My father
recommended it to me when I began to write letters--I have formed my own
style upon it; I recommend it to your favourite."

"I should be very sorry for him to exchange his style for any such
pompous writing," said Captain Brown.

Miss Jenkyns felt this as a personal affront, in a way of which the
Captain had not dreamed. Epistolary writing she and her friends
considered as her _forte_. Many a copy of many a letter have I seen
written and corrected on the slate, before she "seized the half-hour
just previous to post-time to assure" her friends of this or of that;
and Dr. Johnson was, as she said, her model in these compositions. She
drew herself up with dignity, and only replied to Captain Brown's last
remark by saying, with marked emphasis on every syllable, "I prefer Dr.
Johnson to Mr. Boz."

It is said--I won't vouch for the fact--that Captain Brown was heard to
say, _sotto voce,_ "D----n Dr. Johnson!" If he did, he was penitent
afterwards, as he showed by going to stand near Miss Jenkyns's
arm-chair, and endeavouring to beguile her into conversation on some
more pleasing subject. But she was inexorable. The next day she made the
remark I have mentioned about Miss Jessie's dimples.

SALLY SIMPKIN'S LAMENT; OR JOHN JONES'S KIT-CAT-ASTROPHE
[Sidenote: _Hood_]

"Oh! what is that comes gliding in,
And quite in middling haste?
It is the picture of my Jones,
And painted to the waist.

"It is not painted to the life,
For where's the trousers blue?
Oh, Jones, my dear!--Oh dear! my Jones,
What is become of you?"

"Oh! Sally dear, it is too true,--
The half that you remark
Is come to say my other half
Is bit off by a shark!

"Oh! Sally, sharks do things by halves,
Yet most completely do!
A bite in one place seems enough,
But I've been bit in two.

"You know I once was all your own,
But now a shark must share!
But let that pass--for now to you
I'm neither here nor there.

"Alas! death has a strange divorce
Effected in the sea,
It has divided me from you,
And even me from me.

"Don't fear my ghost will walk o' nights,
To haunt, as people say;
My ghost _can't_ walk, for oh! my legs
Are many leagues away!

"Lord! think, when I am swimming round,
And looking where the boat is,
A shark just snaps away a half
Without a quarter's notice.

"One half is here, the other half
Is near Columbia pla