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DOUGLAS JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
In Press. 
 
 THE LIFE OF DOUGLAS JERROLD. 
 By his Son. 
 
SPECIMENS 
 
 DOUGLAS JERROLD'S WIT 
 
 TOGETHER WITH 
 
 SELECTIONS, CHIEFLY FROM HIS CONTRIBUTIONS 
 TO JOUKNALS, 
 
 INTENDED TO ILLUSTRATE UIS OPINIONS. 
 
 ARRAXG-ED BY HIS SON, 
 
 BLANCHARD JERROLD. 
 
 / 
 
 'Oir/T^t, 
 
 ^V- 
 
 BOSTON: 
 TIOKNOR AND FIELDS 
 
 M DCCC LVIII. 
 
1858 
 
 ^ 
 
 \ 
 
 author's edition. 
 
 .'•q ./ / r^ /'/ r. 
 
 J 
 
 r^r^J/S. riJc 
 
 ^J/o/3 : 
 
 / 
 
 RiTERSiDE, Cambridge: 
 
 STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BT 
 H. 0. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 
 
PKEFACE. 
 
 I HAVE endeavoured to collect the scattered wit- 
 ticisms which, during the last twenty years, have 
 been coupled with the name of Douglas Jerrold. 
 The collection is very incomplete. It cannot in- 
 clude one twentieth part of the brilliant repartees, 
 the sparks of wisdom, the flashes of burning fire, 
 which fell from the eloquent tongue that is now 
 mute forever. Charles Kemble said that in one 
 of Douglas JeiTold's plays there was wit sufficient 
 for three comedies by any other writer ; but if it 
 were possible to collect completely the thousands 
 of " good things " that, in the daily intercourse of 
 life — over the study-fire at Putney, at picnics in 
 the Pas de Calais, at the table of " Our Club," in 
 the genial circle of the Old Mulberries, and at the 
 family dinner-table — fell from the lips of one of 
 the kindest among men, the present spare volume 
 would swell to the proportions of an encyclopae- 
 dia, and the reputation of the author of " Bubbles 
 of the Day " would increase tenfold. " Disjecta 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 membra are all we find of any poet or of any 
 man."* A complete collection of Douglas Jer- 
 rold's wit is now impossible. From far and near, 
 however — from old friends long separated, from 
 club associates, and fireside companions, I have 
 gleaned the few ears of golden grain which time 
 had left within the reach of their memory. Not 
 one friend who has afforded me a single grain has 
 failed to assure me of his sorrow over the treach- 
 ery of his memory. The ghosts of a hundred good 
 things appeared to him, but he could not reach 
 them. Only the recollection of the time and cir- 
 cumstance, which had given birth to each, could 
 bring them back to definite shape. The humble 
 editor of the present volume can, for his own part, 
 call to mind many evenings when his father kept 
 the company about his table till a late hour, flash- 
 ing upon them quaint turns of thought and bright 
 shafts of wit ; each of which was worth the trou- 
 ble of a note-book. And the son has left, deter- 
 mined, henceforth, to bear in mind all his father's 
 sayings, and to commit them, from the dangerous 
 keeping of the memory, to these safer media, ink 
 and paper. But this determination was never 
 acted upon ; and the culprit who fell from it, and 
 now presents this poor skeleton of a splendid pres- 
 ence, regrets his sin of omission keenly, and will 
 regret it always. Still the present volume makes, 
 in the humble opinion of its compiler, no ordinary 
 
 * Cai-lyle. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 list of wise things said by one man. Let the 
 reader be pleased to note also, tliat if, here and 
 there, the arrow stings with a malignant poison 
 upon its barb, the wound is for the strong that 
 have oppressed the weak— the ignoble who have 
 warred against the noble. There is consuming fire 
 in many of the sayings ; but the victim, in every 
 case, deserves to die. On the other hand, there 
 are touches of infinite tenderness in every page. 
 The eye that flashed fire over a wrong done by the 
 strong to the weak ; the lip that curled with scorn 
 at the meannesses of life, softened to sweet pity 
 over a story of sorrow. It has been the persever- 
 ing endeavour of many men who have smarted 
 under the keen lash of Douglas Jerrold's wit, to 
 prove to the world that the man who wrote " Clo- 
 vernook" and the " Story of a Feather" was a 
 savage misanthrope, who had small belief in the 
 goodness, but infinite faith in the rottenness, of 
 human nature. The present volume will, it is be- 
 lieved, go far to dispel this error, and to confound 
 its authors. 
 
 The editor of "Douglas Jerrold's Wit" has 
 sought for material, not only in his father's known 
 and acknowledged works, but also among his 
 early pages— now forgotten. Even " More Fright- 
 ened than Hurt," written in the author's fourteenth 
 year, has furnished matter to the present volume. 
 Nor have dramas, as completely forgotten as "Fif- 
 teen Years in a Drunkard's Life," been neglected. 
 Papers contributed by Douglas Jerrold to the New 
 
X PREFACE. ^^^ 
 
 Monthly Mag-azine, more than twenty years ago, 
 under the nom-de-plume of Henry Brownrigg, in- 
 eluding " Papers of a Gentleman-at-Arms," have 
 been carefully examined, that the present volume 
 might be made worthier of the author's reputa- 
 tion. But the book includes, after all, only a 
 scanty proportion of the witticisms which belong 
 to Douglas Jerrold, and which find their way to 
 every place where the English language is spoken. 
 This is the more to be regretted since it is indis- 
 putable that Douglas Jerrold did not write his best 
 jokes. He cast them forth, in the course of con- 
 versation, and forgot them as soon as they Were 
 launched. Often when reminded, on the morrow 
 of a party, of some good thing he had said, he 
 would turn, in surprise, upon his informant, and 
 ask, " Did I really say that?" 
 
 With these few and feeble words of introduc- 
 tion, the son concludes his humble part of the pres- 
 ent work. It has afforded him some weeks of 
 consoling labour; and it will, he trusts, be ac- 
 cepted as a tribute dutifully offered to his father's 
 memory. 
 
 There are many sharp sayings in the present 
 volume which were pointed at dear and old 
 friends; but they were pointed in purest frolic. 
 The best evidence of this is, that although Jerrold 
 often said bitter things, even of his friends, this 
 bitterness never lost him a friend ; for to all men 
 who knew him personally, he was valued as a 
 kind and hearty man. He sprang ever eagerly to 
 
PREFACE. xi 
 
 the side, even of a passing acquaintance, who 
 needed a kindness. He might possibly speak 
 something keenly barbed on a grave occasion; 
 but his help would be substantial, and his sympa- 
 thy not the less hearty : for with him, a witty 
 view of men and things forced itself upon his 
 mind so continually and irresistibly, and with a 
 vividness and power so intense, that sarcasm 
 flashed from his lips, even when he was deeply 
 moved. He knew that this subjection to the dom- 
 inant faculty of his mind had given him a reputa- 
 tion in the world for ill-nature. And he writhed 
 under this imputation ; for he felt how little he 
 deserved it — he, who could never resist a kind 
 word, even when spoken by a man who had 
 deeply injured him! There are many still living 
 who have stung him with unfair shafts of satirical 
 criticism and who might bear witness to the hearti- 
 ness of his grasp, when he met them afterwards 
 in friendship. A keen and even fierce antagonist 
 while at open war with a foe, he set his lance to 
 rest with the perfect courtesy of a true knight, the 
 war at an end. 
 
 If in these pages, then, there be words to 
 wound, let those to whom they apply remember 
 the gentle heart that beat behind them ; be cer- 
 tain that they were intended in merest playful- 
 ness, or were uttered in obedience to an irresistible 
 force, that put fire upon the tongue, but left the 
 soul human and tender. 
 
I 
 
JERKOLD'S WIT. 
 
 A HANDSOME CONTRIBUTION. 
 
 A GENTLEMAN Waited upon Jerrold one morning to 
 enlist his sympathies in behalf of a mutual friend who 
 was in want of a round sum of money. But this mutual 
 friend had already sent his hat about among his Hterary 
 
 brethren on more than one occasion. Mr. 's hat was 
 
 becoming an institution ; and the friends were grieved at 
 the indelicacy of the proceeding. On the occasion to 
 which we now refer, the bearer of the hat was received 
 by Jerrold with evident dissatisfaction. 
 
 " Well," said Jerrold, " how much does want this 
 
 time?" 
 
 " Why just a four and two noughts will, I think, put 
 him straight," the bearer of the hat replied. 
 
 Jerrold. — " Well, put me down for one of the noughts." 
 
 A RULE OF LIFE. 
 
 " My dear father on his death-bed," said Lord Skin- 
 deep, — " ha ! what a father he was ! — my dear father 
 said, ' Barnaby, my deaf Barnaby, never while you live 
 
14 JEREOLD'S WIT. 
 
 refuse an honest man your hand ; but, my beloved boy, 
 be sure of one thing : when you give your hand, oh ! 
 never, never have a pen in it.' " 
 
 STATESMANSHIP. 
 
 " Sir, there is but one path to substantial greatness — 
 the path of statesmanship. For, though you set out in a 
 threadbare coat and a hole in either shoe, if you walk 
 with a cautious eye to the sides, you'll one day find your- 
 self in velvet and gold, with music in your name and 
 money in your pocket." 
 
 A PHILANTHROPIST. 
 
 As for the member for MufFborough, he is one of those 
 wise philanthropists who, in a time of famine, would vote 
 for nothing but a supply of toothpicks. 
 
 A BLUE. 
 
 She's a travelling college, and civilizes wherever she 
 goes. Send her among the Hottentots, and in a week 
 she'd write 'em into top-boots. She spent only three 
 days with the Esquimaux Indians, wrote a book upon 
 their manners, and, by the very force of her satire, 
 shamed 'em out of whale-oil into soda-water. 
 
 THE LAW. 
 
 Study — study the law ! How invitingly yon row of 
 sages smile upon you ! With what a dulcet note doth 
 Wisdom, clad in sober calf, invoke me to her banquet 
 and her shows ! There may he who feeds, grow great 
 on dead men's brains ; there may he trace a web of 
 hubbub words which craft may turn into a net of steel ; 
 there learn, when Justice weighs^jaoor bleeding Truth, to 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 15 
 
 make her mount by flaw and doubt ; and see recorded, 
 ay, ten thousand times, how Quibble, with his varinshed 
 cheek, hath laughed defrauded Justice out of court ! 
 
 A MONEY-LENDER. 
 
 The best fellow in the world, sir, to get money of; for 
 as he sends you half cash, half wine, why, if you can't 
 take up his bill, you've always poison at hand for a 
 remedy. 
 
 A GOLDEN RULE. 
 
 Fix yourself upon the wealthy. In a word, take this 
 for a golden rule through life — nevQr, never have a friend 
 that's poorer than yourself. 
 
 men's hearts. 
 Men's hearts! Do what you will, the things won't 
 break. I doubt if even they'll chip. 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF A SCOUNDREL. 
 
 Jerrold. — " That scoundrel, sir ! Why, he'd sharpen 
 a knife upon his father's tombstone to kill his mother ! " 
 
 TRANSLATION AND ORIGINAL WRITING. 
 
 Jerrold was walking along the Strand one day, when 
 
 he met C S , exquisitely gloved. Jerrold had a 
 
 pair of modest Berlin gloves on. He glanced first at 
 his own unassuming hands, and said, " Tut !— original 
 
 writing ! " Then, pointing to S 's faultless yellow 
 
 kid, added, "Translation ! " 
 
 MORAL RRINCIPLE. 
 
 This is what the world calls principle : he has owed me 
 half a crown for seven years, and wears lavender-water ! 
 
16 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 MAIDS AND WIVES. 
 
 Women are all alike. When they're maids they're 
 mild as milk : once make 'em wives, and they lean their 
 backs against their marriage certificates, and defy you. 
 
 TRUTH. 
 
 I've heard people say, truth lives in a well ; if so, I'd 
 advise you to take an early dip in the bucket. 
 
 MONEY. 
 
 Certainly man's wicked angel is in money. I often 
 catch myself with something bold as a lion bouncing from 
 my heart, when the shilling rattles, and the lion as small 
 as any weasel slinks back again. 
 
 THE WAY TO A WOMAN's HEART. 
 
 The surest way to hit a woman's heart is to take aim 
 kneeling. 
 
 BRED ON THE BOARDS. 
 
 When Morris had the Haymarket Theatre, Jerrold, on 
 a certain occasion, had reason to find fault with the 
 strength, or, rather, the want of strength, of the com- 
 pany. Morris expostulated, and said, "Why, there's 
 V , he was bred on these boards ! " 
 
 Jerrold. — " He looks as though he'd been cut out of 
 them." 
 
 THE PHILANTHROPIST. 
 
 Jerrold hated the cant of philanthropy, and writhed 
 whenever he was called a philanthropist in print. On 
 one occasion, when he found himself so described, he ex- 
 claimed, " Zounds, it tempts a man to kill a child to get 
 rid of the reputation." 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 17 
 
 CHARACTER. 
 
 Character 's like money : when youVe a great deal, 
 you may risk some ; for, if you lose it, folks still believe 
 you've plenty to spare. 
 
 ANCESTRY. 
 
 " As for ancestry," says Smoke, " truth to speak, I am 
 one of those who may take the cuckoo for their crest, and 
 for their motto — ' Nothing.' " 
 
 GRAPES V. RAISINS. 
 
 Poor Mrs. Quarto ! Even if there had been a boyish 
 passion, now 'twould be absurd. A man may be very 
 fond of grapes who sha'n't abide the fruit when dried into 
 raisins. 
 
 WOMEN AND WARRIORS. 
 
 With women as with warriors, there's no robbery — all's 
 conquest. 
 
 A DIFFERENCE. 
 
 Jerrold one day met a Scotch gentleman, whose name 
 was Leitch, and who explained that he was not the pop- 
 ular caricaturist, John Leech. 
 
 Jerrold. — " I'm aware of that — you're the Scotchman 
 with the i-t-c-h in your name." 
 
 PHYSIC TO THE DOGS. 
 
 One day Mr. Tilbury entered a room where Jerrold 
 was talking with some friends. Macready was about to 
 produce " Macbeth " at Covent Garden ; Tilbury com- 
 plained that he had been cast for the Physician, having 
 previously been entrusted with the more genial part of 
 Witch. 
 
18 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 Jerrold. — " Made you the Physician ! Humph — that 
 is throwing physic to the dogs with a vengeance ! " 
 
 A CAUTIOUS LOVER. 
 
 •" When I courted her," said Spreadweasel, " I took 
 lawyer's advice, and signed every letter to my love, — 
 ' Yours, without prejudice ! ' " 
 
 THE TEMPLE OP FAME. 
 
 Some people were praising the writings of a certain 
 Scot. Jerrold.—^'' I quite agree with you that he should 
 have an itch in the Temple of Fame." 
 
 DAMPED ARDOUR. 
 
 Jerrold and Laman Manchard were strolling together 
 about London, discussing passionately a plan for joining 
 Byron in Greece. Jerrold, telling the story many years 
 after, said, " But a shower of rain came on and washed 
 all the Greece out of us." 
 
 A lover's aspiration. 
 The sky's blue again, — blue as your precious eyes, 
 and the rain-drops hang upon the leaves as bright 
 as the diamonds I wish I was rich enough to give 
 you. 
 
 AN actor's wine. 
 
 " Do you know," said a friend to Jerrold, " that Jones 
 has left the stage and turned wine-merchant ? " — " Oh, 
 yes," Jerrold replied", " and I'm told that his wme off the 
 stage is better than his whine on it." 
 
 love. 
 They say love 's like the measles — all the worse when 
 it comes late in life. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 19 
 
 A KNOWLEDGE OF GUANO. 
 
 A literary gentleman once said pretentiously to Jerrold, 
 " My dear Jerrold, you know, of course, what guano is ? " 
 — "No," Jerrold replied; "but I can understand your 
 knowledge, you've had so much thrown at you in your 
 time." 
 
 THE CHANGES OF THE HEART. 
 
 " When we last met, ma'am, my heart was like a sum- 
 mer walnut, — green and tender ; now, I can tell you, it's 
 plaguy hard in the shell." 
 
 JERROLD's LUGGAGE. 
 
 When Jerrold v/as once returning from the continent, 
 a Folkstone custom-house officer seized his carpet-bag — 
 a very small one — and said, " I cannot let that pass — you 
 must tell me what's in it." — " In this reticule ! " Jerrold 
 replied — " well, you shall see it ; but I can assure you that 
 it's only a very small hippopotamus:" 
 
 woman's love. 
 Strange is the love of woman : it's like one's beard — 
 the closer one cuts it the stronger it grows — and both a 
 plague. 
 
 AN UGLY DOG. 
 
 Jerrold had a favourite dog, that followed him every- 
 where. One day, in the country, a lady who was passing, 
 turned round and said, audibly, " What an ugly little 
 brute ! " whereupon, Jerrold, addressing the lady, replied, 
 " Oh, madam ! I wonder what he thinks about us at this 
 moment ! " 
 
20 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 A PROFESSOR. 
 
 Indeed, there are few things, from Chinese to back- 
 gammon, of which I am not professor. I dabble, too, a 
 good deal in bar and pulpit eloquence. Ha, sir ! the 
 barristers I've fitted for the woolsack — the heads I've 
 patted into shape for mitres ! Even the stuttering parish 
 clerk of Tithepig-cum-Tottlepot, he took only three les- 
 sons, and nobody knew his " Amen " for the same thing. 
 And then I've a great name for knife-and-fork eloquence. 
 Yes — I teach people after-dinner thanks. I don't brag ; 
 but, show me the man who, hke me, can bring in the 
 happiest moment of a gentleman's life at only a crown a 
 lesson. 
 
 THE EFFECTS OF TRUNK-MAKING. 
 
 Some years ago he lined his trunks with Roman His- 
 tory, and he's believed himself Cato ever since. 
 
 MR. pepper's party. 
 
 Jerrold went to a party at which a Mr. Pepper had 
 assembled all his friends. Jerrold said to his host, on 
 entering the room, " My dear Mr. Pepper, how glad you 
 must be to see all your friends mustered ! " 
 
 TREASON. 
 
 Treason is like diamonds ; there's nothing to be made 
 of it by the small trader. 
 
 THE TIME FOR PATRIOTISM. 
 
 Wlien a man has nothing in the world to lose, he is 
 then in the best condition to sacrifice for the public good 
 every thing that is his. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 21 
 
 Contentment is the poor man's bank. 
 
 A CONFESSION. 
 
 In Verona, I ruined a lawyer — no, that comes by-and- 
 by among my good acts. 
 
 A COVERING FOR KNAVERY. 
 
 I always thought his knavery so great, nothing, save a 
 cowl, could cover it. 
 
 THE TIME FOR MOURNING. 
 
 When rich rogues are merry, honest folks may go into 
 mourning. 
 
 A VERY ROGUE. 
 
 Had he to cut his neighbour's throat, he'd first sharpen 
 his knife on the church marble. 
 
 THE SWEETEST PLUM. 
 
 In all the wedding-cake, hope is the sweetest of the 
 plums. 
 
 LOVE. 
 
 Love 's like the flies, and, drawing-room or garrets, 
 goes all over the house. 
 
 THE CLEAREST OF ALL LAWS. 
 
 Self-defence is the clearest of all laws ; and for this 
 reason — the lawyers didn't make it. 
 
 EXTINCT OLD VIRTUES 
 
 are, like extinct volcanoes, with a strong memory of 
 brimstone and fire. The sun itself isn't the same sun that 
 illuminated the darling middle ages ; but a twinkling end 
 of sun — the sun upon a save-all. And the moon — the 
 
22 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 moon that shone on Coeur-de-Lion's battleaxe — ha ! that 
 was a moon. ' Now our moon at the brightest, what is it? 
 A dim, dull, counterfeit moon — a pewter shilling. 
 
 SECOND MARRIAGES. 
 
 I've heard say wedlock 's like wine — not to be properly- 
 judged of till the second glass. 
 
 BODY AND MIND. 
 
 His body is weak, but his mind tremendous. Yes, 
 a sword — a Damascus blade in a brown paper scab- 
 bard. 
 
 DAMP SHEETS. 
 
 To think that two or three yards of damp flax should 
 so knock down the majesty of man ! 
 
 PERMANENTLY ENLARGED. 
 
 Some years ago London was covered with announce- 
 ments of the permanent enlargement of the Morning 
 Herald. One day Jerrold called at the office, and on see- 
 ing the portly figure of Mr. Rodin, the publisher, said, 
 " What ! Rodin, you too seem to be permanently en- 
 larged ! " 
 
 THE DAISY. 
 
 The daisy is Death's forget-me-not. 
 
 AN ATTEMPT TO RETURN TO THE MIDDLE AGES 
 
 is trying to make John Bull grow little again into John 
 Calf. 
 
 THE DINER-OUT AT HOME. 
 
 A gentleman who enjoyed the reputation of dining out 
 
JEKKOLD'S WIT. 23 
 
 continually, and of breaking bread with the refinement 
 of a gourmet, once joined a party, which included Jerrold, 
 late in the evening. The diner-out threw himself into a 
 chair, and exclaimed with disgust, " Tut ! I had nothing 
 but a d — d mutton-chop for dinner ! " Jerrold. — " Ah ! I 
 see, you dined at home." 
 
 TWOPENNY TIMES. 
 
 "We live in twopenny times, when chivalry goes to 
 church in the family coach, and the god of marriage bar- 
 gains for his wedding-breakfast. 
 
 AN attorney's last HOPE. 
 
 A certain sharp attorney was said to be in bad circum- 
 stances. A friend of the unfortunate lawyer met Jerrold, 
 
 and said, " Have you heard about poor R ? His 
 
 business is going to the devil." Jerrold. — "That's all 
 right — then he is sure to get it back again." 
 
 A TAX UPON TOADIES. 
 
 Brown was said by all his friends to be the toady of 
 Jones. The appearance of Jones in a room was the proof 
 that Brown was in the passage. When Jones had the 
 influenza, Brown dutifully caught a cold in the head. 
 Jerrold met Brown one day, and holding him by the 
 buttonhole said, " Have you heard the rumour that's fly- 
 ing about town ? " — " No." " Well, they say Jones pays 
 the dog-tax for you." 
 
 A MODEL BEGGAR. 
 
