captain, who pleases himself vastly with having once made a pun at Otaheite, in the O language. 'Tis the same man who said, "Shakespeare he liked, because he was so much of the gentleman." Rickman is a man absolute in all numbers. I think I may one day bring you acquainted, if you do not go to Tartary first; for you'll never come back. Have a care, my dear friend, of anthropophagi: their stomachs are always craving! 'Tis terrible to be weighed out at fivepence a pound; to sit at table (the reverse of fishes in Holland), not as a guest, but as a meat. God bless you; do come to England. Air and exercise may do great things. Talk with some minister. Why not your father? God dispose all for the best. I have discharged my duty. Your sincere friend, Lamb. On another occasion Lamb confided a pet dog to the care of Mr. Patmore, and shortly afterwards wrote the following letter of inquiry: DEAR PATMORE,-Excuse my anxiety, but how is Dash? (I should have asked if Mrs. Patmore kept her rules and was improving,-but Dash came uppermost. The order of our thoughts should be the order of our writing.) Goes he muzzled, or aperto ore? Are his intellects sound, or does he wander a little in his conversation? You cannot be too careful to watch the first symptoms of incoherence. The first illogical snarl he makes, to St. Luke's with him. All the dogs here are going mad, if you believe the overseers; but I protest they seem to me very rational and collected. But nothing is so deceitful as mad people to those who are not used to them. Try him with hot water. If he won't lick it up, it is a sign he does not like it. Does he wag his tail horizontally, or perpendicularly? That has decided the fate of many dogs in Enfield. Is his general deportment cheerful? I mean, when he is pleased; for otherwise there is no judging. You can't be too careful. Has he bit any of the children yet? If he has, have them shot, and keep him for curiosity, to see if it was the hydrophobia. They say all our army in India had it at one time, but that was in HyderAlley's time. Do you get paunch for him? Take care the sheep was sane. You might pull out his teeth (if he would let you) and then you need not mind if he were as mad as a Bedlamite. It would be rather fun to see his odd ways. It might amuse Mrs. Patmore and the children. They'd have more sense than he! He'd be like a Fool kept in the family, to keep the household in good humor with their own understanding. You might teach him the mad-dance set to the mad-howl. Madge Owl-et would be nothing to him. "My, how he capers!" (One of the children speaks this.). What I scratch out is a German quotation from Lessing on the bite of rabid animals; but, I remember, you don't read German. But Mrs. Patmore may, so I wish I had let it stand. The meaning in English is, "Avoid to approach an animal suspected of madness, as you would avoid a fire or a precipice;" which I think is a sensible observation. The Germans are certainly profounder than we. If the slightest suspicion arises in your breast that all is not right with him (Dash), muzzle him and lead him in a string (common packthread will do ; he don't care for twist) to Hood's, his quondam master, and he'll take him in at any time. You may mention your suspicion or not, as you like, or as you think it may wound or not Mr. H.'s feelings. Hood, I know, will wink at a few follies in Dash, in consideration of his former sense. Besides, Hood is deaf; and, if you hinted anything, ten to one he would not hear you. Besides, you will have discharged your conscience, and laid the child at the right door, as they say. The following note by Thackeray has lately been published for the first time by the Pall Mall Gazette: KENSINGTON, W., Wednesday. DEAR NED,-You ask me for a recipe for restoring your eyes to their wonted lustre and brilliancy. Very good. Here you are. Take them out and wash well, first with soap and water, and afterwards with a solution of nitric acid, white sand, and blacking. Let them dry well, and then replace them, fastening them in their places with gum-water. One great advantage of the discovery is that by turning the pupils inward, on restoring the eyes to their places again, a view of the whole internal economy may be obtained, and thus the precept of the old philosopher, to "know thyself," be readily complied with. There! will that suit you? Eh? Generously yours, Non sequitur, a Latin phrase meaning "It does not follow," is used as an English noun to indicate a wrong process of thought by means of which an impossible cause and effect are grotesquely linked together. The familiar sophism known as the post hoc propter hoc fallacy ("after this, therefore on account of this") is a familiar instance. Thus, the Free-traders