engagement
concludes, be regaled with a complimentary supper of several yards of
property sausages. Among other expected toasts, is "The Memory of JOSEPH
GRIMALDI," which, it is believed, will be responded to by his late
dresser, a veteran of the good old school. On this festive occasion, the
horses of the company--deathless Barbs!--will have an extra feed of
beans.

* * * * *

THE "VOW OF POVERTY."

Some Benedictine monks, with a strange mixture of the secular and the
spiritual in their affections, presented themselves a few days ago as
claimants to vote for Members of Parliament. Though they profess to
entirely de-vote themselves to the Church, they do not wish to be
de-voted or deprived of votes for the county of Northumberland. But the
best of the joke--rather a solemn piece of mockery, by the bye--was the
fact of their appearing in the character of persons having taken "a vow
of poverty," to claim their right to certain property, in respect of
which they contended that they ought to have the electoral franchise.
The contradictory and anomalous position in which they stood led to a
cross-examination of the claimants, in the course of which some peculiar
views as to the effect of a "vow of poverty" were elicited. The result
seems to be, that a Benedictine monk may be a man of property, though he
has taken a vow of poverty, and that, in the words of one of the
professional men engaged on the occasion, "so far as respects property
the law of poverty has no effect whatever."

The Benedictine monk was a good deal pressed, and in spite of the
ingenuity appropriate to his "order" he was driven into a corner, from
which he could not escape except upon the prong of a fork which the
professional gentleman kept continually presented to the Benedictine
monk, for the latter to fall upon. When told that, "in making the vow of
poverty, he says he has no property whatever," the "monk" could only
reply "We must have property or we could not exist;" so that we are
justified in asking what is the meaning of a vow of poverty, if it can
be taken by a man of property who, on the strength of that property,
lays claim to a vote for the county? The witness when pressed admitted,
"We all have property"--all _we_ who have made a vow of poverty, or an
abnegation of property--but the way we manage it is this: "We have what
is called a 'peculium,' which is a separate thing from the vow of
poverty." It is conve