everal
sentences which show trenchant wit, as: "Nations squint in looking at
one another; we must discount what Germany and France say of each
other."

Several Englishwomen can be recalled who were noted for their
epigrammatic wit: as Harriet, Lady Ashburton. On some one saying that
liars generally speak good-naturedly of others, she replied: "Why, if
you don't speak a word of truth, it is not so difficult to speak well of
your neighbor."

"Don't speak so hardly of ----," some one said to her; "he lives on your
good graces."

"That accounts," she answered, "for his being so thin."

Again: "I don't mind the canvas of a man's mind being good, if only it
is completely hidden by the worsted and floss."

Or: "She never speaks to any one, which is, of course, a great advantage
to any one."

Mrs. Carlyle _was_ an epigram herself--small, sweet, yet possessing a
sting--and her letters give us many sharp and original sayings.

She speaks in one place of "Mrs. ----, an insupportable bore; her neck
and arms were as naked as if she had never eaten of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil."

And what a comical phrase is hers when she writes to her "Dearest"--"I
take time by the _pig-tail_ and write at night, after post-hours"--that
growling, surly "dearest," of whom she said, "The amount of bile that he
brings home is awfully grand."

For a veritable epigram from an American woman's pen we must rely on
Hannah F. Gould, who wrote many verses that were rather graceful and
arch than witty. But her epitaph on her friend, the active and
aggressive Caleb Cushing, is as good as any made by Saxe.

"Lay aside, all ye dead,
For in the next bed
Reposes the body of Cushing;
He has crowded his way
Through the world, they say,
And even though dead will be pushing."

Such a hit from a bright woman is refreshing.

Our literary foremothers seemed to prefer to be pedantic, didactic, and
tedious on the printed page.

Catharine Sedgwick dealt somewhat in epigram, as when she says: "He was
not one of those convenient single people who are used, as we use straw
and cotton in packing, to fill up vacant places."

Eliza Leslie (famed for her cook-books and her satiric sketches), when
speaking of people silent from stupidity, supposed kindly to be full of
reserved power, says: "We cannot help thinking that when a head is full
of ideas some of them must involuntarily _ooze_ out."

And is not this epi