IT being unlawful to set man-traps and spring-guns, a gentleman once hit upon a happy device. He was a scholar, and being often asked the meaning of mysterious words compounded from the Greek, that appear in every day's newspaper, and finding they always excited wonder by their length and sound, he had painted on a board, and put up on his premises, in very large letters, the following: "_Tondapamubomenos set up in these grounds_." It was perfectly a "patent safety." DCCCXIX.--A COLORABLE EXCUSE. A LADY who painted her face, asked Parsons how he thought she looked. "I can't tell, madam," he replied, "except you _uncover_ your face." DCCCXX.--CONSISTENCY. NO wonder Tory landlords flout "Fixed Duty," for 'tis plain With them the Anti-Corn-Law Bill Must go against the grain. DCCCXXI.--A WONDERFUL CURE. DOCTOR HILL, a notorious wit, physician, and man of letters, having quarrelled with the members of the Royal Society, who had refused to admit him as an associate, resolved to avenge himself. At the time that Bishop Berkeley had issued his work on the marvellous virtues of tar-water, Hill addressed to their secretary a letter purporting to be from a country-surgeon, and reciting the particulars of a cure which he had effected. "A sailor," he wrote, "_broke_ his leg, and applied to me for help. I bound together the broken portions, and washed them with the celebrated _tar-water_. Almost immediately the sailor felt the beneficial effects of this remedy, and it was not long before his leg was completely _healed_!" The letter was read, and discussed at the meetings of the Royal Society, and caused considerable difference of opinion. Papers were written for and against the tar-water and the restored leg, when a second letter arrived from the (pretended) country practitioner:--"In my last I omitted to mention that the broken limb of the sailor was a _wooden leg_!" DCCCXXII.--AN ACCOMMODATING PHYSICIAN. "IS there anything the matter with you?" said a physician to a person who had sent for him. "O dear, yes, I am ill all over, but I don't know what it is, and I have no particular pain nowhere," was the reply. "Very well," said the doctor, "I'll give you something to _take away all that_." DCCCXXIII.--CHOICE SPIRITS. AN eminent spirit-merchant in Dublin announced, in one of the Irish papers, that he has still a small quantity of the whiskey on sale _which was drunk by his late Majesty while in Dublin_. DCCCXXIV.--AN EXPLANATION. YOUNG, the author of "Night Thoughts," paid a visit to Potter, son of Archbishop Potter, who lived in a deep and dirty part of Kent, through which Young had scrambled with some difficulty and danger. "Whose field was that I crossed?" asked Young, on reaching his friend. "Mine," said Potter. "True," replied the poet; "Potter's field _to bury_ strangers in." DCCCXXV.--IMPROMPTU BY R.B. SHERIDAN.