 Jerrold was showing off the accomplishments of a fa- 
 vourite terrier. " Does he beg ? " asked a visitor. " Beg ! " 
 replied Jerrold, " ay, like a prince of the blood I " 
 
24 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 TOWN AND COUNTRY. 
 
 Compared to London, the country seems to me the 
 world without its clothes on. 
 
 A MOTTO. 
 
 Conscious virtue and cold mutton. 
 
 EXTREMES MEET. 
 
 A gourmet joined a social club to which Jerrold be- 
 longed, and opened a conversation on dining. "Now 
 nobody," said the London Savarin, "can guess what I 
 had for dinner to-daj ! " The company declined to spec- 
 ulate, whereupon the gourmet said, with an air, " Why, 
 calf 's-tail soup ! " Jerrold. — " Extremes meet ! " 
 
 WISHES. 
 
 Wishes at least are the easy pleasures of the poor. 
 
 GOLD. 
 
 He who has guineas for his subjects, is the king of 
 men ! 
 
 SOCIETY. 
 
 Like a tailor's pattern-book, society is of all colours ; 
 and yet, make up the colours as you will, they all cover 
 the same kind of Adam. 
 
 JEWELS. 
 
 Jewels ! It's my belief that, when woman was made, 
 jewels were invented only to make her the more mis- 
 chievous. 
 
 A SAFE GOVERNMENT. 
 
 That government is still the safest that makes treason 
 laughable. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 25 
 
 ADDRESSED TO A DIPLOMATIST. 
 
 Daylight's wasted upon a man who can see so much 
 better in the dark. 
 
 WIT AND WAGGERY. 
 
 Wit, I have heard called a merchant prince, trading 
 with the whole world ; whilst waggery is a green-grocer, 
 making up small penn'orths for the local vulgar. 
 
 TREASON. 
 
 To fan treason into full blaze, always fan with a petti- 
 coat. 
 
 ST. CUPID. 
 
 Since Cupid has so many of his old friends in the 
 calendar, 'tis right, at last, he's canonized himself. 
 
 TIME. 
 
 To the true teacher, time's hour-glass should still run 
 gold dust. 
 
 THE PINE-APPLE. 
 
 The nobleman of the garden. 
 
 THE PRIDE OF SICKNESS. 
 
 With high folks, whenever a sickness shows itself in a 
 family, it is treated witii so much pomp and ceremony, it 
 can't make up its mind to leave. 
 
 A COMIC AUTHOR. 
 
 Jerrold was talking about a well-known comic lecturer, 
 and of his tendency to reduce any subject to the absurd. 
 He presently exclaimed, " Egad, sir ! that fellow would 
 vulgarize the day of judgment ! " 
 
26 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 Conscience, be it ever so little a worm while we live, 
 grows suddenly to a serpent on our death-bed. 
 
 A sailor's education. 
 I was always fond of learning, even when a child. 
 Well, Tom Cipher, he was once what they call a usher 
 at a school in Yorkshire ; he was captain of the top, and 
 there he used to give me my edication, making me spell 
 the names of the merchantmen as they passed by us. I 
 larnt my letters through a telescope. 
 
 woman's love of dress. 
 Ask a woman to a tea-party in the Garden of Eden, 
 and she'd be sure to draw up her eyelids and scream, 
 " I can't go without a new gown." 
 
 THE ANGLO-FRENCH ALLIANCE. 
 
 Jerrold was in France, and with a Frenchman who was 
 enthusiastic on the subject of the Anglo-French alliance. 
 He said that he was proud to see the English and French 
 such good friends at last. Jerrold. — " Tut I the best thing 
 I know between France and England is — the sea." 
 
 THE husbandman's LIFE. 
 
 What a new life of happiness and honour — the life of 
 the husbandman ; a hfe fed by the bounty of earth, and 
 sweetened by the airs of heaven. 
 
 MEETING TROUBLES HALF-WAT. 
 
 Some people are so fond of ill-luck that they run half- 
 way to meet it. 
 
JEKKOLD'S WIT. 27 
 
 r 
 OTHELLO SET TO MUSIC. 
 
 Davenant is about to cut down, and put music to 
 " Othello." He takes away the golden wires of Apollo, 
 and puts in their place his own cat-gut. 
 
 A LAND OF PLENTY. 
 
 Earth is here so kind, that, just tickle her with a hoe, 
 and she laughs with a harvest. 
 
 A BROKEN CHARACTER. 
 
 The character that needs law to mend it is hardly 
 worth the tinkering. 
 
 A CHARITABLE LESSON. 
 
 It would be uncharitable too severely to condemn for 
 faults, without taking some thought of the sterling good- 
 ness which mingles in and lessens them. 
 
 BOOKS. 
 
 A blessed companion is a book ! A book that, fitly 
 chosen, is a life-long friend. A book — the unfailing Da- 
 mon to his loving Pythias. A book that, at a touch, pours 
 its heart into our own. 
 
 UGLY TRADES. 
 
 The ugliest of trades have their moments of pleasure. 
 Now, if I were a grave-digger, or even a hangman, there 
 are some people I could work for with a great deal of 
 enjoyment. 
 
 IMPLEMENTS OF HUSBANDRY. 
 
 Every tool seemed to me at once the weapon and the 
 
28 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 ornament of independence. With such magnificent arms 
 a true man may go forth and conquer the wilderness, 
 making the earth smile with the noblest of victories. 
 
 A TASTE OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 A gentleman described to Jerrold the bride of a mutual 
 friend. " Why he is six foot high, and she is the shortest 
 woman I ever saw. AVhat taste, eh ? " 
 
 "Ay," Jerrold replied, "and only a taste !" 
 
 WHOLESALE AND RETAIL. 
 
 Wholesales don't mix with retails. Raw wool doesn't 
 speak to halfpenny ball of worsted ; tallow in the cask 
 looks down upon sixes to the pound, and pig iron turns 
 up its nose at tenpenuy nails. 
 
 CHARITY. 
 
 Charity is such a lonely creature, my blood comes up 
 when I see a set of rascals — and there's a pretty knot in 
 this town — trying to impose upon her. 
 
 FORCED KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 It's odd how folks will force disagreeable knowledge 
 upon us, — crab-apples, that we must eat and defy the 
 stomach-ache. 
 
 A WEDDING-GOWN. 
 
 After all, there is something about a wedding-gown 
 prettier than in any other gown in the world. 
 
 THE GENIUS OF MONEY. 
 
 If at times it brings trouble upon men, as men are too 
 apt in their excess of sincerity to declare, it must be 
 
JEIJROLD'S WIT. 29 
 
 allowed that the trouble it saves them is to the full as 
 great as the perplexity it inflicts. 
 
 TIIK CHOICE OF A TROFESSION. 
 
 The bar's too full — the bench can't be lengthened to 
 hold a thousandth j)art of us, and we mus'n't sit in each 
 otlier's laps. So many — nine-tenths — must die like spi- 
 ders with nothing to spin. And as to the army, that's 
 "going, going," soon to be "gone." Laurels are fast 
 sinking from the camp to the kitchen. In a very little 
 while the cook will rob Caesar of his wreath to flavor a 
 custard. 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF WEALTH. 
 
 Everybody has imagination when money is the thought 
 — the theme. The common brain will bubble to a golden 
 wand. 
 
 Money is like the air you breathe ; if you have it not, 
 you die. 
 
 COLD MUTTON. 
 
 Cold mutton's like a cold friend, the less to be stom- 
 ached for having once been hot. 
 
 THE CITY GENTLEMAN. 
 
 What a picture to the imagination, the City Gentle- 
 man ! Calm, plain, self-assured in the might of his 
 wealth. All the bullion of the Bank of England makes 
 background details ; the India House dawns in the dis- 
 tance, and a hundred pennants from masts in India Docks 
 tremble in the far-off sky. 
 
 TWO THIRDS OF THE TRUTH. 
 
 Albert Smith once wrote an article in Blackwood^ 
 
30 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 signed " A. S." " Tut," said Jerrold, on reading the 
 initials, " what a pity Smith will tell only two thirds of 
 the truth." 
 
 A coxcoarB. 
 
 A poor vain fellow, who would play at cup-and-ball 
 with the hearts of the whole sex. 
 
 FAIRY AYORTH. 
 
 In the old poetic time the same fairy that would lead 
 men astray for the sake of the mischief, would, by way 
 of recompense, churn the butter and trim up the house, 
 while the household snored. Now money is the prose 
 fairy of our mechanical generation. 
 
 A CHARITABLE MAN. 
 
 He was so good he would pour rose-water over a toad. 
 
 GAMBLING HOUSES. 
 
 Many a house in tliis town is a swan house, all white 
 and fair outside ; but only think of the black legs that 
 are working out of sight ! 
 
 THE GREAT SECRET. 
 
 Poverty is the great secret, kept at any pains by one 
 half the world from the other half ; the mystery of mys- 
 teries, guarded at any cost by neighbour Brown from 
 next door neighbour Green. 
 
 TITLES. 
 
 Titles are. straws that tickle women. 
 
 TRUE WISDOM. 
 
 The only lasting good; all else is hollow. Glory — 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 31 
 
 'tis but a bubble blown from blood ! law — a spider's 
 wisdom ; and politics — the statesman ponders and plans, 
 winning nothing certain but ingratitude and indigestion ; 
 whilst for woman, we hunt a wild-fire, and vow it is a 
 star. 
 
 THE LAW. 
 
 The law's a pretty bird, and has charming wings. 
 'Twould be quite a bird of paradise if it didn't carry- 
 such a terrible bill. 
 
 TRUE WORTH. 
 
 Don't think that money can do any thing and every 
 thing — it can't. There must be inward worth. The 
 gold candlestick — if I may be so bold as to use a figure 
 — may be prized, I grant ; but its magnificence is only 
 subservient to its use ; the gold is very well, but after 
 all, it's the light we look to. 
 
 ADVICE TO A JACOBITE. 
 
 Take my advice, leave plots, go into the country, love 
 your queen, and — but if you still have a hankering for 
 the sweets of rebellion — why take a wife. 
 
 MERCY. 
 
 There be few of us, I fear, would be worse for a little 
 more of it. 
 
 THE PETTICOAT. 
 
 Live in a palace without a petticoat — 'tis but a place 
 to shiver in. Whereas, take off the house-top, break 
 every window, make the doors creak, the chimneys 
 smoke, give free entry to sun, wind, and rain — still will 
 a petticoat make the hovel habitable ; nay, bring the 
 little household gods crowding about the fire-place. 
 
32 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 FRIENDSHIP IN ADVERSITY. 
 
 Friendship in ill-luck turns to mere acquaintance. 
 The wine of life — as I've heard it called — goes into 
 vinegar; and folks that hugged the bottle, shirk the 
 cruet. 
 
 AN OLD BACHELOR. 
 
 He spends all his life discovering flaws and blots, 
 whilst another woos and weds ; and looking only with his 
 natural eyes, sees, to the end of his days, nothing but 
 Hght. 
 
 YOUNG ladies' ACCOMPLISHMENTS. 
 
 Bless their little filagree hearts ! before they marry 
 they ought to perform quarantine in cotton, and serve 
 seven years to pies and puddings. 
 
 THE TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 There's nothing like a prison pavement to ring our old 
 friends upon. 
 
 LOVE IN PRISON. 
 
 Has not the magic of the passion hung prison walls 
 with garlands, and, like the sun of old, drawn hidden har- 
 monies from out the very flint ? 
 
 DEBT. 
 
 To get appearance upon debt is, no doubt, every bit as 
 comfortable as to get height upon the rack. The figure 
 may be expanded ; but how the muscle of the heart, how 
 all the joints are made to crack for it ! 
 
 TALL AND SHORT. 
 
 At an evening party, Jerrold was looking at the dan- 
 
JEKROLD'S WIT. 33 
 
 cers. Seeing a very tall gentleman waltzing with a 
 remarkably short lady, he said to a friend at hand, 
 " Humph ! there's the mile dancing with the mile-stone." 
 
 A SOLEMN WARNING. 
 
 At a rehearsal, one day, a lady, whom Jerrold was in 
 the habit of rallying, gave him a cake. Whereupon, he 
 took his watch from his pocket, held up the present, and 
 addressing those around him, said, " Ladies and gentle- 
 men, it is now half-past twelve o'clock, and I am about to 
 eat this cake. Remember the hour! " 
 
 A CARELESS HOUSEMAID. 
 
 That girl would break the Bank of England if she put 
 her hand upon it. 
 
 HUMAN DEVILS. 
 
 If men do seem devils, it is when, made drunk and 
 callous by the bounty of heaven, they mock and mortify 
 their fellow-men. 
 
 WISHES. 
 
 Foolish and wicked wishes do not fly upwards ; but, 
 there is no doubt of it, descend below; where, though 
 they are but bodiless syllables, they are often fashioned 
 by the imps into pins and needles, and straightway re- 
 turned to the world to torment their begetter. 
 
 what's going on ? 
 
 A very prosy gentleman was in the habit of waylaying 
 
 Jerrold, whenever he met him, to have a chat in the 
 
 street. Jerrold disliked very naturally to be held by the 
 
 button-hole in a crowded thoroughfare. One day Prosy 
 
34 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 met his victim, and, planting himself in the way, said, 
 " Well, Jerrold, what is going on to-day ? " 
 
 Jerrold (sharply, darting past the inquirer). — " I am ! " 
 
 A GOOD WORLD. 
 
 We are poor fools, and make sad mistakes ; but there 
 is goodness hived, like wild honey, in strange nooks and 
 corners of the world. 
 
 THE WORLD. 
 
 The world is as a cocoa-nut ; there is the vulgar out- 
 side fibre, to be made into door-mats and ropes ; the hard- 
 shell good for beer-cups ; and the white delicate kernel, 
 the real worth, food for the gods. 
 
 SHAKSPERIAN GROG. 
 
 As for the brandy, "nothing extenuate," — and the 
 water, " put nought in, in malice." 
 
 A VERY THIN MAN. 
 
 At a bachelor party there was a gentleman remarkable 
 for his thinness. Shall we call him Deedes ? In the 
 course of the evening a servant opened the door, and the 
 cold air rushed into the apartment. 
 
 Jerrold. — " By heavens ! quick ! shut the door. This 
 draught will blow Deedes up the chimney ! " 
 
 SUDDEN CHANGE OF FORTUNE. 
 
 A man who has so long to fight against misfortune, 
 wants strength to meet a sudden kindness. 
 
 A NOBLE LORD. 
 
 He was the lord of abundance — a man who had noth- 
 
JEREOLD'S WIT. 35 
 
 ing to do with want and misery, but to exercise the 
 noblest prerogative of happy humanity — namely, to de- 
 stroy them wheresoever he found them preying upon his 
 fellows. 
 
 FILIAL LOVE. 
 
 A tree planted by a parent gone, doth seem to have its 
 roots within his grave ; to strike the one, doth almost 
 seem to violate the other. 
 
 TRUE HUMOUR. 
 
 A man of true humour may put a capital joke into an 
 epitaph, and get a broad grin from a skeleton. 
 
 AN EXEMPLARY SCHOOLMASTER." 
 
 It was his prejudice to prefer one slip of oUve to a 
 whole grove of birch. 
 
 THE TENDENCY OP THE TIME. 
 
 The great tendency of our time is to sink the serious 
 and to save the droll. Folks who have an eagle in their 
 coat-of-arms begin to be ashamed of it, and paint it out 
 for the laughing goose. In a very little while we shall 
 put a horse-collar round about the world, expressly for 
 all the world to grin through it. 
 
 A SUSPICIOUS MAN. 
 
 He'd search a pincushion for treason, and see daggers 
 in a needle-case. 
 
 HASTY MARRIAGES. 
 
 When young folks are for going to church, they never 
 j heed whether in a slow march or a gallop. 
 
36 JEEE OLD'S WIT. 
 
 NATURE. 
 Nature is a pattern maid-of-all-work, and does best 
 when least meddled with. 
 
 A BAD PEN. 
 
 " God has written ' honest man ' in the face," said a 
 friend to Jerrold, speaking of a person in whom Jerrold's 
 faith was not altogether blind. — " Humph ! " Jerrold re- 
 plied, "then the pen must have been a very bad one." 
 
 A POOR SEMPSTRESS. 
 
 A solitary pale young thing-— one of the cloud of 
 genteel phantoms that flit across our daily path — who 
 compliment life by endeavouring to live by needle and 
 thread. 
 
 MISCALLED PRIDE. 
 
 There is a miscalled pride, so near akin to selfishness 
 I cannot choose between. If the man I love refuse my 
 aid, I needs must think 'tis that when my turn shall come 
 I may expect no aid from him. 
 
 LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Though love cannot dwell in a heart, friendship may. 
 Friendship takes less room — it has no wings. 
 
 BAD HEARTS. 
 
 Some people's hearts are shrunk in them like dried 
 nuts. You can hear 'em rattle as they walk. 
 
 A LEARNED PROFESSOR. 
 
 He had studied mankind only as thieves study a house 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 37 
 
 — to take advantage of the weakest parts of it. The 
 true scholarship — for how rich it makes the best profes- 
 sors ! 
 
 JOKES. 
 
 They are the luxury of beggars ; men of substance can't 
 afford 'em. 
 
 A RUSTIC VENUS. 
 
 Talk of Venus rising from the sea ! Were I to paint a 
 Venus, she should be escaping from a cottage window ; 
 with a face now white, now red, as the roses nodding 
 about it ; an eye hke her own star ; lips sweetening the 
 jasmine, as it clings to hold them ; a face and form in 
 which harmonious thoughts seem as vital breath ! Noth- 
 ing but should speak ; her little hand should tell a love- 
 tale ; nay, her very foot, planted on the ladder, should 
 utter eloquence enough to stop a hermit at his beads, and 
 make him watchman while the lady fled. 
 
 COMMENTATORS. 
 
 Worthy folks who too often write on books, as men 
 with diamonds write on glass — obscuring light with 
 scratches. 
 
 WICKED OATHS. 
 
 An oath that binds a man to evil, is as an arrow shot 
 into the sky, that, turning, falls and pierces the archer. 
 
 CHILDREN. 
 
 Children are earthly idols that hold us from the stars. 
 
 SELF-RESPECT. 
 
 Self-respect ! why it's the ballast of the ship. With- 
 
38 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 out it, let the craft be what she will, she's but a fine sea- 
 coffin at the best. 
 
 GAMBLING. 
 
 I never by chance hear the rattling of dice that it 
 doesn't sound to me like the funeral bell of a whole 
 family. 
 
 CONDESCENSION. 
 
 There are people who make even a million a very 
 small matter, merely by the condescending way of speak- 
 ing of it. 
 
 THE HUMAN HEART. 
 
 I learnt to reverence the human heart in some foul 
 place, some very nest of misery, — there it would flourish 
 in its best beauty, giving out even in such an atmosphere 
 the sweets of love and charity and resignation. 
 
 DEEP AFFECTION. 
 
 What nature hath hung about our hearts passes our 
 surgery with skill to cut away. In our stoicism we think 
 it done, but the wound keeps open, and the blood stiU 
 runs. 
 
 INGRATITUDE. 
 
 We are too apt to bury our accounts along with our 
 benefactors ; to enjoy the triumphs of others as though 
 they were the just property of ourselves. 
 
 STOLEN MATCHES. 
 
 There are good dull folks who'd doubt of lasting love 
 in paradise — seeing that the first match wanted the con- 
 sent of aunts and grandfathers. 
 
JERKOLD'S WIT. 39 
 
 HEARTS. 
 
 Every man talks of his neighbour's heart, as though it 
 was his own watch, — a thing to be seen in all its works, 
 and abused for irregular going. 
 
 DEATH IN A POOR MAN's HOME. 
 
 The children of the poor have curious memories. Death 
 comes not to their home a stately suramoner, veihng its 
 hideousness with robes and plumes, but stands and strikes 
 upon the poor man's hearth — a naked, foul, and cruel 
 thing ; but ever brings a blessing to the house prepared. 
 
 CONCEIT. 
 
 It is wonderful to think how near conceit is to insanity ; 
 and yet how many folks are suffered to go free, and foam- 
 ing with it. 
 
 A HEARTLESS LANDLORD. 
 
 If he had a tree, and but one squirrel lived in it, he'd 
 take its nuts sooner than allow it lodging gratis. 
 
 MARRIAGE. 
 
 The marriage of a loved child may seem to a parent a 
 kind of death. Yet therein a father pays but a just debt. 
 Wedlock gave him the good gift ; to wedlock, then, he 
 owes it. 
 
 A sailor's idea of the law. 
 
 Beelzebub's ship. It is neither privateer, bombship, 
 
 nor letter of marque. It is built of green timber, manned 
 
 with loplolly boys and marines ; provisioned with mouldy 
 
 biscuit and bilge water, and fires nothing but red hot 
 
40 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 shot : there's no grappling with or boarding her : she 
 always sails best in a storm, and founders in fair weather. 
 
 man's debts. 
 Man owes two solemn debts ; one to society, and one 
 to nature. It is only when he pays the second that he 
 covers the first. 
 
 SPIES. 
 
 He who turns spy for pleasure, wouldn't stickle to be 
 hangman for business. 
 
 THE SOFT SEX. 
 
 A woman is like tar — only melt her, and she will take 
 any form you please. 
 
 LYING. 
 
 Don't give your mind to lying. A lie may do very 
 well for a time, but, like a bad ghilling, it's found out at 
 last. 
 
 PLATONIC LOVE. 
 
 Plato was ever a good master of the ceremonies — just 
 introducing people, and then politely making his bow. 
 
 children's beauty. 
 The beauty of children is a terror — a fearful loveliness. 
 
 a COLD MAN. 
 
 Jerrold said of a cold comic writer : " He'd write an 
 epigram upon his father's tombstone ! " 
 
 FAIR trade. 
 You mustn't think because a man in fair trade loves a 
 guinea, that his heart is all figures, like a ready reckoner 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 41 
 
 A NAUTICAL MAN OF STONE. 
 
 A fellow that would sit still at his grog at the cry of 
 " a mail overboard ! " 
 
 TRUTH. 
 
 In this world truth can wait ; she's used to it. 
 
 A MEAN MAN. 
 
 He grudges a canary his sugar, and counts out grains 
 of barley to his horse by tens. 
 
 A DUELLIST 
 
 is only Cain in high life. 
 
 A GOOD LIFE. 
 
 How beautiful can time, with goodness, make an old 
 man look ! 
 
 PERFECT DISCONTENT. 
 
