Dear Murphy, to improve her charms, Your servant humbly begs; She thanks you for her leash of arms, But wants a brace of legs. Moreover, as you promise folks On certain days a drizzle; She thinks, in case she cannot rain, She should have means to _mizzle_. Some lightning too may just fall due, When woods begin to moult; And if she cannot “fork it out,” She’ll wish to make a _bolt_! [Illustration: WETHER WISE.] [Illustration: BID ME DISCOURSE.] THE ELLAND MEETING. _Benedict._ “Here’s a dish I love not: I cannot endure my lady Tongue.”--MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. “Do you hear the rumour? They say the women are in insurrection, and mean to make a----.”--THE WOMAN’S PRIZE. “Enter Rumour, painted full of tongues.”--K. HENRY IV. “In a word, the Tartars came on.”--ROBINSON CRUSOE. In my M. S. days,--and like many bookish bachelors of the same standing,--I was a member of a private literary society, with a name whereof I only remember that it began in Greek and ended in English. This re-union was framed on the usual plan of such institutions; except that the gallantry of the founders had ruled that half the members might be of the female sex, and accordingly amongst our “intellectual legs,” we numbered a fair proportion of the hose that are metaphorically blue. We assembled weekly at the house of some Fellow that had a house, where an original essay was first read by the author, and then submitted to discussion, much as a school-boy first spins his top and then lays it down to be pegged at by the rest of the company. The subjects, like Sir Roger de Coverley’s picture, generally left a great deal to be said on both sides, nor were there wanting choppers, not to say hackers of logic, to avail themselves of the circumstance; and as we possessed, amongst others, a brace of Irish barristers, a Quaker, a dissenter to everything, an author who spoke volumes, a geologist who could find sermons in stones, and one old man eloquent, surnamed for his discursiveness the rambler, we had usually what Bubb Doddington has called “a multiplicity of talk.”