DCCLXXII.--ATTENDING TO A WISH. "I WISH you would pay a little attention, sir!" exclaimed a stage manager to a careless actor. "Well, sir, so I am paying _as little_ as I can!" was the calm reply. DCCLXXIII.--A MECHANICAL SURGEON. A VALIANT sailor, that had lost his leg formerly in the wars, was nevertheless, for his great prudence and courage, made captain of a ship; and being in the midst of an engagement, a cannon bullet took off his wooden supporter, so that he fell down. The seamen immediately called out for a surgeon. "Confound you all," said he, "no surgeon, no surgeon,--_a carpenter! a carpenter_!" DCCLXXIV.--CANINE POETRY. A PRETTY little dog had written on its collar the following distich:-- "This collar don't belong to you, sir, Pass on--or you may have one too, sir." The same person might have been the proprietor of another dog, upon whose collar was inscribed:-- "I am Tom Draper's dog. Whose dog are you?" DCCLXXV.--FOOTIANA. FOOTE praising the hospitality of the Irish, after one of his trips to the sister kingdom, a gentleman asked him whether he had ever been at _Cork_. "No, sir," replied Foote; "but I have seen many _drawings_ of it." DCCLXXVI.--NIGHT AND MORNING. AN industrious tradesman having taken a new apprentice, awoke him at a very early hour on the first morning, by calling out that the family were sitting down to table. "Thank you," said the boy, as he turned over in the bed to adjust himself for a new nap; "thank you, I never eat anything during _the night_!" DCCLXXVII.--FULL INSIDE. CHARLES LAMB, one afternoon, in returning from a dinner-party, took his seat in a crowded omnibus, when a stout gentleman subsequently looked in and politely asked, "All full inside?"--"I don't know how it may be, sir, with the _other_ passengers," answered Lamb, "but that last piece of oyster-pie did the business for _me_." DCCLXXVIII.--A SHORT JOURNEY. AN old clergyman one Sunday, at the close of the sermon, gave notice to the congregation that in the course of the week he expected to go on a mission to the heathen. One of his parishioners, in great agitation, exclaimed, "Why, my dear sir, you have never told us one word of this before; what shall we do?"--"O, brother," said the parson, "I don't expect to _go out_ of this town." DCCLXXIX.--A POSER BY LORD ELLENBOROUGH. DURING the Chief-Justiceship of the late Lord Ellenborough there was a horse-cause, to which a certain Privy Councillor was a party, and who, as of right, took his seat upon the bench at the hearing, and there (while his adversary's counsel told his tale) ventured a whisper of remark to the Chief Justice. "If you again _address me_, Sir W----, I shall give you in custody of the Marshal." It was a settler for him, and, as it turned out, of his cause; for he lost it, and most justly too. DCCLXXX.--EPIGRAM.