IN a valedictory address an editor wrote: If we have offended any man in the short but brilliant course of our public career, let him send us a new hat, and we will then forget the...
MR. BARTLEMAN, a celebrated bass-singer, was taken ill, just before the commencement of the musical festival at Gloucester: another basso was applied to, at a short notice, who att...
AT an hotel at Brighton, Douglas Jerrold was dining with two friends, one of whom, after dinner, ordered a bottle of old port.--Waiter, added Jerrold, with a significant twinkle of...
Give me a pen, it is but fair You take my note. Quoth he, Hold there; Jack! to the cash I've bid adieu;-- No need to waste my paper too.
THE following cannot be omitted from a Jest Book, although somewhat lengthy:-- A man was convicted of bigamy, and the annexed conversation took
DR. FULLER having requested one of his companions to make an epitaph for him, received the following: Here lies Fuller's earth!
WHEN Reginald Heber read his prize poem of Palestine to Sir Walter Scott, the latter observed that, in the verses on Solomon's Temple, one striking circumstance had escaped him; na...
AN agricultural society offered premiums to farmers' daughters, girls under twenty-one years of age, who should exhibit the best lots of butter, not less than 10 lbs. That is all r...
IT chanced, one gloomy day in the month of December, that a good-humored Irishman applied to a merchant to discount a bill of exchange for him at rather a long though not an unusua...
A CERTAIN Irish judge, called the Hanging Judge, and who had never been known to shed a tear except when Macheath, in the Beggar's Opera, got his reprieve, once said to Curran, Pra...
THAT'S a pretty bird, grandma, said a little boy. Yes, replied the old dame, and he never cries.--That's because he's never washed, rejoined the youngster.
WHEN Mr. Pope once dined at Lord Chesterfield's, some one observed that he should have known Pope was a great poet by his very shape; for it was in and out, like the lines of a Pin...
THEODORE HOOK, about to be proposed a member of the Phoenix Club, inquired when they met. Every Saturday evening during the winter, was the answer. Evening? O then, said he, I shal...
A STINGY husband threw off the blame of the rudeness of his children in company, by saying that his wife always Gives them their own way.--Poor things! was the prompt response, it'...
AN EMINENT painter, who had suffered, under the common malady of his profession, namely, to paint portraits for persons who neither paid for them nor took them away, sent word to a...
A LADY'S-MAID told her mistress that she once swallowed several pins together. Dear me! said the lady, didn't they kill you?
THE late Duchess of York having desired her housekeeper to seek out a new laundress, a decent-looking woman was recommended to the situation. But, said the housekeeper, I am afraid...
QUIN was one day lamenting that he grew old, when a shallow impertinent young fellow said to him, What would you give to be as young as I am?--By the powers, replied Quin, I would...
JERROLD and Laman Blanchard were strolling together about London, discussing passionately a plan for joining Byron in Greece, when a heavy shower of rain wetted them through. Jerro...
A SCOTCH lady, who was discomposed by the introduction of gas, asked with much earnestness, What's to become o' the puir whales? deeming their interests materially affected by this...
WE row in the same boat, you know, said a literary friend to Jerrold. This literary friend was a comic writer, and a comic writer only. Jerrold replied, True, my good fellow, we do...
LUTTREL and Wilkes were standing on the Brentford hustings, when Wilkes asked his adversary, privately, whether he thought there were more fools or rogues among the multitude of Wi...
CHARLES MATHEWS, seated on a coach-box on a frosty day, waiting for the driver, said to him when at length he appeared: If you stand here much longer, Mr. Coachman, your horses wil...
BARON N., once playing at cards, was guilty of an odd trick; on which his opponent threw him out of the window of a one-pair-of-stairs room. The baron meeting Foote complained of t...
A MAN being interrogated on a trial, spoke several words with much impropriety; and at last saying the word curosity, a counsellor exclaimed, How that fellow murders the English la...
THE most luxurious smoker I ever knew, says Mr. Paget, was a young Transylvanian, who told me that his servant always inserted a lighted pipe into his mouth the first thing in the...
A VERY stupid foreman asked a judge how they were to ignore a bill. Write Ignoramus for self and fellows on the back of it, said Curran.
SOME people have a notion that villany ought to be exposed, though we must confess we think it a thing that deserves a hiding.
(On hearing a prosing harangue from a certain Bishop.) WHEN he holds forth, his reverence doth appear So lengthily his subject to pursue, That listeners (out of patience) often fea...
A WORTHY English agriculturist visited the great dinner-table of the Astor House Hotel, in New York, and took up the bill of fare. His eye caught up the names of its--to him--unkno...