 An old lady was in the habit of talking to Jerrold in a 
 gloomy, depressing manner, presenting to him only the 
 sad side of life. " Hang it ! " said Jerrold, one day, after 
 a long and sombre interview, " she wouldn't allow there 
 was a bright side to the moon." 
 
 DEATH. 
 
 The grave is the true purifier, and, in the charity of 
 the living, takes away the blots and stains from the dead. 
 
 INTOXICATION. 
 
 Habitual intoxication is the epitome of every crime. 
 
 YOUR BED. 
 
 Make your bed as a coffin, and your coffin Avill be as a 
 bed. 
 
42 JEKKOLD'S WIT. 
 
 SAILORS. 
 
 Sailors can do anything. All they have to do with 
 time is to beat it. 
 
 COOLNESS. 
 
 He would eat oysters while his neighbor's house was 
 in flames — always provided that his own was insured. 
 Coolness ! — he's a piece of marble, carved into a broad 
 grin. 
 
 DOGMATISM 
 
 is puppyism come to its full growth. 
 
 A JOVIAL BROKER. 
 
 He levies a distress as though he brought a card of 
 invitation ; giggles himself into possession ; makes out 
 the inventory with a chuckle ; and carts off chairs and 
 tables to " Begone dull care," or, " How merrily we hve 
 who shepherds be ! " 
 
 LUCKY FELLOWS. 
 
 Soldiers are lucky fellows ; all hearts enlist for them — 
 and recruit for them very often. 
 
 VIRTUE. 
 
 Virtue, attempting to gloss dishonesty, if it doesn't 
 grow ashamed and break down in the oration, ceases to 
 be virtue. 
 
 TITLES. 
 
 Titles, to be the real thing, should be like potatoes, and 
 turn up with a lot of land about 'em. 
 
 THE DECENCIES OF MATRIMONY. 
 
 To feel the chains, but take especial care the world 
 
JEKKOLD'S WIT. 43 
 
 shall not hear them clank. 'Tis a prudence that often 
 passes for happiness. 
 
 man's strength. 
 A man never so beautifully shows his own strength as 
 when he respects woman's softness. 
 
 A REFORMED DRUNKARD. 
 
 I've heard him renounce wine a hundred times a daj, 
 but then it has been between as many glasses. He never 
 takes an oath, but he settles it with a bumper. 
 
 A MATTER-OF-FACT MAN. 
 
 Talk to him of Jacob's ladder, and he would ask the 
 number of the steps. 
 
 AN INVETERATE TOPER. 
 
 If I were made Doge of Venice, instead of wedding 
 the ocean, faith, I'd drop a ring into a barrel of eau- 
 de-vie. 
 
 THE POWER OP MONEY. 
 
 Wliat makes the elephant powerful ? His trunk and 
 tusks. What makes the lion dangerous ? His teeth and 
 claws. And what tusks and teeth are to the lower crea- 
 tures, money is to man. 
 
 RESPECTABILITY. 
 
 If all the rascals who, under the semblance of a smug 
 respectability, sow the world with dissensions and deceit, 
 were fitted with a halter, rope would double its price, and 
 the executioner set up his carriage. 
 
44 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 A DANGEROUS PARTNER. 
 
 At a meeting of literary gentlemen, a proposition for 
 the establishment of a newspaper arose. The shares of 
 the various persons who were to be interested were in 
 course of arrrangement, when an unlucky printer sug- 
 gested an absent litterateur, who was as remarkable for 
 his imprudence as for his talent. " What ! " exchiimed 
 Jerrold, " share and risk with him ! Why I wouldn't be 
 partners with him in an acre of Paradise ! " 
 
 SNEERS MADE EASY. 
 
 When we've lost all relish for wine, 'tis marvellously 
 easy to sneer at the butler. 
 
 A TRUE WOMAN, 
 
 when a man has only half a meaning, supplies the other 
 half. It is that which makes the full circle of the wed- 
 
 THE HEROINE OF A LOVE STORY. 
 
 A mere thing of goose-quill and foolscap ; only born in 
 a garret to be buried in a trunk. 
 
 A MODEL GAMBLER. 
 
 Take a skeleton from the box of an anatomist, give its 
 head an immovable mask of flesh ; clothe the skull, but 
 leave all besides dry bones ; make it calculate, but not 
 feel ; give it motion but not life, and there's your model 
 ■ — there's your trading gamester. 
 
 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 The great magician, who has left immortal company 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 45 
 
 for the spirit of man in its weary journey tlirougli this 
 briary world — has bequeathed scenes of immortal loveli- 
 ness for the human fancy to delight in — founts of eternal 
 truth for the lip of man to drink, and drink — and for aye 
 to be renovated with every draught. 
 
 woman's heart. 
 A woman's heart, like a singing-bird in a cage, if neg- 
 lected starves and dies ; but, for men's hearts, why they're 
 free birds of prey — vultures and hawks — or thievish mag- 
 pies at the best. 
 
 PATRIOTISM. 
 
 A man quarrelled with some French dragoons, because 
 he would insist that the best cocoa-nuts grew on Prim- 
 rose-hill, and that birds of Paradise flew about St. 
 James's. Whenever a Frenchman threw him down a 
 lie, for the honor of England he always trumped it. 
 
 SPEECH MAKING. 
 
 "VVe don't look for long speeches from men of wealth. 
 We've plenty of speakers whose only bank is the English 
 language, and tremendously they draw upon it. 
 
 HOW THE GOVERNMENT IS KEPT UP. 
 
 Like an hour-glass, when one side 's quite run out, we 
 turn up the other, and go on again. 
 
 READY MONEY. 
 
 Work for ready money. Take no bill upon posterity ; 
 in the first place, there are many chances against its being 
 paid ; and, in the next, if it be duly honoured, the cost 
 may be laid out on some piece of bronze or marble of not 
 the shghtest value to the original. 
 
46 JEREOLD'S WIT. 
 
 MARRIED LIFE AND SINGLE. 
 
 They who live single all their life, when they have 
 sown their wild oats begin to sow nettles ; whilst the 
 married, from the first, plant orchards. 
 
 THE PERFECTION OF A VTOMAN. 
 
 Beautiful — and can do every thing but speak ! 
 
 WHITE SAVAGES. 
 
 Do not imagine that they are the only savages whose 
 skins are soot-colour, who wear rings through their noses, 
 stick parrot's feathers in their woolly hair, and bow to 
 Mumbo Jumbo as their only deity. They are to be found 
 amongst the whitest, the most carefully dressed, and most 
 pious of London. 
 
 A MONEY lender's FACE. 
 
 Don't call it a face — it's like a bank-note, every line 
 in it means money. 
 
 WORDS. 
 
 In their intercourse with the world, people should not 
 take words as so much genuine coin of standard metal, but 
 merely as counters that people play with. 
 
 A lawyer's flight. 
 Witches fly upon broomsticks — a lawyer may come 
 upon justice. 
 
 sensibility. 
 A man who would thrive in the world has no such 
 enemy as what is known by the term Sensibility. It is 
 
JERROLD'S ^nT. 47 
 
 to walk barefoot in a mob ; at every step, your toes are 
 crushed by the iron-shod shoon of crowding vagabonds, 
 who grin from ear to ear at the wry faces you make — at 
 the cries that may escape you. 
 
 WHOLESOME IDLENESS. 
 
 Talk not of the idleness which is full of quiet thoughts. 
 Is it idle to be up with the day — to feel the balmy cool- 
 ness of a rich May-dew — to watch the coming splendour 
 of the sun — to see the young lambs leap — to hear sing- 
 ing, a mile above us, the strong-throated lark, the spirit 
 of the scene — is this idle ? Yet by some 'tis called so. 
 The sluggard, who wakes half the night to lay lime-twigs 
 for poor honesty the next day ; the varlet, who acknowl- 
 edges no villainy on the safe side of an act of parliament — 
 he calls one a loiterer and a time-killer. Be it so — it 
 does not spoil the fishing. Idle ! why, angling is in itself 
 a system of morality ! 
 
 THE WORLD AND THE LAWS. 
 
 Consider the whole world an orchard, guarded by the 
 man-traps and spring-guns of laws ; you have only to 
 know where the laws are laid, that, though you intrude 
 upon them ever so closely, you are never caught or hit 
 by them. 
 
 PEWS. 
 
 "What a sermon might we not preach upon these little 
 boxes ! small abiding-places of earthly satisfaction, sanc- 
 tuaries for self-complacency — in God's own house, the 
 chosen chambers for man's self-glorification ! What an 
 instructive colloquy might not the bare deal bench of the 
 poor church-goer hold with the soft-cushioned seat of the 
 
48 JEER OLD'S WIT. 
 
 miserable sinners who chariot it to prayers, and with 
 their souls arrayed in sackcloth and ashes, yet kneel in 
 silk and miniver. 
 
 LOVE IN BLACK AND WHITE. 
 
 A man's in no danger so long as he talks his love ; but 
 to write it is to impale himself on his own pot-hooks. 
 
 FORTUNE. 
 
 Fortune is called harlot every hour of the day, and 
 that, too, by grave gentlemen, who only abuse the wench 
 before company because they have never known her pri- 
 vate favours. But, bad as she is, let sour-faced Seneca 
 and all the other philosophers of the vinegar-cruet stalk 
 with paper lanterns before her door, they will never bring 
 the romping hoyden into ill-repute. 
 
 BLACK-LEG PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 I consider a hand of cards just an army of mercena- 
 ries ; and, when I play, believe myself no more than an 
 Alexander, a Pompey, or a Julius Caesar. 
 
 LYING. 
 
 The world, as at present constituted, could not go on 
 without lying. It is only the conviction of this fact that 
 enables so many worthy, excellent people to club their 
 little modicum together, for the benevolent purpose of 
 keeping the world upon its axis. 
 
 A dramatist's golden RULE. 
 
 A good murder is now the very life of a drama. Thus, 
 if a playwright would fill his purse, he should take a hint 
 from the sugar-bakers, and always refine his commodity 
 with blood. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 4^9 
 
 TRUTH. 
 
 He who in this world resolves to speak only the truth, 
 will speak only what is too good for the mass of mankind 
 to understand, and will be persecuted accordingly. 
 
 HOW TO BE SOMEBODY. 
 
 If you'd pass for somebody, you must sneer at a play, 
 but idolize Punch. I know the most refined folks, who'd 
 not budge a foot to hear Garrick, would give a guinea 
 each — nay, mob for a whole morning — to see a Green- 
 lander eat seal's flesh and swallow whale-oil. 
 
 DIFFIDENCE. 
 
 It is an acquaintance that hourly picks your pocket ; 
 that makes you hob and nob with fustian, when otherwise 
 you might jostle it with court ruffles. 
 
 AN angler's fly. 
 
 Make it thus : — Take a piece of honesty for the body ; 
 whip it round about with the strong thread of resolution ; 
 add thereto the wings of cheerfulness, the sky-blue crest 
 of hope, the tail of meekness. Bind the fly to the silver 
 hook of independence ; then cast it into the stream of the 
 world, and though many a hungry pike may snap at it, 
 yet be assured you will hook the golden fish, a good 
 conscience. 
 
 LENDING. 
 
 There are three things that no man but a fool lends, or, 
 having lent, is not in the most hopeless state of mental 
 crassitude if he ever hope to get back again. These 
 three things are— Books, umbrellas, and money. 
 4 
 
50 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 ONE LEG IN THE GRAVE. 
 
 People with one leg in the grave are so devilish long 
 before they put in the other. They seem like birds, to 
 repose better on one leg. 
 
 A BAD NAME. 
 
 Having acquired a name for ill-nature, or, in reality, 
 having acquired a fatal reputation for using your eyes, it 
 is in vain to deal in praise of anything. The people who 
 profess to know you, will, like witches, read even your 
 prayers backwards. 
 
 SITTING FOR YOUR PORTRAIT 
 
 If there be a plague upon earth, it is the plague of 
 sitting under a continual struggle to call into your face, 
 and keep there, your very prettiest and most amiable 
 look, until duly fastened by pigments upon wainscot or 
 canvas. 
 
 MARRIED HAPPINESS. 
 
 Married happiness is a glass ball ; folks play with it 
 during the honeymoon, till falling, it is shivered to pieces ; 
 and the rest of life is a wrangle who broke it. 
 
 A CROTCHETY MAN. 
 
 He is one of those fellows who dive into the well of 
 truth, and croak only with the frogs at the bottom. 
 
 THE NEWGATE CALENDAR. 
 
 A mine of gold from which philosophic novelists have 
 cast pocket-heroes for heroes, and mantel-piece ornaments 
 for boarding-schools. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. ^j 
 
 THE INVENTOR OF GUNPOWDER. 
 
 They say a parson first invented gunpowder, but one 
 cannot believe it till one is married. 
 
 PATIENCE. 
 
 Once upon a time Patience wanted a nightingale. 
 Well, Patience waited, and the egg sang. 
 
 THE philosopher's STONE. 
 
 The true philosopher's stone is only intense impudence. 
 
 HUMBUG. 
 
 The cement of the social fabric — the golden cord tying 
 together and making strong the sticks and twigs of the 
 world. The dulcet bell, whose ravishing sound calls the 
 great family of man to eat, drink, and be merry. 
 
 REAL fullers' EARTH. 
 
 Grave-dust, that truest fullers' earth, surely takes out 
 the negro stain. 
 
 THE GAMESTER. 
 
 He is indeed a privileged person ; a creature who 
 merges all the petty wearying anxieties of life into one 
 sublime passion. Become a gamester, and you are forti- 
 fied, nay, exempt from the assaults of divers other feelings 
 that distract and worry less happy men. Gaming is a 
 moral Aaron's rod, and swallows up all meaner passions. 
 
 STOCK-JOBBERS. 
 
 The mere money-changers — the folks who carry their 
 sullen souls in the corners of their pockets, and think the 
 site of Eden is covered with the Mint. 
 
52 JBRKOLD'S WIT. 
 
 hunger's welcome guest. 
 When a man has nothing in his cupboard, fever is his 
 best guest. 
 
 readers. 
 
 Readers are of two sorts. There is a reader who care- 
 fully goes through a book ; and there is a reader who as 
 carefully lets the book go through him. 
 
 GRATIS. 
 
 Gratis ! It is the voice of Nature speaking from the 
 fulness of her large heart. The word is w^ritten all over 
 the blue heaven ; the health-giving air whispers it about 
 us ; it rides the sunbeam (save when statesmen put a 
 pane 'twixt us and it) ; the lark trills it high up in its 
 skyey dome ; the little wayside flower breathes gratis from 
 its pinky mouth ; the bright brook murmurs it ; it is 
 written in the harvest moon. And yet how rarely do we 
 seize the happiness, because, forsooth, it is a joy gratis ! 
 
 DRUNKENNESS. 
 
 Never get drunk — that is, in company — above the 
 girdle. There is a thermometer of drunkenness which 
 every wise young man who has to elbow his way through 
 the world would do well to consider. A man may be 
 knee-drunk, hip-drunk, shoulder-drunk, nay, chin-drunk ; 
 but the wine should be allowed to rise no higher. 
 
 A doctor's LIVERY. 
 
 A very popular medical gentleman called on Jerrold 
 one day. When the visitor was about to leave, Jerrold, 
 Jooking from his library window, espied his friend's car- 
 riage, attended by servants in flaming liveries. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 53 
 
 Jerrold. — " What ! doctor, I see your livery is measles 
 turned up with scarlet fever." 
 
 FLATTERY. 
 
 Whatever dirty-shirted philosophers may say to the 
 contrary, flattery is a fine social thing ; the beautiful 
 handmaid of life, casting flowers and odoriferous herbs in 
 the paths of men, who, crushing out the sweets, curl up 
 their noses as they snuff the odour, and walk half an inch 
 higher to heaven by what they tread upon. 
 
 COME in! 
 He has escaped somewhat of the smitings of this single- 
 stick world, who, when he hears knuckles at his postern, 
 can throw himself back in his chair like a king upon 
 his throne, and without a qualm of the heart, cry, " Come 
 in!" 
 
 women's fear of jokes. 
 There are various ways of attaching the sex : but the 
 surest is, not to attempt to shine and sparkle and go off 
 in crackers of jokes before them. Women, somehow, 
 have the same fear of witty men as of fireworks ; and 
 thus, how often do pretty, lively creatures link themselves 
 to fools ! 
 
 THE GREATEST ANIMAL IN CREATION. 
 
 The animal that cooks. 
 
 PIG AND PORK. 
 
 When my lady sees master pig munching and wallow- 
 ing in a ditch, she curls her nose and lifts her shoulders 
 at his nastiness. And lo ! when the same pig's leg, fra- 
 
54 JEKROLD'S WIT. 
 
 grant with sage and patriarchal onions, smokes upon the 
 board, the same lady sendeth her plate three times. 
 
 PUBLIC OPINION. 
 
 Public opinion is the terrible Inquisition of modem 
 times ; and those who, in a former age, were by their 
 birth and office held the elect and chosen, are unceremo- 
 niously dragged forth, questioned, and doomed to an auto 
 da fe. 
 
 PICKING UP CHARACTER. 
 
 Jerrold met Alfred Bunn one day in Jermyn-street. 
 Bunn stopped Jerrold, and said, " What ! I suppose 
 you're strolling about, picking up character." 
 
 Jerrold. — " Well, not exactly ; but there's plenty lost 
 hereabouts." 
 
 PROSINESS. 
 
 An old gentleman, whom we may call Prosy Very — 
 the " prosy " having been affixed to his name by his suf- 
 fering listeners — was in the habit of meeting Jerrold, and 
 pouring long pointless stories into his impatient ears. On 
 one occasion Prosy related a long, limp account of a stu- 
 pid practical joke, concluding with the information that 
 the effect of the joke was so potent, " he really thought 
 he should have died with laughter." 
 
 " I wish to heaven you had," was Jerrold's reply. 
 
 DREAMS. 
 
 Happy is the man who may tell all his dreams. 
 
 THE CRY CJF the DRAPERS' ASSISTANTS. 
 
 These men are clamouring for leisure — for time for 
 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 55 
 
 self-improvement ! What would they have ? Are they 
 not the chosen servitors of the fair? Do they not for 
 nine, ten, eleven hours per diem, only six days in the 
 week, live in the very atmosphere of beauty ? What 
 have they to do but to take down and put by, to smile, to 
 speak softly, to protest — and, for the benefit of the " con- 
 cern," to tell a lie with the grace of perfect gentlemen ? 
 
 A GOOD NAME WHEN TOO LATE. 
 
 How often does it happen that a man learns that he 
 had a good name, only when he ceases to possess it ! If 
 a man would know what his friends thought of him, let it 
 be given out that he is dead, or has unfortunately picked 
 a pocket. Then mute opinion finds a tongue — " He was 
 the best of fellows." 
 
 THE EXAMPLE OF THE HANGMAN. 
 
 Death would indeed be punishment, could it only be 
 administered by the executioner ; but as God has made it 
 the draught for all men — the inevitable cup to be di-ained 
 to the dregs by all who live — since there is not one man 
 privileged to pass it — is not that a strange punishment for 
 the deepest wickedness of guilt, if the same evil must at 
 the last foreclose the life of the nobly good ? 
 
 SLANDER. 
 
 If slander be a snake, it is a winged one — it flies as 
 well as creeps. 
 
 THE FIRST MUSIC-SELLER. 
 
 The ballad-singer was the first music-seller in the land. 
 Ye well-stocked, flourishing vendors of fashiorable scores, 
 deign to cast a look through plate glass at your poor yet 
 
56 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 great original, barefooted and in rags, singing unabashed 
 amidst London wagon-wheels : behold the true descend- 
 ant of the primitive music-seller— of him who even two 
 centuries ago, sold his lays without the help of other com- 
 mendation than his own cracked yet honest voice. 
 
 bottom's descendants. 
 The immortal weaver of Athens hath a host of descend- 
 ants ; they are scattered throughout every country of the 
 world ; their moral likeness to their sage ancestor becom- 
 ing stronger in the land of luxury and wealth. They are 
 a race marked and distinguished by the characteristics of 
 their first parent— omnivorous selfishness and invulner- 
 able self-complacency. They wear the ass's head, yet 
 know it not ; and, heedless of the devotion, leave the Ti- 
 tania fortune still to round their temples " with coronets 
 of fresh and fragrant flowers." 
 
 THE STROLLING PLAYER. 
 
 He is the merry preacher of the noblest, grandest les- 
 sons of human thought. He is the poet's pilgrim, and, 
 in the forlornest by-ways and abodes of men, calls forth 
 new sympathies—sheds upon the cold, dull trade of real 
 life an hour of poetic glory, " making a sunshine in a 
 shady place." He informs human clay with thoughts 
 and throbbings that refine it ; and for this he was for cen- 
 turies " a rogue and a vagabond," and is, even now, a 
 long, long day's march fi-om the vantage-ground of re- 
 spectability. 
 
 A SUGGESTIVE PRESENT. 
 
 Jerrold and a company of literary friends were out in 
 the country, rambling over commons and down lanes. In 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 57 
 
 the course of their walk, they stopped to notice the gam- 
 bols of an ass's foal. There was a very sentimental poet 
 among the baby ass's admirers, who grew eloquent as 
 Sterne over its shaggy coat. At last the poet vowed that 
 he should like to send the little thing as a present to his 
 mother. " Do," Jerrold replied, " and tie a piece of 
 paper round its neck, bearing this motto — ' When this you 
 see, remember me.' " 
 
 SUCCESS. 
 
 No matter for his birthplace, his parentage — success 
 has all-in-all in his name. Though he were born on the 
 wayside, his mother a gipsy, and his father a clipper of . 
 coin — for his name, and name alone, men shall bow down 
 and worship him. Desert weeps at the early grave of 
 the broken-hearted ; success eats ortolans with a quack- 
 salver at threescore. We may certainly be brought to 
 allow the possible existence of unrewarded desert ; but 
 for success, there can be no doubt of his vitality. 
 
 A METAPHYSICIAN. 
 
 He could take mind to pieces as easily as a watch- 
 maker could take a chronometer to bits — knew every 
 little spring of human actions, and, in a word, looked 
 through the heads of the sons and daughters of Eve as 
 easily as though they were of glass, and the motives 
 therein working, labouring bees. 
 
 THE postman's BUDGET. 
 
