---, whom you may remember
at Oxford, were at a ball together at Brussels, and what do you think we
did? We strewed cayenne pepper on the floor, and no sooner did the girls
begin to dance than they began incontinently to sneeze. Ladies and
gentlemen were curtsying, and bowing, and sneezing to one another in the
most ludicrous manner conceivable."

"Ha! ha! ha! Excellent! By the way," rejoined the other, "talking of
Brussels, do you know who has the glory of that famous joke practised
there upon the statues in the park? They give the credit of it to the
English, but on what ground, except the celebrity they have acquired in
such feats, I could never learn."

"I know nothing of it. What was it?"

"Why, you see, amongst the statues in the little park at Brussels are a
number of those busts without arms or shoulders. I cannot call to mind
their technical name. First you have the head of a man, then a sort of
decorated pillar instead of a body, and then again, at the bottom of the
pillar, there protrude a couple of naked feet. They look part pillar and
part man, with a touch of the mummy. Now, it is impossible to
contemplate such a figure without being struck with the idea, how
completely at the mercy of every passer-by are both its nose--which has
no hand to defend it--and its naked toes, which cannot possibly move
from their fixed position. One may tweak the one, and tread upon the
other, with such manifest impunity. Some one in whom this idea, no
doubt, wrought very powerfully, took hammer and chisel, and shied off
the noses and the great toes of several of these mummy-statues. And
pitiful enough they looked next morning."

"Well, that was capital!"

"And the best of it is, that even now, when the noses have been put on
again, the figures look as odd as if they had none at all. The join is
so manifest, and speaks so plainly of past mutilation, that no one can
give to these creatures, let them exist as long as they will, the credit
of wearing their own noses. The jest is immortal."

The recital of this excellent piece of _fun_ was followed by another
explosion of laughter. The Frenchman who sat opposite to me--a man, as I
have said, of grave but urbane deportment, became curious to know what
it was that our neighbours had been conversing about, and which had
occasioned so much hilarity. He very politely expressed this wish to me.
If it was not an indiscretion, he should like to partake, he said, in
the wit that was