eminent for his promptitude at an epigram,
being once asked how it could happen that a lady rather stricken in
years looked so much better in an evening than a morning, thus
replied:--

"Ancient Phyllis has young graces,
'Tis a strange thing, but a true one.
Shall I tell you how?
She herself makes her own faces,
And each morning wears a new one!
_Where's the wonder now_?"

CCLXXXVIII.--BRIGHT AND SHARP.

A LITTLE boy having been much praised for his quickness of reply, a
gentleman present observed, that when children were keen in their youth,
they were generally stupid and dull when they were advanced in years,
and _vice versa_. "What a _very sensible boy_, sir, must _you_ have
been!" returned the child.

CCLXXXIX.--A WOODMAN.

A YOUNG man, boasting of his health and constitutional stamina, was
asked to what he chiefly attributed so great a happiness. "To laying in
a good foundation, to be sure. I make a point, sir, to eat a great
_deal_ every morning."--"Then I presume, sir, you usually breakfast in a
_timber-yard_," was the rejoinder.

CCXC.--HUMAN HAPPINESS.

A CAPTAIN in the navy, meeting a friend as he landed at Portsmouth,
boasted that he had left his whole ship's company the _happiest_ fellows
in the world. "How so?" asked his friend. "Why, I have just flogged
seventeen, and they are happy it is over; and all the rest are happy
that they have escaped."

CCXCI.--MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

A FELLOW stole Lord Chatham's large gouty shoes: his servant, not
finding them, began to curse the thief. "Never mind," said his lordship,
"all the harm I wish the rogue is, that the shoes may _fit him_!"

CCXCII.--A DESERVED RETORT.

A SPENDTHRIFT, who had nearly wasted all his patrimony, seeing an
acquaintance in a coat not of the newest cut, told him that he thought
it had been his great-grandfather's coat. "So it was," said the
gentleman, "and I have also my great-grandfather's _lands_, which is
more than you can say."

CCXCIII.--A POETICAL SHAPE.

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 Pindaric ode_.

CCXCIV.--A COMMON CASE.

A SAILOR meeting an old acquaintance, whom the world had frowned upon a
little, asked him where he lived? "Where I _live_," said he, "I don't
know;