 A strange volume of real life is the daily packet of the 
 postman ! Eternal love, and instant payment ! Dim 
 visions of Hymen and the turnkey ; the wedding ring and 
 the prison bolt ! Next to come upon the sinful secrets of 
 
58 JEEROLD'S WIT. 
 
 the quiet, respectable man — the worthy soul, ever vir- 
 tuous because never found out — to unearth the hypocrite 
 from folded paper, and see all his iniquity blackening in 
 white sheet ! And to fall upon a piece of simple goodness 
 — a letter gushing from the heart ; a beautiful unstudied 
 vindication of the worth and untiring sweetness of human 
 nature — a record of the invulnerability of man, armed 
 with high purpose, sanctified by truth. 
 
 THE DEATH OF A SWINDLER. 
 
 When the plodding, sober, thrifty man quits this noisy 
 world — made noisy by the incessant rattling of pounds, 
 shillings, and pence — it is ten to one that he makes what 
 is generally called an irreparable gap in a very large cir- 
 cle of affectionate friends. How different the death of a 
 swindler ! He leaves no irreparable gap in society — not 
 he ! He agonizes neither man nor woman, nor child ; not 
 a tear is dropped at his grave — not a sigh rises at the 
 earth rattling on his coffin ! 
 
 GOOD AND ILL LUCK. 
 
 Shall not one varlet ruffle it in mobs, flounder through 
 many dirty ways, struggle through a maze of briers, and 
 still have his good name — we mean his superfine cloak — 
 without a wrinkle in it, a spot upon it, a tear — yea, even 
 the fracture of a thread in it ? And yet, put the same 
 cloak upon another, and, though he shall suffer from a 
 casual jostling, though he shall tread a muddy walk care- 
 fully as a cat, and only tarry a moment to gather a dog- 
 rose from a bush at the wayside, and — phew ! — what an 
 unseemly rumpling of his garment — what splashes of foul- 
 est mud upon it ! 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 59 
 
 '■*• 
 THE INTRUDER REBUKED. 
 
 Jerrold and some friends were dining in a private room 
 at a tavern. After dinner, the landlord appeared, and 
 having informed the company that the house was partly 
 under repair, and that he was inconvenienced for want of 
 room, requested that a stranger might be allowed to take 
 a chop at a separate table in the apartment. The com- 
 pany assented, and the stranger, a person of common- 
 place appearance, was introduced. He ate his chop in 
 silence ; but, having finished his repast he disposed him- 
 self for those forty wdnks which make the sweetest sleep of 
 gourmets. But the stranger snored so loudly and inhar- 
 moniously that conversation was disturbed. Some gen- 
 tlemen of the party now jarred glasses, or shuffled upon 
 the floor, determined to arouse the obnoxious sleeper. 
 Presently the stranger started from his sleep and to his 
 legs, and shouted to Jerrold, " I know you, Mr. Jerrold ; 
 but you shall not make a butt of me ! " " Then don't 
 bring your hog's head in here," was the prompt reply. 
 
 THE INCONVENIENCES OF POVERTY. 
 
 What wrigglings, and strugglings, and heart-burnings, 
 are every day acted and endured to stand well with the 
 world ; that is, to stand without a hole in our hat, or a 
 damning rent in our smallclothes ! The modern man is 
 wonderfully spiritualized by this philosopher; so much ,50, 
 that if he can secure to himself a display of the collar, 
 he is almost wholly unconscious of the absence of the 
 shirt. 
 
 THE USES OP THE UNDERTAKER. 
 
 The undertaker is sometimes called upon to make up, 
 by one great show — by the single pageant of an hour — 
 
60 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 for the neglect and misery shown and inflicted for years 
 by the living to the dead. How many a poor relation has 
 pined and died in a garret, disregarded by wealthy kin- 
 dred, who profusely lavish upon clay what they denied tb 
 beating flesh and blood. 
 
 ACCOMMODATION BILLS. 
 
 There is one objection to a bill— it puts another pair 
 of wings to the back of Time. 
 
 REPUTATIONS. 
 
 Strange it is, but reputations, like beavers and cloaks, 
 shall last some people twice the time of others ; not that 
 there shall be the slightest difference in the quality of the 
 article — no, not a whit — the commodity shall be the same 
 to a thread. 
 
 A LONDON HOVEL. 
 
 One of those abodes of dirt, and crime, and famine, 
 that, within gunshot of the houses of luxury and affluence, 
 serve as the constant theme for legislative philanthropy ; 
 places from which smug Theory, with weeping eyes and 
 heaving breast, holds forth many a touching discourse ; 
 but where dogged Practice never shows his nose to de- 
 crease the abomination. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF SWINDLING. 
 
 All mankind may be divided into two classes: the 
 swindlers according to custom and to law, and the swin- 
 dlers according to the bent of their natural genius. 
 
 A TRUE SWINDLER. 
 
 With your true swindler the brain must have played 
 
JEREOLD'S WIT. 61 
 
 the Aaron's rod to the heart — swallowing it whole ; a 
 miracle very often performed in the anatomy of great 
 public men. 
 
 SHOWY FUNERALS. 
 
 The trappings of the defunct are but the outward dress- 
 ings of the pride of the living : the undertaker, in all his 
 melancholy pomp, his dingy bravery, waits upon the 
 quick, and not the dead. 
 
 A THEATRICAL MANAGER. 
 
 A manager who really knows his business will make a 
 most effulgent " star " out of nothing better than block- 
 tin — nay, cut a whole constellation from so much foil- 
 paper, as easily as a school-girl, with precocious contempt 
 of Malthus, will cut out a population from an old copy- 
 book. 
 
 PUBLIC COMPANIES. 
 
 Take ten, twenty, thirty men — creatures of light — ad- 
 mirable, estimable, conscientious persons — by-words of 
 excellence, proverbs of truth in their individual dealings ; 
 and yet, make of them a " board," a " committee," a 
 " council," a " company," no matter what may be the col- 
 lective name by which they may be known, and imme- 
 diately every member will acknowledge the quickening 
 of feeling — the sudden growth of an indomitable lust to 
 swindle. 
 
 THE PENALTY OF THE DINER OUT. 
 
 He must have a passionate love for children. He must 
 so Qomport himself, that when his name shall be an- 
 nounced, every child in the man-ion shall set up a yell — 
 
62 JEEE OLD'S WIT. 
 
 a scream of rapture — shall rush to him, pull his coat-tails, 
 climb on his back, twist their fingers in his hair, snatch 
 his watch from his pocket; and whilst they rend his 
 super-Saxony, load his shoulders, uncurl his wig, and 
 threaten instant destruction to the repeater, he must stifle 
 the agony at his heart and his pocket, and to the feebly- 
 expressed fears of the mamma that the children are 
 troublesome, must call into every corner of his face a look 
 of the most seraphic delight. 
 
 HIGH BLOOD. 
 
 High blood, like the finest wine, may be kept so long 
 that it shall entirely lose its flavour. Hence, the last 
 man of an old family may be like the last bottle of a 
 famous vintage — a thing to talk of, not to use. 
 
 LIGHT IN DARKNESS. 
 
 Live in London ! a butterfly in a dark lantern. 
 
 THE VAGABOND. 
 
 Your real, quick-blooded, genial vagabond, is the ara- 
 besque of life. Talk of cabinet dinners — give us vaga- 
 bond suppers ! 
 
 THE INTEMPERANCE OF THE POOR. 
 
 We talk of the intemperance of the poor ; why, when 
 we philosophically consider the crushing miseries that 
 beset them — the keen suffering of penury, and the mock- 
 ery of luxury and profusion with which it is surrounded 
 — my wonder is, not that there are so many who pur- 
 chase temporary oblivion of their misery, but that there 
 are so few. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. g3 
 
 THE SCHOOL BIRCH. 
 
 The school birch — dead twigs though it seem — buds 
 and bears fruit. The child feels only the branches, but 
 how often is the produce ashes in the mouth of manhood ! 
 
 AN ALTERNATIVE. 
 
 A girl, proud of her father's wealth, and shrewdly 
 counting up the measure of its power, declared once to 
 Jerrold, that she had made up her mind to marry a lord. 
 But time wore on, and still no lord made even a nibble 
 at the hook baited with bank-notes. The girl began to 
 feel nervous : and still Time's hour-glass dribbled, in no 
 way impeded by the poor girl's rapid progress towards 
 thirty. At last, the soured woman became religious. 
 " Ah," said Jerrold, " as the lord would not come to lier, 
 she has gone to the Lord." 
 
 A PEER IN HIS MINORITY. 
 
 Nothing so succulent (to a money-lender) as a peer 
 under age, to be eaten in due time, with, post obit sauce. 
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 
 
 How was the girl smitten ? As they kill partridges — 
 at first sight. 
 
 A FRUITFUL VICARAGE. 
 
 It is a fruitful nook, where there is an hourly struggle 
 between the rector and his geese which shall be the fat- 
 test, man or birds. 
 
 A SON OF MARS IN A SHELL-JACKET. 
 
 A young recruit is an egg ; he may become a house- 
 
64 JEEROLD'S WIT. 
 
 hold thing — on the contrary, he may stalk along the 
 plain, a mighty victor ! Never do we see a raw recruit 
 that we do not think of an unboiled egg. 
 
 ENGLISH PRISONS DEFENDED. 
 
 An English prisoner in France loquitur : — 
 The prison here is tolerably strong, but not to be 
 spoken of after Newgate. As for their locks, they 
 haven't one fit for a tea-caddy. The rats at nights come 
 in regiments. We're allowed no candle ; but we can feel 
 as they run over our faces that they must be contemptible 
 in the eyes of Englishmen. 
 
 TRUE VrORTH. 
 
 True worth, like the rose, will blush at its own sweet- 
 ness. 
 
 READING FOR LADIES. 
 
 When I was young, girls used to read " Pilgrim's 
 Progress," Jeremy Taylor, and such books of innocence. 
 Now, young ladies, know the ways of Newgate as well as 
 the turnkeys. Then, books gave girls hearty, healthy 
 food ; now, silly things ! like larks in cages, they live 
 upon hemp-seed. 
 
 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Oh, friendship ! thou divinest alchemist, that man 
 should ever profane thee ! 
 
 MATERNAL INSTINCT. 
 
 One of the most touching instances of the maternal 
 instinct, as it has been called, in children, once came 
 under my notice. A wretched woman with an infjint in 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 65 
 
 her arms — mother and child in very tatters — solicited the 
 alms of a nursery -maid passing with a child clothed in 
 the most luxurious manner, hugging a wax doll. The 
 mother followed the girl, begging for relief, " to get bread 
 for her child," whilst the child itself, gazing at the treas- 
 ure in the arms of the baby of prosperity, cried, " Mam- 
 my, when will you buy me a doll ? " 
 
 A FRENCH COOK EXTINGUISHED. 
 
 I pity you French. Talk of consomme de grenouilles ; 
 did you ever taste our habeas corpus ? No ! Ha ! 
 
 GUY FAVTKES. 
 
 Who was Guy Fawkes ? Did he have a father and 
 mother ? Was he ever a little boy, and did he fly a kite 
 and play at marbles ? If so, how could he have ever 
 thought it worth his while to trouble himself with other 
 matters ? Guy Fawkes, a boy ! a baby ! now shaking a 
 rattle — now murmuring as he fed, his mother smiling 
 down upon him ! No, no, it was impossible ! Guy 
 Fawkes was never born — he was from the first a man — 
 he never could have been a baby. He is in our baby- 
 thoughts a mysterious vision — one of the shadows of evil 
 advancing on the path of childhood. We grow older, 
 and the substances of evil come close upon is — we see 
 their dark-lanterns and snuff the brimstone. 
 
 A NECESSARY CONSEQUENCE. 
 
 A pretentious young gentleman, elaborately dressed for 
 an evening party, and whose hair was of that inflamma- 
 tory hue which is now generally regarded as undesirable, 
 once thrust his head into the smoking-room of the Mu- 
 seum Club, and exclaimed, " Egad, I can't stay in this 
 
QQ JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 cloud." " I don't see," replied Jerrold, " how it can hurt 
 you. "Where there's fire, there 7jntst be smoke ! " The 
 inflammatory head was immediately withdrawn. 
 
 A BACCHANAL USURER. 
 
 He lends half in gold and half in poison : so many 
 pounds sterling ; and so much bad vinegar, that having 
 been kept near port, must, as he conceives, have a vinous 
 flavour. 
 
 A child's faith. 
 The child passively accepts a story of the future ; he 
 can bring his mind up to a thing promised, but wants 
 faith in the past. 
 
 BEAUTY UNADORNED. 
 
 Take a sailor's advice. Don't colour at all ; where 
 nature has done so well, there's little need of paint or 
 patches. 
 
 SINDBAD AND THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN. 
 
 That is a fine allegory, though not understood. The 
 truth is, the Old Man drew a bill, and Sindbad — guile- 
 less tar ! — accepted it. 
 
 THE ENGLISH ABROAD. 
 
 The inn at which the cockney puts up — it is his boast 
 — is kept by an Englishman ; .the dinners are Enghsh ; 
 the waiter is English ; the chambermaid is English ; the 
 boots is English ; and the barber who comes to shave 
 him, if he be not English, has at least this recommenda- 
 tion — he has in his time lived five years in Saint Mary 
 Axe, and is almost English. 
 
/ERROLD'S WIT. 67 
 
 ELEGANT PORTRAIT-PAINTING. 
 
 They painted me with a military cloak slipping off my 
 shoulders, my hand, with ten rings upon it, supporting 
 my head, my forehead an enormous piece of white paint, 
 and my eyes fixed upon a star, poetically placed in the 
 corner of the picture within an inch of the frame. I was 
 seated on a rock, with a very handsome ink-stand beside 
 me, and my right hand grasping, as if in a spasm of in- 
 spiration, an eagle's feather ! Altogether I made a very 
 pretty show. 
 
 A WALKING ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 A certain philosopher of this time, who has played — 
 and wisely — with many sciences, and has been jocund 
 among the wits of the day, was discovered one day by 
 Jerrold busy with crucibles, retorts, acids, and alkalies, 
 making a mysterious experiment. The prudent philoso- 
 pher had encased himself from head to foot in a suit of 
 black oil-cloth. " Why," said Jerrold, " you look like q, 
 walking advertisement of Warren's blacking ! " 
 
 A maiden's voice. 
 Her voice — 'twould coax a nail out of heart of oak. 
 
 A FREE MAN. 
 
 Be sure of it, he who dines out of debt, though his 
 meal be biscuit and an onion, dines in " The Apollo." 
 
 A WORD FOR thieves. 
 
 When the full-grown thief is hanged, do we not some- 
 times forget that he was the child of misery and vice — 
 born for the gallows — nursed for the halter? Did we 
 
68 JERROLD'S WIT, 
 
 legislate a little more for the cradle, might we not be 
 spared some pains for the hulks ? 
 
 DOG IN THE MANGER. 
 
 Because he hadn't the heart to fall in love himself, he 
 must spoil the little love of every body else ; just like 
 the boy who blabbed about the stolen apples, only be- 
 cause he hadn't the courage to go into the orchard. 
 
 AUTHORS AND SCHOLARS. 
 
 Can it be true that, since the days of Johnson and 
 Savage, they have descended a story and live in third 
 floors ? Are they now, I will not say endured, but 
 received into what is called good society ? Does the 
 moralist no longer dine behind a bookseller's screen, that 
 he may hide his dilapidated shoes ? Is the author, in 
 these days of light, no longer considered an equivocal 
 something between a pickpocket and a magician ? Is 
 the poet only a "little lower" in the household of the 
 great than the under-butler ? In a word, is it possible, 
 in the present state of the world, that a man can write 
 an epic, a play, a novel, a lyric, and at the same time be 
 considered a gentleman ? It is so ! History, biography, 
 satire cease to be cups and balls ; poetry is no longer 
 hocus pocus ! 
 
 THE MONEY-LENDER. 
 
 He moves stealthily as an ague : as though haunted 
 by the memory of a thousand acts that have written him 
 down in the private memoranda of Lucifer. Had he 
 lived in Spain, he would have made an excellent familiar 
 of the Inquisition ; he would with demoniacal compla- 
 cency have applied the thumbscrew, the burning pincers, 
 
JEEROLD'S WIT. 69 
 
 and the molten lead. Born in England, bred an attor- 
 ney, and adding to his professional cares the anxieties of 
 money-lender, he is yet enabled to satisfy his natural and 
 acquired lust of evil, and he therefore gets up costs. He 
 has never stood at the bar of a police office, and yet his 
 hands are dyed with the blood of broken hearts. 
 
 REWARDS OF AUTHORS. 
 
 However great the rewards and honours heaped upon 
 the English author, they are as nothing to the wealth and 
 distinction promised him by the philosophic legislator. 
 The calamity now to be feared is, that in a few years 
 authors will become too powerful and too rich — will be 
 absolutely placed upon a level with tradesmen and mer- 
 chants, and, like them, have the delightful privilege of 
 disposing of their possessions at their death. As for the 
 honours in store for literature, it may be safely predicted 
 that in no less than half a century or so, attaches, or even 
 small consuls, may be selected from English writers. 
 Already two distinguished men have been promised the 
 next vacancies as messengers. 
 
 PICTURES OF FEMALE LOVELINESS. 
 
 There cannot be a more gratifying evidence of the 
 present passion for art in this country, of the ingenuity 
 of its professors, and the liberality of its patrons, than 
 the continued supply of female loveliness. No slave- 
 market could ever boast such a stock of " beauties," such 
 a string of attractive creatures, dressed or half-dressed at 
 the sweet will and sweeter taste of the painter. And 
 then they attach a simple man with such invincible 
 names, and under such touching types, it is impossible to 
 be safe from them. 
 
70 JEKE OLD'S WIT. 
 
 QUEER PARTNERS. 
 
 Jerrold, at a party, noticed a doctor, in solemn black, 
 waltzing with a young lady, who was dressed in a silk of 
 brilliant blue. Jerrold. — " As I live ! there's a blue pill 
 dancing with a black draught ! " 
 
 THE SHIRT OF NESSUS. 
 
 The shirt of Nessus was a shirt not paid for. 
 
 A MAN OF BURDEN. 
 
 An author may be likened to an elephant, seeing that 
 he frequently has to carry a house upon his back filled 
 with a numerous family. 
 
 THE FASHIONABLE TRADESMAN. 
 
 He is not to be taken by shabby appearance. He is a 
 fish that bites only at the finest flies. It is, therefore, 
 highly essential that the would-be debtor should appear 
 before him bearing all the external advantages of Mam- 
 
 AN USHER S DUTIES AND REWARD. 
 
 Twenty boys are handed over to his keeping. Hence 
 he is expected to see them all safe in bed ; to have an 
 eye upon them whilst dressing and washing ; to take his 
 meals with them ; to never leave the school-room ; and 
 above all, when the young gentlemen recreate themselves 
 in the play-ground, or take a walk, or go to church, he 
 is to accompany them, giving his most vigilant attention, 
 his every thought, to their doings, and, indeed, at all 
 times and in every respect studying the interest of his 
 employer as if it were doubly his own. For he must 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 71 
 
 remember that the salary is twenty pounds per annum ! 
 There are positively many footmen who do not get so 
 much. 
 
 "lions" of a season. 
 This, our glorious metropolis, is a vast cemetery for 
 *' lions." They are whelped every season ; and, frail 
 and evanescent as buttercups, they every season die. 
 
 DUELLING. 
 
 If men must fight, let them fight by deputy. Let us 
 leave what is called " gentlemanly satisfaction " to be 
 worked out for us by the lower animals. Your very 
 high folks might settle their disputes with a couple of 
 lions ; whilst the vulgar might have their quarrels satis- 
 factorily worked out by cocks and terriers. Indeed, 
 how many a feud, that was tragically ended with a bullet, 
 might have been settled by a maggot-race ! 
 
 A. GENTLE CRITIC. 
 
 He would finish a new tragedy, comedy, and farce in 
 less time than a Cyclops would head and point a pin. 
 When, howev,er, he intends to be very severe, he never 
 mercilessly uses a club, but endeavours quickly to punch 
 a mortal hole in his subject with a blunt epigram. 
 
 WORLDLY HONOUR. 
 
 There never was so miserable a mountebank as what 
 is called Worldly Honour. It is this quack-salver that 
 talks of washing wrongs out with blood, in the same 
 way that a jack-pudding at a fair needs powder of pool 
 to take out every household blot and stain. Both these 
 
72 JERROLD'S WIT. ■ 
 
 creatures are impostors — with this difference, that one is 
 a zany with a death's-head. 
 
 THE REAL AND THE COUNTERFEIT. 
 
 Such is the ardour of men in this incomparable Lon- 
 don to acknowledge and reward merit, that even an 
 imitation of talent shall often carry away the price of 
 the true thing : hence it now and then happens to genius 
 as to spoons, the plated article takes the place of the 
 real metal. 
 
 ADVICE TO MARRIED LADIES. 
 
 Cultivate your nerves. You can't pet them too much. 
 Something will always be happening in the house, and 
 unless your husband be worse than a stone, every new 
 fright will be as good as a new gown or a new trinket to 
 you. There are some domestic wounds only to be healed 
 by the jeweller. 
 
 THE LEGITIMATE DRAMA DEFINED BY A MANAGER. 
 
 I have ransacked the whole globe for attraction ; I 
 may say it, I have gone, as it were, into Noah's ark for 
 actors. I have executed what meaner men would die 
 blushing to think of — and the result of my experience, 
 after much thinking, is this, that that drama is to all 
 intents and purposes the most legitimate — that brings 
 the most money. 
 
 LOVE OF THE SEA. 
 
 Love the sea ? I dote upon it — from the beach. 
 
 THE BIGOTRY OF VIRTUE. 
 
 Virtue makes victims by her very bigotry. 
 
JEREOLD'S WIT. 73 
 
 THE REASON WHY. 
 
 One evening at the Museum Club a member very 
 ostentatiously said, in a loud voice, " Isn't it strange, we 
 had no fish at the Marquis's last night ? That has hap- 
 pened twice lately. I can't account for it." 
 
 " Nor I," replied Jerrold, " unless they ate it all up- 
 stairs." 
 
 SHARP TO THE SHARP. 
 
 As a man is known by his associates, so we think may 
 the character of the creditor be known by his attorney : 
 the sharp employ the sharp. 
 
 OBSCURITY. 
 
