e truly desired death. But many curses were
lavished on the priest to whom he confessed, because he did not
warn the imprudent man not to quit the bounds of ecclesiastical
freedom!'

There is a whole ballad--nay, a whole history of the middle ages in this
story; for among thousands I can recall none as perfectly characteristic
of the times. The absolute aristocratic control of the life of a white
slave; its abuse by transferring it to the arbitrary will of an upper
servant; the blind devotion to feudal service shown in the fidelity of
the poor serf, the horrible cruelty of his punishment; and finally, the
cowardly supple fawning of the local priesthood, who were always either
worms or dragons in their relations to the nobility, are all set forth
here in a few lines.

I have said that the eminent lawyers of modern times are greatly favored
in the inheritance of old jokes. Judge Jeffries, we are told, in
examining an old fellow with a long beard, told him he supposed he had a
conscience quite as long as that natural ornament of his visage. 'Does
your lordship measure consciences by beards?' said the man; 'that is
strange, seeing you yourself are shaven.' Among the monk-Latin tales
there is one to the effect that a certain _pater_, priding himself on
his beard, was informed that in a convent of he-goats he certainly
deserved to be abbot. The same story, re-made into a gross form, is
current in this country, and attributed to an eminent Virginia
politician. In the _Antidotum Melancholiae_ (Frankfort, 1667), it is
given in the form of an evidently very old Latin rhyme:

'Si bene barbatum faceret sua barba beatum,
Nullus in hoc circo fuerit felicior hireo.'

There is a modern story current in America, which is often
circumstantially narrated, of some individual wearing a fine beard or
'whiskers,' and who is said to have sold them to a vulgar practical
joker, who had one shaved off, but suffered the other to remain for a
long time on the face of his victim, annoying him meantime with
inquiries as to 'my whisker.' It is the true type of a great number of
stories which originated in the Southern and South-Western United
States, the point of which almost invariably turns on vexing, grieving,
or maltreating some victim, who is an inferior as regards wit, fortune,
or physique. It is worth remarking that the only really original and
characteristic class of jokes which the slave States originated are
strongl