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"The Great Expounder of the Constitution," as he was called, was then in the prime of life, and had not began those indulgences which afterward exercised such injurious effects upon him. He would also occasionally indulge in a grim witticism.

Though asked for them later, he did not return them, excusing himself by a witticism. Pretending that he had not enough assistants, he said: "Send some men and take them." Caesar shrank from seizure of sacred things and hence allowed them to remain as votive offerings.

This brilliant comedian, whose manners were not of the choicest, was more at home in the lax and epicurean world of Ninon and Mme. de la Sabliere a world which naturally did not find the decorum of the precieuses at all to its taste; the witticism of Ninon, who defined them as the "Jansenists of love," is well known.

I praise God who made day and night: Day thy countenance, and thy hair the night. Long before him the Hebrew poet Abraham ibn Ezra had written, On thy cheeks and the hair of thy head I will bless: He formeth light and maketh darkness. In the thirteenth century the very same witticism meets us again, in the Hebrew Machberoth of Immanuel.

Reynolds was an admirer of Cornelia's; a fact which was the occasion of much pleasant remark and easy witticism. More serious consequences were not likely to ensue, for such men as he seldom attain to be other than indirectly useful or mildly obnoxious to their fellow-creatures.

After I had paid, through the medium of my risible muscles, due homage to this witticism of Vincent's, he shut up his folio, called for his hat, and we sauntered down into the street. As we passed by one of the libraries, a whole mob of the dandies of the last night were lounging about the benches placed before the shop windows.

In those which possess a great number of homonymes, that is, words possessing the same, or nearly the same, sound, though quite different in their derivation and signification, it is almost more difficult to avoid, than to fall on such a verbal play. It has, however, been feared, lest a door might be opened to puerile witticism, if they were not rigorously proscribed.

The famous saying that "Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris," is generally supposed to be his, though Oliver Wendell Holmes told me one day that he himself was really the author of it; but, if a keen witticism was floating about fatherless in the Boston circles it drifted to Tom Appleton as putative parent.

Washburn stared blankly at him for an instant, then he said, slowly, "All right." "You'd better get it to-night," added Westerfelt. "All right, sir. I'll attend to everything." "Cool as a cucumber," laughed a man. "Next thing you know he'll give orders 'bout whar he wants to be buried, an' what to have cut on his grave-rock." The whole gang laughed at this witticism, and started on again.

"Your sallies are excellent, Horace, but spare us your Aunt Sallies!" De Craye had no repartee, nor did Dr. Middleton challenge a pun. We have only to sharpen our wits to trip your seductive rattler whenever we may choose to think proper; and evidently, if we condescended to it, we could do better than he. The critic who has hatched a witticism is impelled to this opinion.