 You cannot but observe how thousands are doomed to 
 a plodding obscurity ; how thousands pass from birth to 
 death with no one action of their lives to signalize them- 
 selves among their fellows : how, like corn, they grow, 
 ripen, and are cut down, leaving behind them no mark 
 of their past existence. 
 
 RED TAPE AND ITS VICTIMS. 
 
 The bowstring is unknown in free and happy Eng- 
 land ; but be sure of it, innocent reader, red tape has 
 its daily victims. 
 
 ADVICE TO A YOUNG AUTHOR. 
 
 Nothing so beneficial to a young author as the advice 
 of a man whose judgment stands constitutionally at the 
 freezing-point. 
 
 HAPPY ENGLAND. 
 
 A tax in England ? We haven't the word in our Ian- 
 
74 JEREOLD'S WIT. 
 
 guage. There are two or three duties, to be sure ; but 
 then, with us, duties are pleasures. As for taxes, you'd 
 make an Englishman stare only to mention such things. 
 
 DIGNITY INSULTED ON THE STAGE. 
 
 There is a drama which contains, I think, a piece of 
 mischief that has escaped the unsuspecting licenser : a 
 mayor is put in bodily fear by a conjurer, who declares 
 that he can, " by his so potent art," transform a high 
 civic authority into an ape ! Mayors ought to look to 
 this. 
 
 PAYING BY THE CLOCK. 
 
 " You have charged me for a full-priced breakfast," 
 said a complaining guest, looking at his bill ; " and all I 
 had was a cup of milk and a chip of toast ! " 
 
 " You might have had coffee and eggs for the same 
 money," replied the waiter. 
 
 "Ah ! " cried the guest, " then it seems you charge 
 according to the clock : and if a man was to have only 
 eggs at dinner-time, I suppose he'd have to pay for full- 
 grown turkeys." 
 
 THE LAUREL. 
 
 An accursed plant of fire and blood. Count up all the 
 crowns of Caesar, and for the honest healthful service of 
 man, are they worth one summer cabbage ? 
 
 THE miser's money-bag. 
 
 A monster — all throat! Could its owner have put 
 the sun itself within this bag, the world for him had 
 been in darkness — perpetual night had cast a pall upon 
 creation — the fruits of earth had withered in the bud, 
 and want and misery been universal ; whilst he, the 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 75 
 
 thrifty villain ! snugly lived in bloom, and in his very 
 baseness found felicity ! 
 
 GLOVE-STEALING FROM LIONS. 
 
 Let a " lion " of a party only unglove himself, and the 
 women — we have seen them do it — steal the kids. The 
 pretty enthusiasts will have a relic of the wonderful 
 creature, and thus commit a theft, which even the suf- 
 ferer must, as we have observed, allow to be very com- 
 plimentary. How courageous are women when they 
 really admire ! To seize a piece of kid from the very 
 paws of a " lion ! " 
 
 THE WINGS OF TIME. 
 
 The wings of Time are no other than two large bill- 
 stamps, duly drawn and accepted. With these he brings 
 his three, six, or nine months into as many weeks. He 
 is continually wasting the sand from his glass, drying the 
 wet ink of promissory notes. 
 
 WORK AND PAY. 
 
 In this world it isn't him as breaks the horse as is 
 always doomed to win the plate. 
 
 THE world's opinion. 
 
 Who and what is this grim despot ? Who is this ex- 
 ecrable tyrant — this mixture of the mountebank and 
 man-eater ? We are pieces of him — little pieces, par- 
 ticles, if you will — of this same quack-salver and canni- 
 bal, christened and known as the World's Opinion. 
 
 Caliban's looking-glass. 
 A remarkably ugly and disagreeable man sat opposite 
 
76 JEKROLD'S WIT. 
 
 Jerrold at a dinner-partj. Before the cloth was removed, 
 Jerrold accidentally broke a glass. Whereupon the 
 ugly gentleman, thinking to twit his opposite neighbour 
 with great effect, said slily, " What already, Jerrold ! 
 Now, I never break a glass." — "I wonder at that," was 
 Jerrold's instant reply, "you ought whenever you look 
 in one." 
 
 THE FACILITIES OF CREDIT. 
 
 How many young gentlemen, with nothing but their 
 wits — poor destitute fellows ! — have been forced into 
 debt by the cordial manner, the gracious words of the 
 man determined to be a creditor ! 
 
 THE MIND OF CHILDHOOD. 
 
 Is not the mind of childhood the tenderest, hohest 
 thing this side heaven ? Is it not to be approached with 
 gentleness, with love, — yes, with a heart-worship of the 
 great God from whom, in almost angel-innocence, it has 
 proceeded ? A creature undefiled by the taint of the 
 world — unvexed by its injustice — unwearied by its hol- 
 low pleasures. A being fresh from the source of light, 
 with something of its universal lustre in it ? If child- 
 hood be this, how holy the duty to see that, in its on- 
 ward growth, it shall be no other! To stand as a 
 watcher at the temple, lest any unclean thing should 
 enter it. 
 
 A STAGE DEVIL. 
 
 In the full glow of my admiration of his diabolic beau- 
 ties, I have often scarcely suppressed a sigh to think how 
 great an ambassador has been sacrificed in a play-house 
 fiend. Indeed, nothing could be more truly diplomatic 
 than his supernatural shifts. Had he acted in France in 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 77 
 
 the d'dys of Napoleon, he had been kidnapped from the 
 stage, and, nolens volens, made a plenipotentiary. 
 
 THE CHURCH. 
 
 The Church, rightly ministered, is the vestibule to an 
 immortal life. 
 
 THE DUTIES OF A GOVERNESS. 
 
 She has within her trust the greatest treasures that 
 human life, with all its pride, can know : the hearts, and, 
 indeed, the future souls of children. As her mission is a 
 noble one, respect and courtesy are hers by right. To 
 look upon her as a better-dressed drudge is, in very truth, 
 not poorest insolence alone, but darkest error. 
 
 LITERARY MEN. 
 
 With certain excellent and patriotic persons, literature, 
 like a gipsy, to be picturesque, should be a little ragged. 
 
 AN UNACKNOAVLEDGED UTILITY. 
 
 There appears to be a tacit compact in society to affect 
 an ignorance of the very existence of the pawnbroker. 
 His merits are never canvassed — no man has, or ever 
 had, a personal knowledge of him. Men are prone to 
 vaunt the rectitude, the talents of their tradesmen — " My 
 wine-merchant," " My bootmaker," even " 3fi/ attorney ; " 
 but who ever yet startled the delicacy of a company with 
 " 31y pawnbroker ? " 
 
 THE PAWNBROKER. 
 
 He is a sort of King Midas in a squalid neighbourhood ; 
 he is a potentate sought by the poor, who bear with 
 his jests, his insolence, his brutality; wdio in tatters bow 
 
78 JEREOLD'S WIT. 
 
 down to him ; and with want in all their limbs, with empty 
 bellies and despairing hearts, make court to him, that he 
 will be pleased to let them eat. Terrible things have 
 been written on dungeon walls ; terrible sickening evi- 
 dences of human misery and human vice ; but if on the 
 partitions of these boxes could be written the emotions 
 of those who have waited near them, the writing would 
 be no less fearful than that traced in the Bastile — graven 
 in the Piombi. 
 
 THE CAUSE OF FREEDOM. 
 
 When men join for freedom, the cause itself does con- 
 secrate the act. To fall from it, or half-way halt in it, is 
 treason to the dignity of human nature — is perjury to the 
 first truth of man. 
 
 A DISHONEST SERVANT. 
 
 A lady once took a servant with the finest character 
 for honesty, and only a week afterwards detected her 
 giving three cold potatoes to a little hurdy-gurdy for- 
 eigner with white mice ! 
 
 THE CREED OP HONESTY. 
 
 It is the creed of honesty always to hope goodness. 
 
 THE printer's DEVIL. 
 
 His looks are the looks of merriment: yet the pockets 
 of his corduroy trousers may be charged with thunder- 
 bolts. He would not hurt a mouse, and in his jacket 
 slumbers lightning to destroy a ministry. Perhaps for 
 the whole Mint he could not compass a sum in addition ; 
 and yet it rests with his integrity whether to-morrow 
 morning the nation shall be saved from bankruptcy ; for, 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 79 
 
 deposited in his cap is an elaborate essay addressed to the 
 ingenious traders in the money-market ; an essay that 
 shall transform beggared England into El Dorado. 
 
 NOVEL FATHERS. 
 
 Fathers in novels are generally dragons in white wigs. 
 
 A lady's idea of a servant. 
 She conceived that a servant ought to be a sort of nun, 
 and from the moment she enters your house should take 
 leave of all the world beside. Has she not her kitchen 
 for willing hands always to do something ? And then for 
 company, doesn't she see the butcher, the baker, the dust- 
 man — to say nothing of the sweeps ? 
 
 AN EMPTY HEAD. 
 
 Of a light, frivolous, flighty girl, whom Jerrold met 
 frequently, he said, *' That girl has no more head than a 
 periwinkle." 
 
 POOR AND CONTENT. 
 
 My son, if poor, see wine in the running spring ; let 
 thy mouth water at a last week's roll ; think a threadbare 
 coat the " only wear ; " and acknowledge a whitewashed 
 garret fittest housing-place for a gentleman. Do this and 
 flee debt. So shall thy heart be at peace, and the sheriff 
 be confounded. 
 
 CATARRH. 
 
 "That cat has got a cold," said a friend to Jerrold, 
 pointing to a domestic favourite. " Yes," Jerrold replied, 
 " the poor thing is subject to cat-arrh." 
 
 POVERTY RENDERED PALATABLE. 
 
 Poverty is a bitter draught, yet may, and sometimes 
 
30 JEEEOLD'S WIT. 
 
 m} 
 
 with advantage, be gulped down. Though the drinker 
 make wry faces, there may, after all, be a wholesome 
 goodness in the cup. 
 
 A SANITARY AIR. 
 
 The air of France ! nothing to the air of England. 
 That goes ten times as far — it must, for it's ten times as 
 thick. 
 
 A KITCHEN-MAID ON DRESS. 
 
 I don't insist on ringlets in the house, but when I go 
 out, I'm my own mistress. I've given up two places for 
 my bird-of-paradise feather — it looks quite alive in my 
 white chip ! — and would give up twenty. After slaving 
 among pots and pans for a month, it is so sweet to be 
 sometimes taken for a lady on one's Sunday out. 
 
 HEARTLESS MISTRESSES. 
 
 They think poor servants have no more flesh and blood 
 than a porridge-skillet. They can have their comfortable 
 courtings in their parlours and drawing-rooms, and then, 
 with their very toes at the fire, they can abuse a poor 
 servant for only whispering a bit of love, all among the 
 snow, perhaps in the area. 
 
 ORDERS. 
 
 We are bigoted to orders. Men, like watches, must 
 work the better upon jewels. Man is, at the best, a 
 puppet, and is only put into dignified motion when pulled 
 by Blue or Red Ribands. 
 
 ABUSE OF THE WORLD. 
 
 When I hear a man cry out, " It's a bad world," I 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. gl 
 
 must of course lump him with the aggregate iniquity ; for 
 how can he have the enormous vanity to select himself as 
 the one pure Adam from naughty millions ? No, be it 
 my faith to think the best of the world. 
 
 HONOUR AND DESERT. 
 
 Desert may pant and moan without honour ; but in the 
 court of kings, where justice weighs with nicest balance, 
 honour never with its smiles mocks imbecility, or gilds 
 with outward lustre a concealed rottenness. Honour 
 never gives alms, but awards justice. 
 
 LIES. 
 
 Lies are a sort of wooden pegs that keep the world 
 together as if it were a box ; nice little things, so let into 
 the work as never to be seen. Take out the pegs, and 
 how would the box tumble to pieces ! 
 
 THE lawyer's gown. 
 
 The masquerading dress of common sense. There is 
 a living instinct in its web : let golden villainy come 
 under it, and with a thought it flows and spreads, and 
 gives an ample shelter to the thing it covers ; let poor 
 knavery seek it, and it shrinks and curtains up, and 
 leases the trembling victim naked to the court. 
 
 A FAVOURITE AIR. 
 
 At a social club to which Jerrold belonged, the subject 
 turned one evening upon music. The discussion was 
 animated, and a certain song was cited as an exquisite 
 composition. "That song," exclaimed an enthusiastic 
 member, " always carries me away when I hear it." 
 
82 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 Jerrold (looking eagerly round the table). — " Can any- 
 body whistle it ? " 
 
 THE ILLS OF DEBT. 
 
 Of what a hideous progeny of ill is debt the father ! 
 What lies, what meanness, what invasions on self-respect, 
 what cares, what double dealing ! How in due season it 
 will carve the frank, open face into wrinkles ; how like a 
 knife, it will stab the honest heart ! 
 
 DRESS. 
 
 The present age judges of the condition of men as we 
 judge of the condition of cats — by the sleekness, the gloSs 
 of their coats. Hence, in even what is called a respecta- 
 ble walk of life, with men of shallow pockets and deep 
 principles, it is of the first importance to their success, 
 that if they would obtain three hundred per annum, 
 they must at least look as if they were in the receipt of 
 
 THE devil's portrait PAINTING. 
 
 He was tolerably good looking ; and now is his coun- 
 tenance but as a tavern sign, where numerous little imps, 
 liberated by drawn corks, continue to give a daily touch 
 and touch of red — proud of their work, as portrait paint- 
 ers to the devil himself. 
 
 A shopkeeper's idea of truth. 
 Truth is very well in a story, or in a sampler, or in 
 any matter of that sort ; but the downright, naked, plain 
 truth behind a counter — pooh ! I should like to know 
 how, by such means, we are to pay rent and taxes. 
 
JERKOLD'S WIT. 83 
 
 THE SWORD. 
 Ceremony sanctifies it. Some kingly words are spoken 
 —a trumpet is blown; and straightway the sword be- 
 comes ennobled! 
 
 THE DEGENERACY OF THE TIMES. 
 
 There is now nothing picturesque in life. We have 
 caught the wild Indian, deprived him of his beads, his 
 feathers, and his cloak of skins ; we have put him into a 
 Quaker's suit without buttons— and behold, the once 
 mighty chief is Mien into Mr. Respectable man ! We 
 have now no character at all : it may seem a paradox— 
 but our respectabihty has destroyed it. 
 
 BETTER THAN NONE. 
 
 A friend— let us say Barlow— was describing to Jer- 
 rold the story of his courtship and marriage. How his 
 wife had been brought up in a convent, and was on the 
 point of taking the veil, when his presence burst upon 
 her enraptured sight. Jerrold listened to the end of the 
 story, and by way of comment said, "Ah ! she evidently 
 thought Barlow better than nun." 
 
 JUSTICE A LUXURY. 
 
 To make justice cheap would doubtless make her con- 
 temptible; she is therefore dignified by expense— made 
 glorious by the greatness of costs. 
 
 THE INDUSTRIOUS CITIZEN. 
 
 In his business hours the cockney is worthy of the 
 attention of any reflecting cart-horse. He is the genius 
 of labour; the willing serf to those worse than Egyptian 
 task-masters, £. s. d. 
 
84 JEREOLD'S WIT. 
 
 MELLOW HEARTS. 
 
 There are hearts all the better for keeping; they be- 
 come mellower, and more worth a woman's acceptance 
 than the crude unripe things too frequently gathered— 
 as children gather green fruit— to the discomfort of those 
 who obtain them. 
 
 A MONET-GRUBBER. 
 
 His very soul seems absorbed in the consideration of 
 the coin of the realm ; his mind hath no greater range 
 than that of his shop ; and his every thought, like every 
 omnibus, runs to the Bank. 
 
 REPUTATION. 
 
 Reputation is to notoriety what real turtle is to mock. 
 
 THE BED OF GLORY. 
 
 What is it ? A battle-field, with thousands blasphem- 
 ing m agony about you ! Your last moments sweetened, 
 It may be, with the thought that somewhere on the field 
 lies a bleeding piece of your handiwork— a poor wretch 
 m the death-grasp of torture. Truly, that is a bed of 
 greater glory which is surrounded by loving hearts— by 
 hands uplifted in deep, yet cheerful prayer? There are 
 thoughts too-it is my belief-better, sweeter far than 
 thoughts of recent slaying, to help the strugglino- soul 
 from out its tenement. * 
 
 THE WAR-FIEND. 
 
 He is too often busy among us— one of the vilest and 
 most mischievous demons of all the brood of wickedness. 
 To be sure he visits men not in his own name, oh. no! 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 85 
 
 he comes to them in the finest clothes and under the 
 prettiest alias. He is clothed in gay colours — has yards 
 of gold trimming about him — a fine feather in his cap — 
 silken flags fluttering over him — music at his heels — and 
 his lying, swindling name is — Glory. 
 
 ITALIAN BOYS. 
 
 I never see an Italian image-merchant with his Graces 
 and Venuses and Apollos at sixpence a head, that I do 
 not spiritually touch my hat to him. It is he who has 
 carried refinement into the poor man's house ; it is he 
 who has accustomed the eyes of the multitude to the har- 
 monious forms of beauty. 
 
 THE BOTTLE. 
 
 The bottle is the devil's crucible, and melts all. 
 
 A tailor's lament. 
 Every day of his life a duke passes my door to parlia- 
 ment, in a pepper-and-salt, linsey-woolsey, duffle, flannel 
 sort of thing, that his tailor, try as hard as he may, can't 
 charge him more than two pounds for. And in tliis con- 
 dition his grace goes to make laws in parliament ! After 
 this I should like to know how it's to be hoped that com- 
 mon folks are to respect the House of Lords ? It's fly- 
 ing in the face of nature to expect it. 
 
 THAT BEAUTIFUL DOG. 
 
 A lady passing a dog that was following at Jerrold's 
 heels, exclaimed, " What a beautiful dog ! " 
 
 "Ay, madam," said Jerrold, turning sharply round, 
 " he looks very beautiful now ; but he ate two babies yes- 
 terday." 
 
86 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 CIVILIZED CANNIBALS. 
 
 How universal, how guileless is the man who never 
 dreams that there are cannibals in London ! Why, 
 society is beset by anthropophagi. One cannot walk the 
 streets without rubbing coats with man-eaters — cannibals 
 duly entered — consumers of human flesh and blood ac- 
 cording to the statutes. 
 
 STATE SALARIES. 
 
 You would think senators were of the same conse- 
 quence as singers, for they positively demand nearly as 
 high salaries ! 
 
 A BINDING PROMISE. 
 
 He kissed her, and promised. Such beautiful lips ! 
 Man's usual fate — he was lost upon the coral reefs. 
 
 THE REGION OF LAW. 
 
 It is not a region of fairies, to be seai'ched for golden 
 fruits and amaranthine flowers ; nor is it a deep, gloomy 
 mine, to be dug and dug with the safety lamp of patience 
 lighting us through many a winding passage — a lamp 
 which, do what we will, so frequently goes out, leaving 
 us in darkness. 
 
 NATIONAL PREJUDICES. 
 
 A man who hated national prejudices invited an uncle 
 to a French restaurant, to " dine 'em out " of him. After 
 dinner he said to him, " What do you think of the 
 French, 7ioiv, uncle ; " — " Not so bad," he replied, with a 
 look of contrition, " not so bad, if they wouldn't eat 
 frogs." " You recollect the third dish — delicious, wasn't 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 37 
 
 it? " The old fellow smacked his lips, with recollections 
 of delight. " In that dish there were two-and-thirty 
 frogs." The uncle insisted upon falling ill immediately ; 
 was carried home, went to bed, scratched his nephew out 
 of his will, and died. Would it be believed — a nurse 
 was found to swear that in his last moments she heard 
 'em croak ! See what comes of national prejudice. 
 
 THE FORCE OF GENIUS. 
 
 Here in this glorious city, in this magnificent abiding- 
 place of mighty men, genius cannot be hidden. Though 
 in its sensitive modesty it take refuge in a garret, a thou- 
 sand benevolent spirits compel it to appear in the light 
 of common day, and rejoice in its deservings. 
 
 ROUGE. 
 
 Rouge is a darling little fib that sometimes lies like 
 truth. 
 
 NEW ZEALANDERS. 
 
 Very economical people ; we only kill our enemies — 
 they eat 'em. We hate our foes to the last ; whilst 
 there's no learning in the end how Zealanders are brought 
 to relish 'em. 
 
 AN ACADEMICAL " VENUS." 
 
 ■ A lady, who had ordered a Venus to be painted for 
 her, on hearing that the goddess was the wife of Vulcan, 
 insisted upon her having a wedding-ring. The poor artist 
 was in agony lest the goddess should be refused admit- 
 tance at the Academy, in consequence of what he pro- 
 fanely called a ridiculous supei-fluity — a wedding-ring, as 
 he avowed, taking the subject entirely out of keeping. 
 
88 JEER OLD'S WIT. 
 
 AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS. 
 
 Publishers look upon authors simply as a butcher looks 
 upon Southdown mutton, with merely an eye to the num- 
 ber of pounds to be got out of them. 
 
 A DIFFICULT QUESTION. 
 
 Jerrold met a fop one day, who languidly offered him 
 two fingers. Jerrold, not to be outdone, thrust forward 
 a single finger, saying — " Well, who shall it be ? " 
 
 DEBTORS BY NATURE. 
 
 There are some to whom debt seems their natural 
 element ; they appear to swim only in hot water. To 
 owe and to live are to them terms synonymous ; the 
 ledger is their lihro d^oro ; the call of the sheriff no more 
 than the call of a friend. 
 
 A WONDERFUL THEATRE. 
 
 You have seen a whole service of plate shaken from a 
 single cherry-stone. In like manner you have at the 
 
 theatre all the tenants of Noah's ark, the j^yramids, 
 
 the entire of the Alps, two or three earthquakes, and 
 every drop of the Bay of Biscay — each or all, as it may 
 please the astounding manager — placed at one time before 
 you. 
 
 THE BEST BEDFELLOW. 
 
 The sweetest bedfellow is — conscience, conscience. 
 Ha ! it's a charming thing to feel her at our heart — to 
 hear her evening song and morning song ! 
 
 MARRIAGE FALLACIES. 
 
 What is enough for one, it has been said, is enough for 
 
JERROLD'S WIT 89 
 
 two. But this is the ignorance of Cupicl, Avho never could 
 learn figures. Now, Hymen is a better arithmetician, 
 taught as he is hy butcher and baker. Love in a cottage 
 is pretty enough for boys and girls ; but men and women 
 like a larger mansion, with coach-house and stabling. 
 
