e is something about the tree, which one bred in the country cannot
soon forget, and which a visiter learns, perhaps, sooner than any
association of placid delight connected with rural scenery. When, too, the
traveller, or the man of the world, after a life spent in other pursuits,
returns to the village of his nativity, the old hawthorn is the only
playfellow of his boyhood that has not changed. His seniors are in the
grave; his contemporaries are scattered; the hearths at which he found a
welcome are in the possession of those who know him not; the roads are
altered; the houses rebuilt; and the common trees have grown out of his
knowledge: but be it half a century or more, if man spare the old hawthorn,
it is just the same--not a limb, hardly a twig, has altered from, the
picture that memory traces of his early years.--_Library of Entertaining
Knowledge_.

* * * * *

TURKISH JOKE.

When the Caliph Haroun el Raschid (who was the friend of the great
Charlemagne,) entertained Ebn Oaz at his court in the quality of jester,
he desired him one day, in the presence of the Sultana and all her
followers, to make an excuse worse than the crime it was intended to
extenuate: the Caliph walked about, waiting for a reply. Alter a long
pause, Ebn Oaz skulked behind the throne, and pinched his highness in the
rear. The rage of the Caliph was unbounded. "I beg a thousand pardons of
your Majesty," said Ebn Oaz, "but I thought it was her Highness the
Sultana." This was the excuse worse than the crime; and of course the
jester was pardoned.

* * * * *

FUND AND REFUND.

Disappointment at the theatre is a bad thing: but the manager returning
admission money is worse. Sheridan, who understood professional feelings
on this subject in the most acute degree, was in the habit of saying that
he could give words to the chagrin of a conqueror, on seeing the fruit of
his victories snatched from him; or the miseries of a broken down minister,
turned out in the moment when he thought the cabinet at his mercy; or a
felon listening to a long winded sermon from the ordinary; or a debtor
just fallen into the claws of a dun; but that he never could find words to
express the sensibilities of a manager compelled to disgorge money once
taken at his doors. "_Fund_," says this experienced ornament of the art of
living by one's wits, "_fund_ is an excellent word; but _re-fund_ is the