MDXX.--FASHION AND VIRTUE. "WHAT'S fashionable, I'll maintain Is always right," cries sprightly Jane; "Ah! would to Heaven," cries graver Sue, "What's _right_ were fashionable too." MDXXI.--PROFESSIONAL COMPANIONS. A GENTLEMAN, who was dining with another, praised the meat very much, and inquired who was his butcher. "His name is Addison."--"Addison!" echoed the guest; "pray is he any relation to the poet?"--"I can't say: but this I know, he is seldom without his _Steel_ by his side." MDXXII.--WHY MASTER OF THE HOUSE. A TRAVELLER coming up to an inn door, said: "Pray, friend, are you the master of this house?"--"Yes, sir," answered Boniface, "my wife has been _dead these three weeks_." MDXXIII.--PRECAUTIONARY. LORD JOHN RUSSELL, remarkable for the smallness of his person as Lord Nugent was for the reverse, was expected at a house where Sydney Smith was a guest. "Lord John comes here to-day," said Sydney Smith, "his corporeal anti-part, Lord Nugent, is already here. Heaven send he may not _swallow John_! There are, however, _stomach-pumps_ in case of accident." MDXXIV.--A LATE DISCOVERER. A VERY dull man, after dinner, had been boring the company with a long discourse, in the course of which he had given utterance to ethical views as old as the hills, as though he had just discovered them. When he had done repeating his truisms, Charles Lamb gravely said: "Then, sir, you are actually prepared to maintain that a thief is not _altogether a moral man_." MDXXV.--LINES TO O'KEEFE. (Said to be written by Peter Pindar.) THEY say, O'Keefe, Thou art a thief, That half thy works are stolen or more; I say O'Keefe, Thou art no thief, Such stuff was never writ before! MDXXVI.--PROFESSION AND PRACTICE. A YOUNG lawyer who had been "admitted" about a year, was asked by a friend, "How do you like your new profession?" The reply was accompanied by a brief sigh to suit the occasion: "My _profession_ is much better than my _practice_." MDXXVII.--A RISKFUL ADVENTURE. MR. REYNOLDS, the dramatist, once met a _free_ and _easy_ actor, who told him that he had passed three festive days at the seat of the Marquis and Marchioness of ----, _without any invitation_. He had gone there on the assumption that as my lord and lady were not on _speaking terms_, _each_ would suppose the _other_ had asked him, and so it turned out. MDXXVIII.--WONDERFUL UNANIMITY.