 RESPECTABILITY. 
 
 Turn where we will we see the evil of what is called 
 " respectability ; " we hate the very word, as Falstaff 
 hated lime. It has carried its w^hitewash into every 
 corner of the land — it has made weak and insipid the 
 wine of life. 
 
 woman's tears. 
 
 What women would do if they could not cry, nobody 
 knows. They are treated badly enough as it is, but if 
 they could not cry when they liked, how they would be 
 put upon — what poor, defenceless creatures they would 
 be! 
 
 Nature has been very kind to them. Next to the 
 rhinoceros, there is nothing in the world armed like a 
 woman. And she knows it. 
 
 THE COMFORT OF UGLINESS. 
 
 We cannot say — and in truth it is a ticklish question to 
 ask of those who are best qualified to give an answer — 
 if there really be not a comfort in substantial ugliness ; 
 in ugliness that, unchanged, will last a man his life ; a 
 good granite face in which there shall be no wear and 
 tear. A man so appointed is saved many alarms, many 
 spasms of pride. Time cannot wound his vanity through 
 his features ; he eats, drinks, and is merry, in despite of 
 mirrors. No acquaintance starts at sudden alteration — 
 hinting, in such surprise, decay and the final tomb. He 
 
90 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 grows older with no former intimates — churchyard voices 
 — crying, " How you're altered ! " How many a man 
 might have been a truer husband, a better fiither, firmer 
 friend, more valuable citizen, had he, when arrived at 
 legal maturity, cut off — say, an inch of his nose ! 
 
 "the eyes of the vtorld." 
 
 Lady Montpelier is trembling on the brink of 
 forty. Every day that agreeable truth-teller, her look- 
 ing-glass, speaks of fading lilies and roses. How can 
 her ladyship meet the Eyes of the World, if not as fair 
 and blushing as when she first came out ? Lady Mont- 
 pelier makes to herself a new face from the cosmetics 
 of the perfumer: she "paints inch thick," but purely 
 out of respect for — the Eyes of the World ! 
 
 Pretty Lydia Melrose ! She had a nice little 
 figure ; straight as a hazel-twig : but — for the Eyes of 
 the World — Lydia did not think herself slender enough. 
 Hence she was laced and laced, and built about with 
 steel sufiicient to forge into a cuirass. She, moreover, 
 eschewed the grossness of meat diet, and lived upon 
 lemons, oranges, almonds, and raisins, and such acid hght 
 fare, and all this, that she might appear an inch less in 
 the waist in — the Eyes of the World ! 
 
 Jack Splashly was left five thousand pounds. In 
 an evil hour he became acquainted with young Lord 
 FusBALL, who had not as many farthings. Jack played 
 and played, and dressed and dressed, his money running 
 wastefully from his purse like sand from a broken sand- 
 glass. " My dear Jack," said an old acquaintance, " I'm 
 sure you can't afford to ride a horse like that — no, nor to 
 wear diamond studs ; nor to " 
 
 "My dear fellow," answered Jack, "1 quite agree 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 91 
 
 with what you say ; but what am I to do ? Were I to 
 do otherwise, how the devil should I appear in — the Eyes 
 of the World ? " 
 
 We have only taken three instances ; we might deal in 
 three thousand, illustrative of the foolish sacrifices daily 
 made to the Eyes of the World ; which, after all, watch- 
 ful and intelhgent as we deem them, are, nine times out 
 of ten, as insensible of the offerings we make to them as 
 are the stone and wooden idols of the heathen. The 
 truth is, the Eyes of the World have other employment 
 than to look on us and our doings ; and even when they 
 do condescend to give a single glance at us, the chances 
 are that they either laugh in ridicule, or leer in contempt. 
 Often when we think we have made them stare again 
 with admiration, they only stare in pity and disgust. 
 
 A HARD FATE. 
 
 You will hear a good lowly creature sing the praises 
 of pure water — call it the wine of Adam when he walked 
 in Paradise — when, somehow, fate has bestowed upon 
 the eulogist the finest Burgundy. He declares himself 
 contented with a crust — although a beneficent fiiiry has 
 hung a fat haunch or two in his larder. 
 
 Now is it not delightful to see these humble folk, who 
 tune their tongues to the honour of dry bread and water, 
 compelled, by the gentle force of fortune, to chew venison 
 and swallow claret ? 
 
 A LITTLE TASTE OF THE JAIL. 
 
 If a man taste ever so little, he's poisoned for life. 
 
 A VERY VILLAIN. 
 
 He'd rob a captain of all that makes his commission 
 
92 JEREOLD'S WIT. 
 
 worth a farthing — the profit and glory of other people's 
 work. 
 
 NO ACCOUNTING FOR TASTE. 
 
 It was never meant to be accounted for, I suppose ; 
 else there's a lot of us would have a good deal to answer 
 about. Taste, in some things, I suppose, was given to us 
 to do what we like with ; but now and then we do cer- 
 tainly ill-use the privilege. 
 
 THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION. 
 
 The British constitution is like an eel ; you may flay 
 it, and chop it to bits ; yet for all that, the pieces will 
 twist and wriggle again. It is elastic — peculiarly elastic. 
 That is why it gets mauled about so much. Just as boys 
 don't mind what tricks they play upon cats — because, 
 poor devils, somebody to spite them has said they've got 
 nine lives. 
 
 TO A LADY ON BREAKING HER WATCH. 
 
 It is the privilege of beauty to kill time. 
 
 A QUICK DRESSER. 
 
 The highest and most valuable of all the female vir- 
 tues, a virtue that Eve herself was certainly not born 
 with, is to be a quick dresser. 
 
 LIES. 
 
 Lord bless you ! if you was to take away all the lies 
 that go to make bread in this town, you'd bring a good 
 many peck loaves down to crumbs. 
 
 HOW TO MANAGE WOMEN. 
 
 Never own a woman is right ; do it once, and on the 
 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 93 
 
 very conceit of it, she'll be always wrong for the rest of 
 her life. 
 
 SWEET MAGICIAN, LOVE. 
 
 Mighty benevolence, Cupid, that takes away stains and 
 blots — that gives the line of beauty to zig-zag, upturned 
 noses — that smiles, a god of enchantment, in all eyes 
 however green, blinking, or stone-like — that gives a 
 pouting prettiness even to a hare-lip, bending it like 
 Love's own bow ! Great juggler, Cupid, that from his 
 wings shakes precious dust in mortal eyes, and lo ! they 
 see nor blight, nor deformity, nor stain — or see them 
 turned to ornament ; even, as it is said, the pearl of an 
 oyster is only so much oyster disease. 
 
 Plutus has been called a grand decorator. He can 
 but gild ugliness, passing oflf the thing for its brightness. 
 But Love — Love can give to it the shape, and paint it 
 with tints, of his own mother. Plutus may, after all, 
 be only a maker of human pocket-pieces. He washes 
 deformity with bright metal, and so puts it off upon the 
 near-sighted ; now Love is an alchemist, and will, at least 
 to the eyes and ears of some one, turn the coarsest lump 
 of clay to one piece of human gold. 
 
 THE SLIPPERY PATH OF LIFE. 
 
 How few there are who, starting in youth, animated 
 by great motives, do not at thirty seem to have suffered 
 a " second fall ! " What angel purposes did they woo — 
 and wdiat hag-realities have they married ! What 
 Rachels have they thought to serve for — and what Leahs 
 has the morning dawned upon ! 
 
 A WIFE AT FORTY. 
 
 " My notion of a wife at forty," said Jerrold, " is, that 
 
94 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 a man should be able to change her, like a bank-note, for 
 two twenties." 
 
 PHILOSOPHY IN RAGS. 
 
 There is to our mind more matter for sweet and bitter 
 melancholy m the flaunting tawdry of a zany, than in the 
 embroidered suit of a fine gentleman — more stuff preg- 
 nant with curious and touching contrast in the fantastic 
 rags of your true vagabond, than in the sleek garments 
 of the man of all proprieties. 
 
 IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORSE. 
 
 " Would you believe it ? " said Jones to Smith, " Web- 
 ster has engaged Charles Kean for only twelve nights ? " 
 
 " For only twelve nights ? " said Smith. 
 
 " For only twelve nights ! " repeated Jones. 
 
 " Thank God ! " ejaculated Smith, with a look of great 
 thanksgiving, "It might have been worse !" 
 
 A PHILOSOPHIC VISIONARY. 
 
 He spent all his inheritance in preaching against the 
 outward vanities of life — the paintings. and the trappings, 
 and the false, fleeting finery of sophistication. He brought 
 himself to rags; but, in a lucky hour, hit upon an expe- 
 dient that in some way restored him ; for it was he who 
 originated the custom of gilding gingerbread. 
 
 TEMPERANCE SPOUTERS. 
 
 They are like bull-frogs in a pond. They only muddy 
 where they stir ; and their monotonous croak is of water. 
 
 A POSTURE-MASTER. 
 
 His principal feat was the snake trick ; for he would 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 95 
 
 cast himself upon the earth, and move along it in undu- 
 lations as quickly and as lightly as the living reptile. We 
 once knew a minister to throw him a guinea, in pure ad- 
 miration of this peculiar motion. Whenever his other 
 tricks failed, he began to creep, and success was certain. 
 
 NO CAUSE NO EFFECT. 
 
 A rumour had been very general that a certain hard 
 lugubrious actor was labouring under an inflammation of 
 the brain. A friend having mentioned the report to Jer- 
 rold, was reassured in the following words : " Depend 
 upon it there is not the least foundation for the report." 
 
 A RESPECTABLE MAN. 
 
 Mr. Chokepear is, to the finger-nails, a respectable man. 
 The tax-gatherer was never known to call at his door a 
 second time for the same rate ; he takes the sacrament 
 two or three times a year, and has in his cellar the old- 
 est port in the parish. He has more than once subscribed 
 to the fund for the conversion of the Jews ; and, as a 
 proof of his devotion to the interests of the Established 
 Church, it was he who started the subscription to present 
 the excellent Doctor Mannamouth with a virgin silver 
 teapot, cream-jug, and spoons. He did this, as he has 
 often proudly declared, to show to the infidel world that 
 there were some men in the parish who were true Chris- 
 tians. He has acquired a profound respect for the bench, 
 since an alderman's judgment upon "the starving villains 
 who would fly in the face of their Maker ; " and, having 
 a very comfortable balance at his bankers', considers 
 their despair very weak, very foolish, and very sinful. 
 He, however, blesses himself that for such miscreants 
 there is Newgate ; — and more, there are aldermen on the 
 bench. 
 
96 JERKOLD'S WIT. 
 
 OUR ENGLISH LOVE OF DINNERS. 
 
 " If an earthquake were to engulf England to-morrow," 
 said Jerrold, " the English would manage to meet and 
 dine somewhere among the rubbish, just to celebrate the 
 event." 
 
 CHURCH BELLS. 
 
 There is something beautiful in the church bells — 
 beautiful and hopeful ; they talk to high and low, rich 
 and poor in the same voice ; there is a sound in them that 
 should scare pride, and envy, and meanness of all sorts 
 from the heart of man ; that should make tlie earth itself 
 seem to him, at least for a time, a holy place. There 
 is a preacher in every belfry, that cries, " Poor, weary, 
 struggling, fighting creatures — poor human things ! take 
 rest, be quiet. Forget your vanities, your follies, your 
 week-day craft, your heart-burnings ! And you, ye human 
 vessels, gilt and painted, believe the iron tongue that tells 
 ye ye are of the same Adam's earth with the beggar at 
 your gates. " Come away, come ! " cries the church-bell, 
 " and learn to be humble — learning that, however daubed 
 and stained, and stuck about with jewels, you are but 
 grave clay. Come, Dives, come and be taught that all 
 your glory, as you wear it, is not half so beautiful in the 
 eye of Heaven as the sores of uncomplaining Lazarus 1 
 And ye, poor creatures, livid and faint — stinted and 
 crushed by the pride and hardness of the world — come, 
 come," cries the bell, with the voice of an angel, " come 
 and learn what is laid up for ye ! — and learning, take 
 heart, and walk among the wickedness, the cruelties of 
 the world, calmly as Daniel walked among the lions." 
 
JEKEOLD'S WIT. 97 
 
 CHURCH. 
 How many go there with no thought whatsoever, only 
 that it is Sunday — church-going day ? And so they put 
 on what they think religion that day, just as I put on a 
 clean shirt. Bless you, sometimes I've stood and watched 
 the crowd, and I've said to myself, *' Well, I should like 
 to know how many of you will remember you're Cliris- 
 tians till next week ! " 
 
 When we see what some people do all the week — 
 people who are staunch at church, remember — I can't 
 help thinking there are a good many poor souls who are 
 only Christians at morning and afternoon service. 
 
 WINTER. 
 
 It was winter in its most savage mood. The tops of 
 the forest trees were heaped with snow, the earth was 
 hard as granite, and the wind howled like a wounded 
 monster through the wood. 
 
 THE HUIHANE SOCIETY AT AN EVENING PARTY. 
 
 At an evening party, a very elderly lady was dancing 
 with a young partner. A stranger approached Jerrold, 
 who was looking on, and said — 
 
 " Pray, sir, can you tell me who is the young gentle- 
 man dancing with that very elderly lady ? " 
 
 " One of the Humane Society, I should think," replied 
 Jerrold. 
 
 A gentleman's library. 
 It is not so necessary to read a library : the great mat- 
 ter is to get it. With a good many folks, heaps of books 
 
98 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 are nothing more than heaps of acquaintance that they 
 promise themselves to look in upon some daj. 
 
 EPITAPHS. 
 
 If the devil ever takes churchyard walks, how he must 
 chuckle and rub his brimstone hands when he reads some 
 of the tombstones — eh ? How he must hold his sides at 
 the " loving husbands," " affectionate fathers," " faithful 
 friends," and " pious Christians," that he sees advertised 
 there ! For he knows better — lie knows better. 
 
 A man's coat. 
 Whatever coat a man wears, never see a hole in it. 
 Though it may be full of holes as a net, never see them ; 
 but take your hat off to the coat as if it was the best bit 
 of broadcloth in the world, without a flaw or a thread 
 dropt, and with the finest bits of gold lace on it. 
 
 A lawyer's smile. 
 Dirt cheap at six and eightpence. 
 
 FEATURE-MONGERS. 
 
 Physiognomists and heralds are in certain cases equally 
 courteous ; first prove yourself a great man, and the 
 feature-mongers will instantly award you eyes and mouth 
 to match — become rich, and though you cannot swear to 
 your own name, you shall have as great a choice of arms 
 as Briareus. 
 
 AN ERROR CORRECTED. 
 
 Jerrold was seriously disappointed with a certain book 
 written by one of his friends. This friend heard that 
 Jerrold had expressed his disappointment. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 99 
 
 Friend (to Jerrold). — I hear you said was the 
 
 worst book I ever wrote. 
 
 Jerrold. — No, I didn't. I said it was the worst book 
 anybody ever wrote. 
 
 SPITTOONS FOR TWO. 
 
 At a club, of which Jerrold was a member, a fierce 
 Jacobite and a friend, as fierce, of the cause of Wilham 
 the Third, were arguing noisily, and disturbing less exci- 
 table conversationalists. At length the Jacobite, a brawny 
 Scot, brought his fist down heavily upon the table, and 
 roared at his adversary : — 
 
 " I tell you what it is, sir, I spit upon your King Wil- 
 liam ! " 
 
 The friend of the Prince of Orange was not to be out- 
 mastered by mere lungs. He rose, and roared back to 
 the Jacobite: — 
 
 " And I, sir, spit upon your James the Second.! ' 
 
 Jerrold, who had been listening to the uproar in silence, 
 hereupon rung the bell, and shouted : — 
 
 " Waiter ! spittoons for two ! " 
 
 THE POLITICS OF THE HEART. 
 
 There is not a babe lying in the public street on its 
 mother's lap — the unconscious mendicant, to ripen into 
 the criminal — that is not a reproach to the state ; a scan- 
 dal and a crying shame upon men who study all politics 
 save the politics of the human heart. 
 
 EGOTISM. 
 
 An eccentric party, of which Jerrold was one, agreed 
 to have a supper of sheep's heads. One gentleman pres- 
 ent was particularly enthusiastic on the excellence of the 
 
100 JEREOLD'S WIT. 
 
 dish ; and, as he threw down his knife and fork, exclaimed, 
 " Well, sheep's heads for ever, say I ! " 
 Jerrold. — " There's egotism ! " 
 
 AN AEISTOCRACY OF RAGS. 
 
 There is an aristocracy of rags, as there is an aristoc- 
 racy of stars and garters. 
 
 A GOOD HUSBAND. 
 
 As regular at his fire-side as the tea-kettle. 
 
 OUT OF BANCO. 
 
 When Macbeth was played, many years ago, at the 
 Coburg Theatre, a certain actor was cast, to his great dis- 
 gust, for Macduff. He told his bitter disappointment to 
 Jerrold, who thus consoled him : — 
 
 " Never mind, my good fellow, there's one advantage 
 in playing Macduff — it keeps you out of Banquo." 
 
 « 
 
 THE FACE OF NATURE. 
 
 We knoAv the common story runs that Nature has pecu- 
 liar visages for poets, philosophers, statesmen, warriors, 
 and so forth ; we do not believe it, we have seen a slack- 
 wire dancer with the face of a great, pious bard — an 
 usurer with the legendary features of a Socrates — a passer 
 of bad money very like a Chancellor of the Exchequer — 
 and a carcass butcher at Whitechapel so resembhng Na- 
 poleon that Prince Talleyrand, suddenly beholding him, 
 burst into tears at the similitude. 
 
 AN EGLINTON JESTER. 
 
 M'lan, the artist, figured as one of the jesters at the 
 celebrated Eglinton tournament. He was mounted upon 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 101 
 
 an ass. Jerrold called him an " ass centaur ; " and said, 
 that it was impossible to discover where one animal began 
 and the other ended. 
 
 GOOD AND EVIL. 
 
 Virtue reads prettily upon a tombstone, but 'tis a losing 
 quality with bare walls and a quenched hearth. Virtue, 
 honesty, benevolence — what are they ? The counters 
 with which the wise men of the world gull its fools and 
 slaves. 
 
 PURE FOLKS. 
 
 Very pure folks won't be held up to the light and shown 
 to be very dirty bottles, without paying back hard abuse 
 for the impertinence. 
 
 SPEAKING YOUR MIND. 
 
 It is an extravagance that has ruined many a man. 
 
 A SCOLDING VriFE. 
 
 A Judge JefFerys in his wig is an abominable tyrant ; 
 yet may his victims sometimes smile to think what Judge 
 JefFerys suffers in his night-cap. 
 
 MARRIAGE. 
 
 In marriage, as in war, it is permitted to take every 
 advantage of the enemy. 
 
 THE WEDDING RING. 
 
 Alack ! like the ring of Saturn, for good or evil it cir- 
 cles a whole world. 
 
 TOBACCO. 
 
 How little does a woman think, when she marries, that 
 she gives herself up to be poisoned ! 
 
102 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 NO SOLITUDE. 
 
 The earth has no place of solitude. Not a rood of the 
 wilderness that is not thronged and eloquent with crowds 
 and voices communing with the spirit of man, endowed 
 by such communion with a knowledge whose double fruit 
 is divinest hope and meekest humanity. 
 
 GRUMBLERS. 
 
 There are folks who would take their smallest wrongs 
 with them into Paradise. Go where they will they carry 
 with them a travelling-case of injuries. 
 
 MANUFACTURED OUTCASTS. 
 
 We make them outcasts, wretches ; and then punish, 
 in their wickedness, our own selfishness, our own neglect. 
 We cry, " God help the babes," and hang the men. 
 
 AFTER TEN YEARS OF MARRIAGE. 
 
 He is a fool who throws pearls to pigs and thinks the 
 pork will eat the richer for the treasure. He is no less a 
 fool who showers diamonds upon his wife when, knowing 
 no better, paste will make her just as grateful. 
 
 PATIENT SUFFERING. 
 
 There is a sanctity in suffering, when strongly, meekly 
 borne. Our duty, though set about by thorns, may still 
 be made a staff, supporting even while it tortures. Cast 
 it away, and, like the prophet's wand, it changes to a 
 snake. 
 
 FAULT-FINDERS. 
 
 To discover the spots in the sun, is to some men 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 1Q3 
 
 greater than the discovery of the laws that govern the 
 sun itself. 
 
 A SCOLDING WIFE. 
 
 Like the owl, she hoots only at night. From eleven 
 at night until seven in the morning there is no retreat for 
 him — he must lie and listen. Minerva's bird, the very 
 wisest thing in feathers, is silent all the day. 
 
 WIT. 
 
 Wit, like money, bears an extra value when rung down 
 immediately it is wanted. Men pay severely who require 
 credit. 
 
 BACCHUS. 
 
 If Bacchus often leads men into quagmires deep as his 
 vats, let us yet do him this justice — he sometimes leads 
 them out. Ask your opponent to take another glass of 
 wine. 
 
 HONESTY. 
 
 Honesty without sharpness in this world is like a sword 
 without edge or point — very well for show, but of no real 
 use to the owner. 
 
 THE POWER OF CASH. 
 
 Money, in this marketing world of ours, may buy 
 much ; but, flighty and frivolous and butterfly-like as 
 the thing sometimes is, it can't always buy a woman's 
 heart. However, this it can purchase ; it can buy a cage 
 to put the poor thing in ; it can buy eyes to watch her 
 — hands to guard her ; and so the pet-lamb may be kept 
 safe from London wolves — safe as parchments in a strong 
 box. 
 
104 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 MAGNA CHARTA. 
 
 An evidence of the value of fine fiction upon a people. 
 Because it ought to be true, they think it is. 
 
 A TAVERN KING. 
 
 A man who lives and moves only in a spittoon : a man 
 who has a pipe in his mouth as constantly as his front 
 teeth. 
 
 HEREDITARY VIRTUES. 
 
 Virtue, like vice, does not always descend in a right 
 line, but often goes in zig-zag. It can't be willed away 
 like the family spoons. 
 
 A REFRESHING CRY. 
 
 There is nothing so refreshing as a good cry, when you 
 know, after all, there is nothing to cry about. Tears 
 were given us to enjoy ourselves with. They wash out 
 the mind like a dirty teacup, and give a polish to the 
 feelings. 
 