ridicule the Protectionist claim that American manufactures have increased under high tariff legislation, and therefore that such legislation favors manufactures, by the proposition that divorces have increased under high tariff legislation, and therefore that such legislation is responsible for divorces. Another illustration of a non sequitur is that known proverbially as putting the cart before the horse, or taking the effect for the cause. An excellent illustration is afforded by the Carmelite friar who praised the divine goodness and wisdom which cause navigable rivers to flow by large towns, and by Voltaire's dictum (absolutely Voltaire's) in "L'Histoire de Jenni," ch. ix., where, writing of Mount Hecla, he rambles on, "Car tous les grands volcans sont placés sur ces montagnes hideuses." If we inquired too curiously, however, many of our finest metaphors would resolve themselves into precisely this sort of blunder. Thus, Sterne's exquisite phrase," God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb," teaches a great truth, but loses sight of the fact that the wind is not tempered because the lamb is shorn, but that the lamb (or, more accurately, the sheep) is shorn at a period chosen because then the wind is tempered. The current jest-books are full of stories wherein the point lies in this confusion of logical sequences. Horace Smith, in his "Tin Trumpet," has two familiar yet excellent examples, that of the Birmingham boy who, being asked whether some shillings which he tendered at a shop were good, answered with great simplicity, "Ay, that they be, for I seed father make 'em all this morning," and of the witness who was about to be sworn: "Young woman," said the magistrate, "why do you hold the book upside down?" "I am obliged, sir, because I am left-handed." The "equivocal answer” in the following story had a startling lack of connection with the question propounded: A literary gentleman, wishing to be undisturbed one day, instructed his Irish servant to admit no one, and if any one should inquire for him, to give him an equivocal answer. Night came, and the gentleman proceeded to interrogate Pat as to his visitors: "Did any one call?" "Yes, sir; wan gintleman." "What did he say?" "He axed was yer honor in." "Well, what did you tell him?” 'Sure, I gave him a quivikle answer, jist." "How was that?" "I axed him was his grandmother a monkey." Dickens em It is a common trick also of the most famous humorists. ploys it with excellent effect. In "Nicholas Nickleby" the letter written by Fanny Squeers to Ralph Nickleby is admirable: "My pa requests me to write to you, the doctors considering it doubtful whether he will ever recover the use of his legs, which prevents his holding a pen," etc. But this is no better than the dream he relates in one of his letters to James T. Fields: I dreamed that somebody was dead. It was a private gentleman, and a particular friend; and I was greatly overcome when the news was broken to me (very delicately) by a gentleman in a cocked hat, top-boots, and a sheet. Nothing else. "Good God!" I said, "is he dead?" "He is as dead, sir," rejoined the gentleman, "as a door nail. But we must all die, Mr. Dickens, sooner or later, my dear sir." "Ah!" I said; "yes, to be sure. Very But what did he die of?" The gentleman burst into a flood of tears, and said, in a voice broken by emotion," He christened his youngest child, sir, with a toasting-fork!” true. Lewis Carroll's books are perhaps the best examples in the language of this topsy-turvy sort of fun. In the books which relate Alice's adventures all the characters think, speak, and act with the most delightful irrelevance ; and "The Hunting of the Snark" is a marvel of inconsequential humor : They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care; They threatened its life with a railway share; Admirable was the ocean-chart which the Bellman brought with him to facilitate the hunt: He had bought a large map representing the sea, And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be A map they could all understand. "What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators, So the Bellman would cry; and the crew would reply, "Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes, (So the crew would protest) "that he's bought us the best,- This was charming, no doubt; but they shortly found out That the captain they trusted so well Had only one notion for crossing the ocean, And that was to tingle his bell. He was thoughtful and grave, but the orders he gave Were enough to bewilder a crew. When he cried, "Steer to starboard, but keep her head larboard!" What on earth was the helmsman to do? Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes,— A thing, as the Bellman remarked, That frequently happens in tropical climes, When a vessel is, so to speak, "snarked.” But the principal failing occurred in the sailing, And the Bellman, perplexed and distressed, Said he had hoped, at least, when the wind blew due East, That the ship would not travel due West! Admirable, too, is the butcher's mathematical demonstration of the problem whether two and one make three: Taking Three as the subject to reason about,— We add Seven and Ten, and then multiply out By One Thousand diminished by Eight. The result we proceed to divide, as you see, Here are two good examples from Artemus Ward's "Lecture :" I met a man in Oregon who hadn't any teeth,-not a tooth in his head,-yet that man could play on the bass drum better than any man I ever met. I never on any account allow my business to interfere with my drinking. The wit of the two following stories lies in the incongruity of the explanations suggested,—the utter failure of sequence between question and answer : Some one saying to Sir F. Gould, "I am told you eat three eggs every day at breakfast," "No," answered Gould, "on the contrary." Some of those present asked, "What was the contrary of eating three eggs?" "Laying three eggs, I suppose," said Luttrell.-THOMAS MOORE: Diary. Hicks and Thackeray, walking together, stopped opposite a door-way, over which were inscribed in gold letters these words: "Mutual Loan Office." They both seemed equally puzzled. "What on earth can that mean?" asked Hicks. "I don't know," answered Thackeray, "unless it means that two men who have nothing agree to lend it to one another."-J. C. YOUNG: Diary. The same effect is often gained by wilfully ignoring the sense of a proposition and attributing an absurd logical confusion to the propounder of it. Thus, Mark Twain tells us "that Benjamin Franklin was always proud of telling how he entered Philadelphia, for the first time, with nothing in the world but two shillings in his pocket and four rolls of bread under his arm. But really, when you come to examine it critically, it was nothing. Anybody could have done it." And again, he calls our attention to the fact that he is a greater and better man than Washington, for while the latter could not tell a lie, "I can, but I won't." Was it humor or mere simplicity of mind that distinguished the heroine of a little anecdote recorded in Frederick Locker's "Patchwork"? "A friend tells me a funny little story of Mrs. (the grandmother of Colonel M-), who was shown a picture of Joseph and Potiphar's wife, in which, of course, the patriarch showed his usual desire to withdraw himself from her society. Mrs. looked at it for a little while, and then said, Eh, now, and what ails him at the lassie ?'" Nonumque prematur in annum, the famous advice given by Horace in his "Ars Poetica,”—Put away your compositions for nine years at least before you give them to the public. This was substantially the counsel of Quintilian also: "Let our literary compositions be laid aside for some time, that we may after a reasonable period return to their perusal, and find them, as it were, altogether new to us." It is all very fine, madame, to remind me of the Horatian nonum prematur in annum. This rule, like many others, may be very pretty in theory, but is worth little in practice. When Horace gave to the author that celebrated precept, to let his works lie nine years in the desk, he should also have given with it a receipt for living nine years without food. While Horace was inventing this advice, he sat, in all probability, at the table of Macenas eating roast turkey with truffles, pheasant-puddings with venison sauce, ribs of larks with mangled turnips, peacocks' tongues, Indian birds'-nests, and the Lord knows what all, and everything gratis at that. But we, the unlucky ones, born too late, live in another sort of times. Our Mæcenases have an altogether different set of principles; they believe that authors, like medlars, are best after they have lain some time on straw, they believe that literary hounds are spoiled for hunting similes and thoughts if they are fed too high, and when they do take it into their heads to give to some one a feed, it is generally the worst dog who gets the biggest piece,-some fawning spaniel who licks the hand, or diminutive" King Charles" who knows how to cuddle up into a lady's perfumed lap, or some patient puppy of a poodle who has learned some bread-earning science, and who can fetch and carry, dance and drum. Ma foi, madame, I could never observe that rule for four-and-twenty hours, let alone nine years: my belly has no appreciation of the beauties of immortality. I have thought the matter over, and concluded that it is better to be only half immortal and altogether fat, and if Voltaire was willing to give three hundred years of his eternal fame for one good digestion, so would I give twice as much for the dinner itself. And, oh, what lovely beautiful eating there is in this world! The philosopher Pangloss is right, it is the best world! But one must have money in this best of worlds. Money in the pocket, not manuscripts in the desk. Mr. Marr, nine host of "the King of England," is himself an author and also knows the Horatian rule, but I do not helieve that if I wished to put it into practice he would feed me for nine years.