So when Frederic the Great said spitefully to Minister Elliot, on occasion of the Te Deums over the reverses of Hyder Ali in India, "I never knew that Providence was one of your allies," and Elliot replied, "The only one, sire, whom we do not pay," both the remark and the retort involve the mind in a momentary adjustment of its ideas to the new suggestion; and the wit is thus restrained from sallying into laughter. We have to reflect that Elliot's repartee is a hit at all subsidized powers, including Prussia, and also at his own nation for its trick of futile gratitude and ascription of praise. But if any movement of sympathy prevents the act of wit from settling upon the internal organs, and bids it escape by every pore, we feel the dew of laughter on the face; as when Falstaff whimsically apologizes for himself, "Thou knowest, in the state of innocency, Adam fell; and what should poor Jack Falstaff do, in the days of villany?"--or when, at a meeting in London to hear a report from some missionaries who had been sent to discover the lost tribes of Israel, the chairman opened the business by saying, "I take a great interest in your researches, gentlemen. The fact is, I have borrowed money from all the Jews now known; and, if you can find a new set, you'll do me a favor." It is witty when the author of the "Maid of Sker," describing a dinner, makes the mouth water with smiles when he particularizes "a little pig for roasting, too young to object to it, yet with his character formed enough to make his brains delicious." Wit can depend, like punning, upon the felicitous use of some well-known verse or sentiment, which suddenly is made to adapt itself to a new idea; as when Henry Clapp, speaking of an intolerable bore, inverted the famous sentence which is associated with Shakspeare, and said, "He is not for a time, but for all day." In the same vein, on the strength of Laurence Sterne's[2] assertion that "God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb," a Boston wit, finding himself in the powerful blast which sweeps across the Common and makes a tunnel of Winter Street, remarked that he wished there was a shorn lamb tied at the head of that street. Walter Scott tells an anecdote of the same special character. "So deep was the thirst of vengeance impressed on the minds of the Highlanders that, when a clergyman informed a dying chief of the unlawfulness of the sentiment, urged the necessity of forgiving an inveterate enemy, and quoted, 'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,' the acquiescing penitent said, with a deep sigh, 'To be sure! it is too sweet a morsel for a mortal.'"