 A MODEL POLICEMAN. 
 
 Medusa staring at him would have had the worst of 
 it, and bashfully, hopelessly, let drop her eyelids. You 
 might as well have frowned at Newgate stones, expecting 
 to see them tumble, as think to move one nerve. 
 
 A CHOICE OF RUIN. 
 
 To be ruined your own way is some comfort. When 
 so many people would ruin us, it is a triumph over the 
 villainy of the world to be ruined after one's own pat- 
 tern. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 105 
 
 THE CHARM OF CHANGE. 
 
 What change of dimate often is to a sick man, change 
 of public-house is to a drunken one. He feels the stronger 
 for the removal, and, therefore — drinks again. 
 
 BLOW HOT BLOW COLD. 
 
 The wind came, sharp as Shylock's knife, from the 
 Minories — it was called the east wind — cutting the shoul- 
 der-blades of old men of forty ; but the boys, in their ro- 
 bust jollity — to whom the tax-gatherer was as yet a rarer 
 animal than baby-hippopotamus — had the redder faces 
 and nimbler blood for it. 
 
 GOING TO TAVERNS. 
 
 Lady {loquitur). — " What men, unless they have their 
 wives with them, can find to talk about, I can't think — no 
 good, of course." 
 
 HOW TO ABOLISH CRIME. 
 
 If we were to hang for everything, there would be an 
 end of crime altogether. 
 
 " GOOD NIGHT." 
 
 This is a simple, earnest wish, that, like the circle of 
 the universe, holds within it all things. 
 
 PERENNIAL COURTSHIP. 
 
 There cannot be a woman ever so old, that, when she 
 smells a sweetheart somewhere, does not snigger and 
 grin as if her own courting-days were come again. 
 
 IDEAS. 
 
 There are some ideas that seem, like rain-drops, to fall 
 
106 JERKOLD'S WIT. 
 
 upon a man's head ; the head itself having nothing to do 
 with the matter. 
 
 A CONFESSION OF IGNORANCE. 
 
 On the first night of Sir E. Lytton's " Sea Captain," 
 when the hero came to that part of his role where he 
 exclaims, " The sea — my mother sea," Jerrold, who was 
 present, said, " I have heard of Mother H., but never be- 
 fore of Mother C." 
 
 A SCOLDING WIFE AT THE SEA-SIDE. 
 
 Happily (says the husband, alluding to a conjugal lec- 
 ture he had received) the wind got suddenly up — the 
 waves bellowed — and, soothed by the sweet lullaby, I 
 somehow sank to repose. 
 
 A COMMAND REVERSED. 
 
 " And God said. Let us make man in our image." 
 "What a fine creature is man, so long as he always has 
 these words before his eyes, and so tries to do nothing but 
 what shall be some way worthy of his likeness ! To do 
 this is to make the world a pleasant place, and to have 
 every body happy about us. " And God said. Let us make 
 man in our image ! " This is beautiful : but it is sad — 
 it is melancholy work, when man says, " Let us make 
 God in our image." 
 
 " ONCE UPON A TIME." 
 
 How oft the old, old words, like silver bells, have rung 
 us to a brief holiday — summoned the gravest of us to the 
 hearth, to take from the lips of fable sweetest truth ! 
 
 SELF-PUNISHMENT. 
 
 Never, so long as you have a stitch about your anatomy, 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 107 
 
 believe yourself alone. If thoughtless people could only- 
 know what their left-off clothes say about them, sure I 
 am they would resolve upon one of two things — either to 
 reform their lives, or to go naked. Let no man harbour 
 a black spot in his breast, and believe that his waistcoat 
 is wholly ignorant of the stain. Let no man drop an ill- 
 gotten guinea into his pocket, and think the pocket uncon- 
 sciT)us of the wrong. His very glove shall babble of the 
 bribe that has burnt his hand ; his cravat shall tighten 
 about his throat, if that throat be seared with daily lies. 
 Ignorance of man ! to believe that what is borne upon 
 the body has no intelligence with the moral good or evil 
 dwelling in the soul. 
 
 BUT BUT. 
 
 When the affairs of Italy were the subject of general 
 conversation in England, Jerrold was very enthusiastic in 
 favour of Mazzini and his party. He was talking hope- 
 fully and warmly on the subject one evening at a party, 
 when a very cold and stiflP and argumentative gentleman 
 was present. This iced man interrupted Jerrold at every 
 turn with a doubting "but." At last, Jerrold, fairly 
 roused by the coolness of his opponent, turned sharply 
 upon him, and said, " Sir, I'll thank you to throw no 
 more of your cold water ' buts ' at me." 
 
 GOOD IN EVERY THING. 
 
 There may be some Eden-like spots even in a coal- 
 mine. 
 
 MARRIAGE A LA MODE. 
 
 Look at the bride, her colour comes and goes, and her 
 Up shakes like a rose-leaf in the wind ; tears blind her 
 
108 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 eyes ; and as she steps from the carriage, the earth whirls 
 about her. Is that the church-door ? Surely it is the 
 entrance of a tomb. She fights with closed lips — mutely 
 fights against her swelling heart. She raises her eyes — 
 she sees her father's stony face glittering with a smile, a 
 statue in the sun — beholds her mother's simper, her 
 weight of great content ; she turns — more horrible than 
 all — and catches then the look of him, in some biief 
 minutes to be made her owner ; he smiles, and her heart 
 dies at his Pan-like leer ! They are married ! 
 
 SLAVE-DEALING IN HIGH LIFE. 
 
 I have heard something of the slave-markets of Cairo, 
 of Alexandria; tales of snow-skinned Georgians and 
 Circassians — of fairest victims vended by avarice to lust. 
 The tales were touching — very, very touching. But 
 hearing them, I have smiled at the wilful ignorance, the 
 snug self-complacency of Britons — I have smiled and 
 remembered me of the slave-markets of St. James's ! I 
 have seen blue eyes, pink cheeks, scarlet lips, sold — aye, 
 as you would sell a nosegay — fathers and mothers having 
 a bishop who shall bless the bargain. There is this 
 difference between the Georgian and the British mer- 
 chandise — a small circle of gold- wire about it — no more. 
 
 A COURT BEAUTY. 
 
 She had some vague notion that there were human 
 creatures ; a white race, something higher in the scheme 
 of the world than the mere Hottentot ; but it was also 
 part of her creed that, like horses and oxen, they were 
 sent for no other purpose to this earth,' save for that of 
 ministering in any manner to the will and wish of her- 
 self, her friends, and her immediate acquaintance. The 
 
JEREOLD'S WIT. 109 
 
 world, the habitable world, to her was composed of about 
 an area of two miles, with St. James's Palace for the 
 centre. Any part beyond that boundary was to her mys- 
 terious as the Great Mogul's country : she looked upon it 
 with the intelligence that possessed the theological oppo- 
 nents of Columbus, when he talked of a new continent — 
 allowing it to exist, and to be once reached, there were 
 certain currents that rendered impossible any return 
 from it. 
 
 LOW LIFE ABOVE STAIRS. 
 
 The Adelphi company once removed, temporarily, to 
 the Haymarket Theatre. Jerrold was asked his opinion 
 on the change. He replied : " The master and mistress 
 are out; and the servants have got into the drawing- 
 room." 
 
 INTELLECT. 
 
 Nonsense I a new-fangled thing, just come up, and the 
 sooner it goes out the better. 
 
 man's account with woman. 
 Look here ; you must allow that woman ought, as much 
 as in her lies, to make this world quite a paradise, seeing 
 that she lost us the original garden. We talk as philos- 
 ophers, and when all is said and done about what we 
 owe to woman, you must allow that we have a swinging 
 balance against her. There's that little matter of the 
 apple still to be settled for. 
 
 LADIES IN WAITING. 
 
 Here are women — doting wives and loving mothers — 
 quitting the serene and holy circle of their own hearths — 
 
110 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 relinquishing for an appointed term the happiness and 
 tenderness of home, to endure a glorifying servitude 
 beneath the golden yoke of ceremony. 
 
 LIKE LEAD. 
 
 To an impertinent fellow, whom Jerrold avoided, and 
 who attempted to intrude himself by saying a bright 
 thing, Jerrold said, sharply turning upon the intruder, 
 " You're like lead, sir, bright only when you're cut." 
 
 A HARD TRUTH. 
 
 How few let their passions, their resentments, die be- 
 fore them ! How few see their vices coffined, ere they 
 fall themselves ! 
 
 THE WORLD TO COME. 
 
 Alas ! what a place would this be, if the many-coloured 
 creeds of this world did not, by Almighty goodness, make 
 the white light of the world to come. 
 
 THE OSTRICH NO GLUTTON. 
 
 The ostrich ought to be taken as the one emblem of 
 temperance. He lives and flourishes in the desert ; his 
 choicest food a bitter spiky shrub, with a few stones — for 
 how rarely can he find iron — how few the white days irt 
 which the poor ostrich can, in Arabia Petraea, have the 
 luxury of a tenpenny nail, to season, as with salt, his 
 vegetable diet. And yet a common-councilman, with 
 face purple as the purple grape, will call the ostrich — 
 glutton. 
 
 THE WRECK AND THE JOLLY-BOAT. 
 
 " Have you seen the wife of poor Augustus ? " a gen- 
 tleman asked Jerrold, referring to a friend. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. m 
 
 "No ; what's the matter ?" said Jerrold. 
 *' Why, I can assure you, she's a complete wreck." 
 " Then, I suppose," repHed Jerrold, " he'll be the jolly- 
 boat to put off from her ! " 
 
 A wife's conjugal sentiment. 
 If a woman would be always cared for, she should 
 never marry. There's quite an end of the charm when 
 she goes to church. We're all angels while you're 
 courting us ; but, once married, how soon you pull our 
 wings off! 
 
 • 
 
 FREEDOM. 
 
 Despair of freedom, even at the worst, is atheism to 
 the goddess Liberty. 
 
 PUBLIC DINNERS DEFINED BY A WIFE. 
 
 " They get a lord or a duke, if they can catch him — 
 any thing to make people say they've dined with nobility, 
 that's it — yes, they get one of these people, with a star, 
 perhaps, on his coat, to take the chair, and to talk all 
 sorts of sugar-plum things about charity, and to make 
 foolish men, with wine in 'em, feel that they've no end of 
 money ; and then — shutting their eyes to their wives and 
 families at home — all the while that their own faces are 
 red and flushed like poppies, they put their hand to paper, 
 and afterwards into their pockets." 
 
 THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. 
 
 The history of the world is made of battles, conquests, 
 the accessions and the deaths of kings, the doings of 
 statesmen, and the tricks of law. This makes the vulgar 
 story of the external world. Its deeper history is of the 
 
112 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 hearts, even of its lowest dwellers — of the ennobling im- 
 pulses that swell them — of the unconquerable spirit of 
 meekness which looks calmly upon terror, and turns even 
 agony to patience. 
 
 A FAIRY SPOT. 
 
 A small quiet nook of a place nestled among trees, and 
 carpeted with green around. And there a brook should 
 murmur, with a voice of out-door happiness ; and a little 
 garden, brimming over with flowers, should mark the 
 days and weeks and months with bud and blossom ; and 
 the worst injuries of time be fallen leaves. And then, 
 health in balm should come about my path, and my mind 
 be as a part of every fragrant thing that shone and grew 
 around me. 
 
 A ROYAL PRINCE IN THE CRADLE. 
 
 He sleeps, and ceremony, with stinted breath, waits at 
 the cradle. How glorious that young one's destinies ! 
 How moulded and marked — expressly fashioned for the 
 high delights of earth — the chosen one of millions for 
 millions' homage ! The terrible beauty of a crown shall 
 clasp those baby temples ; that rose-bud mouth shall 
 speak the iron law ; that little, pulpy hand shall hold the 
 sceptre and the ball. But now, asleep in the sweet mys- 
 tery of babyhood — the little brain already busy with the 
 things that meet us at the vestibule of life — for even then 
 we are not alone, but surely have about us the hum and 
 echo of the coming world — ^but now thus, and now upon 
 a giddying throne ! What grandeur — what intensity of 
 bliss — what an almighty heritage to be born to — to be 
 sent upon the earth, accompanied by invisible angels, to 
 take possession of! 
 
JERPvOLD'S WIT. 113 
 
 HUMOUR UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 A critic one day talked to Jerrold about the humour of 
 a celebrated novelist, dramatist, and poet, who was cer- 
 tainly no humourist. 
 
 " Humour ! " exclaimed Jerrold, " why he sweats at a 
 joke, like a Titan at a thunderbolt ! " 
 
 MATRIMONY AND FREEMASONRY. 
 
 " Man and wife one, indeed ! (exclaimed an indignant 
 lady, whose husband had just been made a Mason,) I 
 should like to know how that can be when a man's a 
 Mason — when he keeps a secret that sets him and his 
 wife apart ? Ha ! you men make the laws, and so you 
 take care to have all the best of 'em to yourselves." 
 
 GOOD-NATURE. 
 
 It seems to be so easy to be good-natured, I wonder 
 any body takes the trouble to be any thing else. 
 
 HOMELY BEAUTY. 
 
 Patty would never have been beautiful ; born in down, 
 and fed upon the world's honey-dew, she would have 
 passed for nothing handsome ; but she had in her coun- 
 tenance that kind of plainness to my mind better than 
 any beauty Heaven has yet fashioned. Her sweet, gen- 
 tle, thin face trembled with sensibility that sent its riches 
 to her eyes, glittering for a moment there beyond all worth 
 of diamonds. From earliest childhood, she was made to 
 read the hardest words — want, poverty — in the iron book 
 of daily life ; and the early teaching had given to her face 
 a look of years beyond her age. With her, daily misery 
 had anticipated time. 
 
114 JERKOLD'S WIT. 
 
 A HANDSOME COlvrPENSATION. 
 
 When " Black-Eyed Susan " was in rehearsal at the 
 Surrey Theatre, an important person — in his own estima- 
 tion — strutted upon the stage, and speaking of Elliston, 
 the Bacchanalian manager, exclaimed in an angry voice, — 
 " How is this ? I can see a duke or a prime minister 
 any time in the morning, but I can never see Mr. El- 
 liston." 
 
 " There's one comfort," Jerrold replied, " if Elliston is 
 invisible in the morning, he'll do the handsome thing any 
 afternoon, by seeing you twice — for at that time of day 
 he invariably sees double." 
 
 "what's in a name?" 
 " I don't like the name of Lazarus (said an anxious 
 parent, discussing the usual topic preliminary to a christ- 
 ening), it's low, and doesn't sound genteel — not at all 
 respectable." 
 
 TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD. 
 
 Truth is never a babe, and never a hag. As at the 
 first, so at the last — full blown, yet young ; her eyes lus- 
 trous through ages, and her lip ruddy and fresh as with 
 the dews of Eden ; upon her brow sits an eternity of 
 beauty. Now Falsehood is born a puling, roaring thing : 
 its very infancy is anticipative of its old age, and stamped 
 with the grossness of mortality. Day by day it waxes 
 bigger and stronger; has increase of reputation, crowds 
 of clients ; until at length its unrighteous hoariness makes 
 it worshipped by multitudes for no other reason save this 
 — ^it has gray hairs. And so the wrinkled wizard keeps 
 his court, and works his mischief-dealing, paralyzing spells, 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 115 
 
 until Truth, at some time, turns her sapphire eyes full 
 upon him, and as a bubble at a finger's touch, Falsehood, 
 is gone. 
 
 will-o'-the-wisp wealth. 
 We harass our reason to the utmost to arrive at wealth 
 — and then, when we think we have built our nest for 
 life, when we have lined it with wool, and gilded the out- 
 side, and taxed our fancy for our best ease — why, what 
 comes of it ? Molly, the housemaid, drops a lighted can- 
 dle snuff amonof the shavings — a cat carries a live coal 
 from under the fire among the linen — the watchman 
 springs his rattle, and, after a considerable time, engines 
 play upon our ruin. 
 
 THE EXPRESSION OF A SKULL. 
 
 Apart from association, the expression of a bare skull 
 has, to ourselves at least, little in it serious : nay, there 
 has always seemed to us a quaint cheerfulness in it. The 
 cheek-bones look still puckered with a smile, as though 
 contracted when it flung aside the mask of life, and caught 
 a glimpse of the on-coming glory. 
 
 IRRESPONSIBLE BURGLARY. 
 
 There is no Old Bailey (at least in this world) for the 
 mighty men of the bully burglar Mars. 
 
 JOKE-HATERS. 
 
 The sex — blessings on their honied hearts ! — will for- 
 give wrong, outrage, perjury sworn ten times deep, any- 
 thing against their quiet, but a jest. Break a woman's 
 heart, and she'll fit the pieces together, and, with a smile, 
 assure the penitent that no mischief is done — indeed, and 
 
116 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 indeed, she was never better. Break a joke, light as 
 » water-bubble, upon her constancy, her magnanimity — 
 nay, upon her cookery, — and take good heed ; she declares 
 war — war to the scissors. 
 
 THE MAN OF BUSINESS. 
 
 A sort of human lurcher. 
 
 HONOUR AMONG THIEVES. 
 
 If there be, as we wish to believe, honour among 
 thieves, sure we are it is alloyed with envy : a man with 
 a hand like a ham cannot complacently view the snaky 
 palm of a more perfect brother. 
 
 THE JOKES OF JUSTICE. 
 
 Assuredly there is no place in which the very smallest 
 joke goes so far as in a court of justice. There, a 
 farthing's worth of wit is often taken as though it were 
 an ingot. 
 
 THE LESSON OF THE GARDEN. 
 
 A garden is a beautiful book, writ by the finger of 
 God ; every flower and every leaf is a letter. You have 
 only to learn them — and he is a poor dunce that cannot, 
 if he will, do that — to learn them, and join them, and 
 then to go on reading and reading, and you will find 
 yourself carried away from the earth to the skies by the 
 beautiful story you are going through. You do not know 
 what beautiful thoughts — for they are nothing short — 
 grow out of the ground, and seem to talk to a man. And 
 then there are some flowers, they always seem to me like 
 over-dutiful children : tend them ever so little, and they 
 come up and flourish, and show, as I may say, their 
 bright and happy faces to you. 
 
JEKROLD'S WIT. 
 
 117 
 
 MASKS AND FACES. 
 
 Poverty and humbleness of station may sit upon the 
 middle benches; but wealth, and what is mouthed for 
 respectability, must have cribs apart for themselves ; must 
 be considered Christian jewels to be kept in velvet boxes, 
 lest they should catch the disease of lowliness by contact 
 with the vulgar. Surely there are other masquerades 
 than masquerades in halls and play-houses. For are 
 there not Sabbath maskings, with naked faces for masks ? 
 How many a man has himself rolled to church, as though, 
 like Elijah, he would go even to heaven in a carriage ! 
 
 Adam's salad. 
 There is no whet to the appetite like early dew; 
 •nothing for the stomacli like grass and wild flowers, taken 
 with a fasting eye at five in the morning. It was Adam's 
 own salad, and that is why he lived to nine hundred and 
 thirty. 
 
 QUARRELS. 
 
 It seems to me that this blessed world will never want 
 something to quarrel about, so long as there are two 
 straws upon it. 
 
 MODERN ACTING. 
 
 Jerrold was told that a certain well-known tragedian 
 was going to act Cardinal Wolsey. 
 
 Jerrold. — " Cardinal Wolsey ! — Linsey Woolsey ! " 
 
 EVIL THOUGHTS. 
 
 The fiends that lie in wait for us need no charm to 
 raise them — no mystic wand — no wizard's spell; the 
 
118 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 wickedness of thought is power sufficient. How often to 
 think evil is to call a devil up to act it ! 
 
 THE SABBATH OF THE UNIVERSE. 
 
 It was a lovely day ; there seemed a Sabbath peace on 
 all things. The drudged horse stood meek and passive in 
 the fields, patiently eyeing the passer-by, as though it felt 
 secure of one day's holiday ; the cows, with their large, 
 kind looks, lay unmoved upon the grass ; all things 
 seemed takin<? rest beneath the brooding wings of heaven. 
 
 We have climbed the hill — have gained the church- 
 yard, the dust of the living dust of generations. The bell 
 is swinging still, and, turning on every side, from distant 
 hamlets we see men, women, and children — age with its 
 staff, and babyhood w^arm at the breast — all coming up- 
 ward — upward to the church. Still they climb, and still 
 from twenty opposite paths they come to strengthen and 
 rejoice their souls in one common centre, — by bigotry's 
 good leave, a fore-shadowing of that tremendous sabbath 
 of the universe, when all men from all parts shall meet in 
 Paradise. 
 
 THE TREE OF GENEALOGY. 
 
 It is with the tree of genealogy as with the oak of the 
 forest ; we may boast of the timbers it has given to a 
 state vessel, but say nought of the three-legged stools, the 
 broomsticks, and tobacco-stoppers made from the ends 
 and chij)s. 
 
 CERTAIN REFORM. 
 
 To reform man is a tedious and uncertain labour: 
 hanging is the sure work of a minute. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 119 
 
 THE devil's cunning. 
 
 The devil is a better judge than to cany away gold. 
 It will do his work all the better left behind. 
 
 A FORCED SMILE. 
 
 His face galvanized into a smile. 
 
 A woman's EYE. 
 
 That luminous concentration, that world of eloquent 
 light — for how it talks !— a woman's eye. 
 
 THE WINE-GOD. 
 
 O wine, wine ! — Bacchus, Bacchus ! How often does 
 excess of wine prevent the spark that might otherwise 
 have cast its radiance far around ! How often has the 
 genius, drenched with grape, done nought, when working 
 hard to scintillate, but blindly strike his own knuckles ! 
 
 A SPARE MAN. 
 
 Jerrold said to a very thin man, " Sir, you are like a 
 pin, but without the head or the point." 
 
 LOVE IN DEATH. 
 
 Death takes fear from love, and, as I feel it, makes 
 love stronger. I loved her when she was here, and must 
 I not love her — still more love her — now she is an 
 angel ? 
 
 When Jerrold was living at Boulogne, he caught rheu- 
 matism in the eyes. He was attended by a coarse, brutal 
 French doctor, who blistered him severely, to no purpose. 
 