-HEINE: Reisebilder. Northern Bear, Northern Giant, popular current designations for the Russian Empire: We believe that in arranging the terms of peace he [Napoleon] was as little inclined to clip the claws of the Northern Bear as his ally.—Christian Examiner. It is no small delight to the lovers of truth, freedom, and England to see that the Northern Giant has, by dint of too much finesse, suffered his once-willing prey to slip through his hands. -Edinburgh Review. Colossus of the North, from the hugeness of her empire and the northern situation of its greater part, is another familiar designation. Northern Harlot, Infamous (Fr. “Infâme Catin du Nord"), an appellative given to the licentious, sensual, and cruel Empress Elizabeth Petrowna of Russia (1709-1761). She caused her husband Paul to be murdered, listening in the next room, where she heard the dogs lapping up the blood of the assassinated emperor. Her shameless harlotry is notorious. She is the empress at whose court Byron's "Don Juan" becomes a great favorite, and by whom he is sent to England as ambassador. The murder of Paul is the subject of one of Landor's most dramatic “Imaginary Conversations." Northwest Territory, the territory north of the Ohio River, east of the Mississippi, south of the great lakes, and west of the States of New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. The charters and patents to these colonies, as also to Massachusetts and Connecticut, fixed no western boundary to the grants of territory made to them respectively, which accordingly extended without limit. When the tract was surrendered by Great Britain to the United States under the treaty of 1783, there was great dispute among these States as to their right in the same, so much so that at length it was determined by all to cede their rights to the Federal government, which was done by all unconditionally except Connecticut, which, while ceding its sovereign rights, reserved proprietary rights in a substantial strip of land. (See WESTERN RESERVE.) A bill for its organization was passed by Congress in 1787, but it was not until 1799 that it was fully organized as the Northwest Territory. It was the beginning of the "Great West," completed afterwards by the Louisiana Purchase and the conquests from Mexico. The Northwest Territory comprised the whole area of what are now the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Nose. To cut off one's nose to spite one's face is a proverbial expression common to most modern nations, and meaning, roughly, to sacrifice one's own interest for the sake of revenge, or, more subtly, to do irreparable injury to one's self in order to affect a mutual interest of one's self and one's enemy. The earliest reported appearance of the saw in literature is in Tallemant des Réaux's "Historiettes" (1657-59), where it takes the literal French form, "Se couper le nez pour faire dépit à son visage." "To keep one's nose to the grindstone" is another proverb of similar uncertain origin, meaning to be forced into uncongenial, unpleasant, or menial work. "A man," says Franklin, in his "Poor Richard's Maxims," "may, if he knows not how to save as he gets, keep his nose to the grindstone." The phrase is found as far back as Heywood's "Proverbs," Part I., ch. iii. Not for Joe, or Not for Joseph, in American and English slang, is used to intimate that one does not intend or care to do, or have, anything requested It probably originated in the refrain of a song popular in the sixties: Not for Joseph, If he knows it; but this in turn seems to have been a special application of the popular locution "Not if I know myself," sometimes used with the addition "and I rather think I do." This phrase is at least as old as Charles Lamb: "Not if I know myself at all" (The Old and New School-Master). Not men, but measures, a familiar phrase in the mouths of "straightout" politicians, meaning that the success of the party policy is paramount over the question of the personal fitness of the candidate. Burke, in his "Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents," vol. i. p. 531 (1770), alludes scornfully to “the cant of 'not men, but measures.' Canning echoed |