ONE day, just as an English officer had arrived at Vienna, the empress knowing that he had seen a certain princess much celebrated for her beauty, asked him if it was really true that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. "I thought so _yesterday_," he replied. CDLXXVI.--AN ODD BIRD. A LATE Duke of Norfolk had a fancy for owls, of which he kept several. He called one, from the resemblance to the Chancellor, Lord Thurlow. The duke's solicitor was once in conversation with his grace, when, to his surprise, the owl-keeper came up and said, "Please you, my lord, Lord Thurlow's _laid an egg_." CDLXXVII.--INQUESTS EXTRAORDINARY. FOUND dead, a rat--no case could sure be harder; Verdict--Confined a week in Eldon's larder. Died, Sir Charles Wetherall's laundress, honest Sue; Verdict--Ennui--so little work to do. CDLXXVIII.--"I'VE DONE THE SAME THING OFTEN." A MR. JOHN SMITH, who is described, evidently not without reason, as a "fast" talker, gave the following description of the blowing up of a steamboat on the Mississippi: "I had landed at Helena for a minute to drop some letters into the post-office, when all of a sudden I heard a tremendous explosion, and, looking up, saw that the sky was for a minute darkened with arms, legs, and other small bits and scraps of my fellow-travellers. Amongst an uncommonly ugly medley, I spied the second clerk, about one hundred and fifty feet above my own level. I recognized him at once, for ten minutes before I had been sucking a sherry-cobbler with him out of the same rummer. Well, I watched him. He came down through the roof of a shoemaker's shop, and landed on the floor close by the shoemaker, who was at work. The clerk, being in a hurry, jumped up to go to the assistance of the other sufferers, when the 'man of wax' demanded five hundred dollars for the damage done to his roof. 'Too high,' replied the clerk; 'never paid more than two hundred and fifty dollars in my life, _and I've done the same thing often_.'" CDLXXIX.--CONFIDENCE. "WHY," said a country clergyman to one of his flock, "do you always sleep in your pew when I am in the pulpit, while you are all attention to every stranger I invite?"--"Because, sir," was the reply, "when _you_ preach I'm sure all's right, but I can't trust _a stranger_ without keeping a good look-out." CDLXXX.--THE CUT INFERNAL. SAID Wetherall the other night Of ----: "He's the silliest elf I ever _knew_." Sir Charles was right, For no one ever _knows himself_. CDLXXXI.--FEELING HIS WAY. "UNCLE," said a young man (who thought that his guardian supplied him rather sparingly with pocket-money), "is the Queen's head _still_ on the sovereign?"--"Of course it is, you stupid lad! Why do you ask that?"--"Because it is now such a length of time since _I saw one_." CDLXXXII.--THE WILL.