extinguished him. Having declared that no one could make a pun on his
name, which he had not heard before, Wallace promptly replied, "It's
_axing_ too much, I presume; but did you ever hear _that_?" Saxe owned
that he had not.

George H. Boker, whose name deserves a very high place in American
literature as a poet, and in history as one who was of incredible
service, quietly performed, in preserving the Union during the war, was
also eminently a wit and humorist. We always read first to one another
all that we wrote. He had so trained himself from boyhood to
self-restraint, calmness, and the _nil admirari_ air, which, as Dallas
said, is "the Corinthian ornament of a gentleman" (I may add especially
when of Corinthian brass), that his admirable jests, while they gained in
clearness and applicability, lost something of that rattle of the
impromptu and headlong which renders Irish and Western humour so easy. I
recorded the _bon mots_ and merry stories which passed among us all in
the _sanctum_ in articles for our weekly newspaper, under the name of
"Social Hall Sketches" (a social hall in the West is a steamboat smoking-
room). Every one of us received a name. Mr. Peacock was Old Hurricane,
and George Boker, being asked what his pseudonym should be, selected that
of Bullfrog. These "Social Hall Sketches" had an extended circulation in
American newspapers, some for many years. One entirely by me, entitled
"Opening Oysters," is to be found in English almanacs, &c., to this day.

It was, I think, or am sure, in 1855 that some German in Pennsylvania,
instead of burying his deceased wife, burned the body. This called forth
a storm of indignant attack in the newspapers. It was called an
irreligious, indecent act. I wrote an editorial in which I warmly
defended it. According to Bulwer in the "Last Days of Pompeii," the
early Christians practised it. Even to this day Urns and torches are
common symbols in Christian burying-grounds, and we speak of "ashes" as
more decent than mouldering corpses. And, finally, I pointed out the
great advantage which it would be to the coal trade of Pennsylvania. A
man of culture said to me that it was the boldest editorial which he had
ever read. Such as it was, I believe that it was the first article
written in modern times advocating cremation. If I am wrong, I am
willing to be corrected.

To those who are unfamiliar with it, the life in an American newspaper
office seems singu