage subjected him, said he would never marry so young again if he lived to be as ould as Methuselah.