Here is something like a justification of the enormity; and, as the pupil is to mix in all societies, he may as well be prepared. Puns may be divided into different classes; they may be made in different ways, introduced by passing circumstances, or by references to bygone events; they may be thrown in _anecdotically_, or conundrumwise. It is to be observed that feeling, or pity, or commiseration, or grief are not to stand in the way of a pun--that personal defects are to be made available, and that sense, so as the sound answers, has nothing to do with the business. If a man is pathetically describing the funeral of his mother or sister or wife, it is quite allowable to call it a "black-_burying_ party," or to talk of a "fit of _coffin_"; a weeping relative struggling to conceal his grief may be likened to a commander of "_private tears_"; throw in a joke about the phrase of "funerals _performed_" and a re-_hearsal_; and wind up with the anagram _real-fun_, funeral. I give this instance first, in order to explain that nothing, however solemn the subject, is to stand in the way of a pun. It is allowable, when you have run a subject dry in English, to hitch in a bit of any other language which may sound to your liking. For instance, on a fishing party. You say fishing is out of your _line_; yet, if you did not keep _a float_, you would deserve a _rod_; and if anybody affects to find fault with your joke, exclaim: "Oh, _vous bête_!" There you have _line_, _rod_, _float_, and _bait_ ready to your hand. Call two noodles from the city in a punt, endeavoring to catch small fry, "_East Angles_"; or, if you please, observe that "the _punters_ are losing the fish," "catching nothing but a cold," or that "the fish are too deep for them." Call the Thames a "_tidy_" river; but say you prefer the _Isis_ in hot weather. Personal deformities or constitutional calamities are always to be laid hold of. If anybody tells you that a dear friend has lost his sight, observe that it will make him more hospitable than ever, since now he would be glad _to see anybody_. If a clergyman breaks his leg, remark that he is no longer a clergyman, but a _lame man_. If a poet is seized with apoplexy, affect to disbelieve it, although you know it to be true, in order to say-- Poeta nascitur non _fit_; and then, to carry the joke one step farther, add, "that it is not a _fit_ subject for a jest." A man falling into a tan-pit, you may call "sinking in the _sublime_"; a climbing boy suffocated in a chimney meets with a _sootable_ death; and a pretty girl having caught the smallpox is to be much _pitted_.