ronunciation of the legal term 'lien'--the former calling it
'lion,' and the latter 'lean'--Jekyll produced the following:

'Sir Arthur, Sir Arthur, why what do you mean
By saying the Chancellor's _lion_ is _lean_?
D'ye think that his kitchen's so bad as all that,
That nothing within it can ever get fat?'

Of Lord Kenyon, another judge of like inhospitable tendencies, someone
said that in his house it was always Lent in the kitchen and Passion
Week in the parlour. On another occasion it was remarked that 'in his
lordship's kitchen the fire is dull, but the spits are always bright;'
to which Jekyll, pretending to be angry, replied, 'Spits! in the name of
common-sense, don't talk about his spits--for nothing turns on them!'
When his lordship died, the words 'Mors Janua _Vita_' were by an error
of the undertaker painted on the coffin; but, someone commenting on the
substitution of 'Vita' for 'Vitae,' Lord Ellenborough protested that
there was no mistake. Kenyon, he declared, had directed that it should
be 'Vita,' so that his estate might be saved the expense of a diphthong.

Most people know the story of Foote and Lord Stormont, the latter of
whom had asked the former to dinner, and had placed before him wine
served in the smallest of decanters and dispensed in the smallest of
glasses. The peer enlarged upon the growth and age of the liquor;
whereupon the player, holding up one of the glasses, demurely said, 'It
is very little of its age!' This recalls an experience of Theodore Hook,
when invited to dine with an unnamed nobleman, at the Star and Garter,
Richmond. There were four of the party, and when covers were removed it
was found that the fare consisted of four loin chops, four mealy
potatoes, and a pint of sherry. These things despatched, the peer asked
Hook for a song, and the wit responded with, of all things in the world,
the National Anthem, which he gave correctly until, arriving at the line
'Happy and glorious,' he added--as if under the influence of drink--'A
pint between four of us--God save the King!' A different form of
stinginess, it would seem, was shown by Brigham Young, when (if we may
believe the tale) he gave as a reason for marrying a certain male-garbed
lady-doctor, that he would be able to have her clothes 'made down' for
his boys.

The mean host has always been a special target for the scorn of his
fellows. It was a Greek satirist who related how

'A miser in his chamber saw a mouse,