than a rod. Some boys, who had watched his want of success a long
time, at last bought a few pennyworth of pickled herrings, and throwing
them on the stream, allowed them to float down towards the eager
disciple of old Izaak. Sheridan saw them coming, rushed in regardless of
his clothes, cast his net and in great triumph secured them. When he had
landed his prize, however, there were the boys bursting with laughter,
and Piscator saw he was their dupe. 'Ah!' cried he, laughing in concert,
as he looked at his dripping clothes, 'this is a pretty _pickle_
indeed!'

His extravagance was well known to his friends, as well as to his
creditors. Lord Guildford met him one day. 'Well, Sherry, so you've
taken a new house, I hear.'--'Yes, and you'll see now that everything
will go on like clockwork.'--'Ay,' said my lord, with a knowing leer,
'_tick, tick_.' Even his son Tom used to laugh at him for it. 'Tom, if
you marry that girl, I'll cut you off with a shilling,'--'Then you must
borrow it,' replied the ingenuous youth.[8] Tom sometimes disconcerted
his father with his inherited wit--his only inheritance. He pressed
urgently for money on one, as on many an occasion. 'I have none,' was
the reply, as usual; 'there is a pair of pistols up stairs, a horse in
the enable, the night is dark, and Hounslow Heath at hand.'

[8: Another version is that Tom replied: 'You don't happen to have it
about you, sir, do you?']

'I understand what you mean,' replied young Tom; 'but I tried that last
night, and unluckily stopped your treasurer, Peake, who told me you had
been beforehand with him, and robbed him of every sixpence he had in the
world.'

So much for the respect of son to father!

Papa had his revenge on the young wit, when Tom, talking of Parliament,
announced his intention of entering it on an independent basis, ready to
be bought by the highest bidder 'I shall write on my forehead,' said he,
"To let."'

'And under that, Tom, "Unfurnished,"' rejoined Sherry the elder. The
joke is now stale enough.

But Sheridan was more truly witty in putting down a young braggart whom
he met at dinner at a country-house. There are still to be found, like
the bones of dead asses in a field newly ploughed, in some parts of the
country, youths, who are so hopelessly behind their age, and indeed
every age, as to look upon authorship as degrading, all knowledge, save
Latin and Greek, as 'a bore,' and all entertainment but hunting,
shooting, fishin