to prescribe to a querulous, nervous old gentleman. His advice and
directions as to what he is to do, &c., greatly annoy the excitable old
man; but his _prescriptions_ set him half crazy. He calls to the servant
in a voice like a Stentor--although a moment before he had described that
organ as "all gone, doctor--a mere penny-whistle"--and ordered him to "kick
the doctor down stairs, and pay him at the street-door!" "Calls himself
one of the '_faculty_?' " growled the old invalid, after the physician had
left in high dudgeon, and vowing vengeance; "calls himself one of the
faculty; stupid old ass! with his white choker and gold-headed cane, and
shrugs, and sighs, and solemn looks: 'faculty!'--why he hasn't _got_ a
faculty! never _had_ a faculty!" We thought, at the time of reading this,
of an anecdote which had lain for years in our "Drawer," of the British
actress, in one of the provincial towns of England, who was preparing to
enact the solemnly tragic character of "Jane Shore," in the historical and
instructive drama of that name, which is richly worth perusal, for the
lesson which it teaches of the ultimate punishment of vice, even in its
most seductive form. The actress was in her dressing-room, preparing for
the part, when her attendant, an ignorant country girl, informed her that
a woman had called to request of her two orders for admission, to witness
the performance of the play, her daughter and herself having walked four
miles on purpose to see it.

"Does she _know_ me?" inquired the lady.

"Not at all; leastways she _said_ she didn't," replied the girl.

"It is very strange!" said the lady--"a most extraordinary request! Has the
good woman got her _faculties_ about her?"

"I think she _have_, ma'am," responded the girl, "for I see her have
summat tied up in a red silk handkercher!"

-------------------------------------

One seldom meets with a truer thing than the following observations by a
quaint and witty author upon what are termed, less by way of "eminence,"
perhaps, rather than "notoriety," _Great Talkers_:--"Great Talkers not only
do the least, but generally _say_ the least, if their words be weighed
instead of reckoned." He who labors under an incontinence of speech seldom
gets the better of his complaint; for he must prescribe for himself, and
is very sure of having a fool for his physician. Many a chatterbox might
pass for a shrewd man, if he would keep his own secret, and put