120 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 Jerrold was in a dark room for several weeks, under the 
 ineffectual treatment of this unpleasant practitioner. One 
 day the doctor was dressing the blister roughly, when his 
 patient winced : — 
 
 " Ce rCest Hen — ce n^est rien ! " said the doctor. Pres- 
 ently some hot water was brought in for the doctor's 
 hands. The doctor dipped his fingers into the basin, but 
 withdrew . them rapidly, with a loud exclamation. The 
 water was nearly boihng. Jerrold could not resist the 
 opportunity — ill as he was, he said to the scalded doctor, 
 imitating his voice, 
 
 " Ce n'est rien — ce n'est rien ! " 
 
 "the lane" and the law. 
 Chancery Lane ! Behold a gentleman in glossy black, 
 with pale and contemplative face, with half-closed lids, 
 and eyes, hare-like, thrown back ; he glances at an op- 
 posite arch, the entrance to a solemn hall, where nothing 
 is heard save notes of sweetest sound — justice tinkling 
 her goldfen scales ! The arch, to common eyes, is built 
 of coarsest stone : it is a piece of purest ivory, worthy to 
 frame the looking-glass of Truth, whose silver-voiced sons 
 pass rustling in and out, arrayed in her sable garb ; for 
 Truth, a milk-white virgin in the sky, became an Ethiop 
 when she touched the earth ; albeit, that these her 
 children ofttimes deny the change, vowing the blackest 
 black to be the whitest white. And in and out these 
 goodly creatures pass — wisdom on their brows, hope in 
 their eyes, and peace and love upon their lij)S. Their 
 awful heads bear curled treasures, snatched from the 
 manes and tails of steeds of Araby, whitened with pow- 
 dered pearls, which Venus' self might weep for. The 
 phcenix might nestle in one of these — by the profane 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 121 
 
 illiterate denominated wigs — deeming it his chosen spi- 
 cery. 
 
 A PICTURE OF MISERY. 
 
 With but one sixpence — and that begged from an old 
 acquaintance — in his pocket, houseless, hopeless, his coat 
 in tatters, a ventilating rent in his breeches, melancholy 
 eating his heart, a November sky, a November rain, and 
 a hole in either shoe ! Is not this an hour in which a 
 man could lie down in a coffin as in a bed ? — in which he 
 could gather hirnself to sleep — wrap even a parish shroud 
 about him, as he would wrap a warm great coat, compose 
 his arms upon his breast, and then fall smiling off into 
 death — smiling at the running, scraping, stamping, shuf- 
 fling, still to continue over his head, by the lackeys, the 
 flatterers, the debaters, the jugglers, of the world above ? 
 
 SLEEP. 
 
 Man sleeps. Oh, ye gentle ministers, who tune our 
 dreaming brains with happy music — who feed the snoring 
 hungry with apples fresh from Paradise — who take the 
 fetters from the slave, and send him free as the wild ante- 
 lope bounding past his hut — who make the hen-pecked 
 spouse, though sleeping near his gentle tyrant, a lordly 
 Turk — who write on the prison-walls of the poor debtor 
 " Received in full of all demands " — whatever ye may be, 
 wherever ye reside, we pray ye, for one short hour at 
 least, cheat poor mortals ! 
 
 THE ARDENT ADMIRER OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 We will not roundly assert that he always understood 
 the object of his admiration ; but his devotion to it was 
 no whit the less from his ignorance — nay, we question if 
 
122 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 it was not heightened by imperfect knowledge. Phi- 
 losophy was his idol ; and so the thing was called philos- 
 ophy, he paused not to pry into its glass eyes, to question 
 the paint smeared upon its cheeks, the large bead dang- 
 ling from its nose, and its black and gilded teeth — not 
 he ; but down he fell upon his knees, and lifted up his 
 simple hands, and raised his pullet voice, and cried, 
 " Divine philosophy ! " What a fortunate thing that 
 philosophy is so musical a word ! 
 
 LUCK. 
 
 Luck — mere luck — may make even madness wisdom. 
 
 " jack's " DEFINITION OF THE HEIGHT OF PRIDE. 
 
 Proud as a mermaid with a new gold frame to her 
 looking-glass. 
 
 "breach OF PROMISE." 
 
 A lady, being deserted by one man, has no other 
 remedy than an appeal to twelve. 
 
 BIRD-CATCHERS. 
 
 Mercenary naturalists. 
 
 " SEEING HIS WAT." 
 
 The snail, that carries its eyes at the end of its horns, 
 had not a more projective look. Seeing nothing he could, 
 to his own satisfaction, peer into the very essences of 
 things. 
 
 THE BROKER. 
 
 The smooth-faced sworn functionary — he with univer- 
 sal judgment, who, on the sanctity of his oath, philosophi- 
 cally and arithmetically proves the worth of all things. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 123 
 
 STAGE ANGELS. 
 
 Happy, guileless little creatures — promoted from the 
 vulgarity of mortal childhood to spirits of a heavenly 
 order ! Not banished to bed with the rooks and the 
 lambs, but kept awake, curled and painted, to receive at 
 midnight the cheers and loud applause of an adult, dis- 
 cerning public. 
 
 THE law's uncertainty. 
 
 Nothing is certain in this world, and more especially in 
 that part of it known as Westminster Hall. 
 
 THE parish doctor's LAMP. 
 
 Mars may have his planet, but give me what, in the 
 spirit of the old mythology, might be made a star in 
 heaven, — the night-lamp of the apothecary, who fights 
 disease beside the poor man's bed, his only fee the bless- 
 ing of the poor ! 
 
 THE CONFIDENCE OF THE TIMES. 
 
 Jerrold said, speaking of a young gentleman who had 
 dared the danger of print before he could hold a razor, — 
 
 " Nowadays men think they're frogs before they're tad- 
 poles." 
 
 TRUE BEAUTY. 
 
 Beautiful are queens on thrones ; but is there not a 
 beauty (eternal as the beauty of the stars) in placid want, 
 smiling with angel looks, and gathering holiest power, 
 even from the misery that consumes it ? 
 
 CUP AND SAUCER. 
 
 A gentleman, who was remarkable at once for Baccha- 
 
124 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 nalian devotion and remarkably large and starting eyes, 
 was, one evening, the subject of conversation. The ques- 
 tion appeared to be, whether the gentleman in question 
 wore upon his face any signs of his excesses. 
 
 " I think so," said Jerrold ; " I always know Avhen he 
 has been in his cups by the state of his saucers." 
 
 LUCKY AND UNLUCKY DOGS. 
 
 I have often been struck by the inequality of fortune 
 suffered by dogs. Here is one couched upon a pilloAV, fed 
 with chicken, sweet biscuit, and new milk, caressed and 
 combed, and decked with a silver collar — yea, sheltered 
 like a baby from the wind and rain ; and here is another, 
 harnessed in a truck, fed with offal, or fed not at all — beat 
 with the stick of a cruel master, or kicked with his iron 
 heel. 
 
 THE ACCIDENTS OF FORTUNE. 
 
 Men often flourish for the very want of those merits 
 for which they are accidentally rewarded. 
 
 LAW BOOKS. 
 
 Here, the stricken stranger, bleeding with his wrongs, 
 may pause and read his glorious remedy. Here, the wan 
 widow gathers hope for her just cause ; and here, the 
 orphan dries her sorrow, comforted by strong assertion. 
 And here, the man hurt by some neighbour's tongue may 
 learn if he be surely hurt or not. Survey the shelves — 
 they bend with the weight of graVe opinions, — and learn 
 this further good, that to a single point there run a hun- 
 dred opposite lines. Talk of vendors of romance ! Give 
 us the window of a law-bookseller for the bloody tales of 
 iron life. 
 
JEREOLD'S WIT. 125 
 
 A REASON FOR THE FALL. 
 
 Jerrolcl said, " Eve ate the apple, that she might 
 dress." 
 
 CAUDLE IN THE VEINS. 
 
 Every woman, no matter how divinely composed, has 
 in her ichor-flowing veins one drop, "no bigger than a 
 wren's eye," of Caudle. Eve herself may now and then 
 have been guilty of a lecture, murmuring it balmily 
 amongst the rose-leaves. 
 
 MAIDS OF HONOUR. 
 
 Hapless images of ceremony — poor moving anatomies, 
 with eyes that must not wink, tongues that must not 
 speak, and, hardest tyranny of all, with mouths that must 
 not yawn at the dull discipline that consumes them. 
 Had I been a fairy wand, I would have changed them 
 straight, have bestowed upon them the paradise of a 
 three-legged stool, with a cow to milk beneath the odour- 
 breathing hawthorn. 
 
 poverty's DIVINITIES. 
 
 Unseen are the divinities that, descending from garrets, 
 tread the loud, foul, sordid, crawling highways of London. 
 There is a something — a look of service in the aspect of 
 some ; a depression that elevates, a dogged air of courage, 
 that speaks the fighting-man in poverty's battalions — an 
 honourable, undisguised, threadbareness, that marks the 
 old campaigner ! Has not such poverty its genii — its 
 attending spirits ? Yes ; a bloodless victory is its body- 
 guard, and the tatter-bearer an angel. 
 
126 JERR OLD'S WIT. 
 
 VANITY UNMASKED. 
 
 If dim-eyed Vanity would use the spectacles of Truth, 
 she would at times see blood on her satins — on her bro- 
 cades — on her lace — on every rich and glistening thread 
 that hangs about her — blood. She would see herself a 
 grim idol, worshipped by the world's unjust necessities, 
 and, so beholding, would feel a quicker throb of heart, a 
 larger compassion for her forced idolators. 
 
 UNREMITTING KINDNESS. 
 
 " Call that a kind man," said an actor, speaking of an 
 absent acquaintance ; " a man who is away from his 
 family, and never sends them a farthing ! Call that 
 kindness ! " 
 
 " Yes, unremitting kindness," Jerrold replied. 
 
 THE LITTLE GREAT. 
 
 Poor small things, infinitely small in their imagined 
 greatness ; men who, like the maggot in a nut, feed and 
 grow gross in darkness, unwitting of the world of light 
 and beauty, without that petty shell of self that circles 
 them ! 
 
 WARM FRIENDSHIPS. 
 
 Some people were talking with Jerrold about a gentle- 
 man as celebrated for the intensity as for the shortness of 
 his friendships. 
 
 " Yes," said Jerrold, " his friendships are so warm that 
 he no sooner takes them up than he puts them down 
 again." 
 
 THE GREEN ROOM. 
 
 Malice, envy, and slander may be there ; but say 
 
JEER OLD'S WIT. 127 
 
 where are they not, and what an amaranthine bank that 
 will be — what a halfway resting-place to heaven for 
 human weariness ! 
 
 THE MARKS OF TIME, 
 
 We do not always trust to the seeming marks of Time, 
 knowing that, like an unjust tapster, he is now and then 
 apt to score double. 
 
 THE ROSES OF LIFE. 
 
 There are some people who are so happy, smelling and 
 plucking the roses about them, that they never think of 
 the slugs and creeping things that may be at their roots. 
 
 HUMAN FALLIBILITY. 
 
 The very best of us soil, ay, sooner than a bride's 
 riband. 
 
 A BLACK SPOT. 
 
 A place whose shadows are as griefs — whose dews are 
 as misery. 
 
 THE SOUL. 
 
 The soul is at best as a trained hawk ; let it fly as high 
 as it will, there is its master, for the time, with his feet 
 upon the earth ; and straightway it drops from the clouds 
 at his feet. 
 
 CONFIDENCE. 
 
 The first time Jerrold saw Tom Dibdin, the song- 
 writer said to him, — 
 
 "Youngster, have you sufficient confidence in me to 
 lend me a guinea ? " 
 
128 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 Jerrold. — " Oh ! yes ; I've all the confidence, but I 
 haven't the guinea." 
 
 SUSPICION. 
 
 Woman — bless her ! — a thousand and a thousand times 
 softens the ruggedness of fortune ; nevertheless, she has 
 now and then a knack of making bad worse bj the force 
 of ill-timed suspicion. 
 
 A ROCK IN THE SEA. 
 
 The world's almanac, with ages in it, printed after 
 ages ; Time, solemn in the granite of a dead world, yet 
 wearing on his sunny brow the flowers of the morning. 
 
 THE widow's cap. 
 
 To kiss a woman in a widow's cap ! Excuse human 
 infirmity as we may, is there not very great presumption 
 in the act ? Is it not greeting the handmaid of death ? — 
 Again, is there not something awful, freezing, in that 
 white, chilling muslin, that sometimes surrounds the face 
 of Venus with a frame of snow — that ices beauty for a 
 twelvemonth ? In the superstition of custom, we are 
 prone to think the dead has yet some lien upon her — a 
 year's hold at least. 
 
 THE delights OF JESTING. 
 
 Take a sulky fellow with a brow ever wrinkled at the 
 laughing hours, let them laugh never so melodiously — 
 who looks with a death's-head at the pleasant fruits of the 
 earth heaped upon his table — who leaves his house for 
 business as an ogre leaves his cave for food — who returns 
 home joyless and grim to his silent wife and creeping 
 children — take such a man, and, if possible, teach him to 
 
JEREOLD'S WIT. 129 
 
 joke. 'Twoulcl be like turning a mandril into an Apollo, 
 A hearty jest kills an ugly face. 
 
 A POOR PLATER. 
 
 The actor — that is, the mere word-speaker, who brings 
 no great original mind to his task — is the jackdaw that; 
 albeit innocent of the larceny, is always dressed in the 
 feathered pens of authors. 
 
 THE IMPUDENCE OF RELIGION. 
 
 In the outside world of brazen brows, there is no 
 impudence like the impudence of what men will call 
 religion. 
 
 A FULL STOP. 
 
 Even the tongue of a vain and jealous woman will stop 
 — an invincible proof of the end of all mortal things. 
 
 LAUGHTER. 
 
 O glorious laughter ! thou man-loving spirit, that for 
 a time dost take the burden from the weary back — that 
 dost lay salve to the feet, bruised and cut by flints and 
 shards — that takest blood-baking melancholy by the nose, 
 and makest it grin despite itself — that all the sorrows of 
 the past, the doubts of the future, confoundest in the joy 
 of the present — that makest man truly philosophic — con- 
 queror of himself and care. What was talked of as the 
 golden chain of Jove, was nothing but a succession of 
 laughs, a chromatic scale of merriment, reaching from 
 earth to Olympus. 
 
 THE REPUTATION OF TRUE GENIUS. 
 
 To some folks reputation comes with a gentle, divine 
 
130 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 approach. One has carved a Venus whose marble mouth 
 would smile paralysis from Nestor ; another has painted 
 a picture, and, with Promethean trick, has fixed a fire 
 from heaven on the canvas ; another has penned a book, 
 and made tens of thousands of brains musical with divin- 
 est humanity — kings have no such music from cymbals, 
 sackbut, and psaltery, — and to each of them Reputation 
 comes silently, like a fairy through their study key-hole. 
 They quaff renown refined, cold-drawn, cold as castor- 
 oil ; and, if they be true philosophers, they will swallow 
 it as a thing no less medicinal. 
 
 CONTENTMENT. 
 
 Contentment is the prettiest thing in the world ; it 
 saves people such a deal of trouble. 'Tis an excellent 
 thing — a beautiful invention for the lower orders ; and 
 then it's so easy for them to obtain — easy as their own 
 bacon, milk, and eggs. But with high folks, who are 
 constantly troubled with a thousand things, contentment 
 would be as out of place as a gipsy in a court suit. 
 
 ADVICE TO THE YOUNG. 
 
 Jerrold said to an ardent young gentleman, who burned 
 with a desire to see himself in print, " Be advised by me, 
 young man ; don't take down the shutters before there is 
 something in the window." 
 
 BEAUTY. 
 
 Beauty ! it's like a guinea ; when it's once changed at 
 all, it's gone in a twinkling. 
 
 AN INDEPENDENT VOTER AND HIS WIFE. 
 
 Mrs. Nutts. — Often when the children want things, 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 131 
 
 Nutts will have the money for the taxes, to preserve what 
 he calls his independent vote. And for years and years — 
 no matter how I've been pinched — he has preserved it. 
 And what's the good on it? Independence! I don't 
 blame anybody for being independent when they can 
 afford it ; then it's right and respectable. Otherwise, it's 
 a piece of extravagance beyond poor people. 
 
 Nutts. — Now, my dear, if you'll let alone my politics, 
 I'll promise not to interfere with your turnip-tops ; and 
 I'm sure, if turnip-tops can speak, I heard 'em just now 
 crying out for you to come and pick 'em in the kitchen. 
 A cleverer woman at greens never lived ; but for all that, 
 my dear, you are not quite up to the House of Commons. 
 — {Mrs. Nutts looks an unspoken repartee, and whisks 
 out.) 
 
 SISTERS OF CHARITY. 
 
 Excellent women ! Creatures preserved from all the 
 hurry, all the sordid coarseness of life, to be the simple 
 almoners of human kindness. 
 
 A PURGATORY OF FLEAS. 
 
 If all our faults, our little tricks, our petty cozenings, 
 our bo-peep moods with truth and justice, could be sent 
 upon us in the blankets, all embodied in fleas, how many 
 of us with lily skins would get up spotted scarlet ! 
 
 INDIRECT MOTION. 
 
 I have found that, with some natures, it would pain 
 and perplex their moral anatomy to move direct to an 
 object. Like snakes, they seem formed to take pleasure 
 in indirect motion ; with them the true line of moral 
 beauty is a curve. 
 
132 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 PHYSIOGNOMY IN BRICKS AND MORTAR. 
 
 There is a physiognomy in houses, at least such is my 
 belief. Sure I am, I have seen houses with a swagger- 
 ing hat-a-cock sort of look ; whilst other habitations have 
 seemed to squint and leer wickedly from the corners of 
 the windows. 
 
 POETRY. 
 
 The poetic spirit — for what is hope but the poetry of 
 daily life ? — will touch the coarsest soul that answers, like 
 a harp-string to the wind, unconscious of the power that 
 stirs it. 
 
 FLOWERS. 
 
 The penny — the ill-spared penny — for it would buy a 
 wheaten roll — the poor housewife pays for a root of prim- 
 rose, is her offering to the hopeful loveliness of nature;* 
 is her testimony of the soul struggling with the blighting, 
 crushing circumstance of sordid earth, and sometimes 
 yearning towards earth's sweetest aspects. Amidst the 
 violence, the coarseness, and the suffering that may sur- 
 round and defile the wretched, there must be moments 
 when the heart escapes, craving for the innocent and 
 lovely ; when the soul makes for itself, even of a flower, 
 a comfort and a refuge. 
 
 THE BATTLE OF POVERTY. 
 
 Great are the odds against poverty in the strife. How 
 often is the poor man, the compelled Quixote, made to 
 attack a windmill in the hope that he may get a handful 
 of the corn that it grinds ? and many and grievous are 
 his buffets ere the miller — the prosperous fellow with the 
 
JEKKOLD'S WIT. I33 
 
 golden thumb — rewards poor poverty for the unequal 
 battle. 
 
 THE RELIGION OF SHOW. 
 
 There are a good many pious people who are as care- 
 ful of their religion as of their best service of china, only 
 using it on holiday occasions, for fear it should get chip- 
 ped or flawed in working-day wear. 
 
 THE CAP OF LIBERTY. 
 
 The only cap of liberty, since in it men one third of 
 their lives visit the land of sleep — the only land where 
 all men are equal — the veritable cap of liberty is the 
 night-cap. 
 
 RESPECTABILITY AND DEBT. 
 
 Respectability is all very well for folks who can have 
 it for ready money ; but to be obliged to run in debt for 
 it — it's enough to break the heart of an angel. 
 
 GENIUS GROPING IN THE DARK. 
 
 It is only the vulgar mind that thinks to win its fortune 
 along the broad highway of life in clearest day ; the nobler 
 genius, hugging itself in its supremacy, searches pits and 
 holes, with this sustaining creed, that though the prize 
 acquired be not really of half the worth to that picked up 
 in open light, it has to the finder a double value, because 
 obtained in secrecy and gloom. 
 
 A SHORT CUT TO POPULARITY. 
 
 I am certain that the shortest cut to popularity of some 
 sort, is to do something desperate. A dull, stupid fellow 
 that pays his way and does harm to nobody — why he may 
 
134 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 die off like a fly in November, and be no more thought 
 of. But only let him do some devil's deed — do a bit of 
 murder as coolly as he'd pare a turnip, — and what he 
 does and what he says : whether he takes coffee, or bran- 
 dy and water ; when he sleeps, and when he wakes, when 
 he smiles and when he grinds his teeth — all of this is 
 put down as if all the world went upon his movements, 
 and couldn't go on without knowing 'em. 
 
 MANCHESTER MEN. 
 
 Two or three provincial gentlemen — I knew them at 
 once to be Manchester men — were grouped together, 
 staring at the giraffes in the Zoological Gardens. 
 
 " Handsome creatures ! " cried the most enthusiastic ; 
 very handsome ; beautiful colours, too, arn't they ? " 
 
 " Humph ! " observed another, staring at the spots on 
 the skin, " beautiful ; but I — I wonder if they're fast ! '* 
 
 PROFITING BY THE DEAD. 
 
 Out upon the vile and sordid matters blighting this 
 beautiful, this liberal world, that self-promotion should 
 ever be sought upon the coffin-plates of our neighbours ! 
 
 LONDON OUT OF SEASON 
 
 is for all the world like a fine lady in an undress gown, 
 with all her paint wiped off. 
 
 SOLDIERS. 
 
 Looked at as they ought to be, they are to the world 
 but as poppies to corn-fields. 
 
 PATIENCE. 
 
 Patience is the strongest of strong drinks, for it kills 
 the giant Despair. 
 
JEREOLD'S WIT. I35 
 
 BISHOP PHILPOTTS. 
 
 What a lawyer was spoiled in. that bishop! What a 
 brain he has for cobwebs ! How he drags you along 
 through sentence after sentence — every one a dark pas- 
 sage — until your head swims, and you can't see your 
 finger close to your nose ! 
 
 THE CUP OF PATIENCE. 
 
 What a goblet ! It is set round with diamonds from 
 the mines of Eden ; it is carved by angelic hands, and 
 filled at the eternal fount of goqdness. 
 
 EXETER HALL. 
 
 What a blessing is Exeter Hall ! What a safety-valve 
 it is for the patriotism, and indignation, and scorn, and 
 hatred — and all other sorts of public virtues — that but 
 for it, or some such place, would fairly burst so many 
 excellent folks, if they couldn't go and relieve their swell- 
 ing souls with a bit of talk ! As it is, they speechify and 
 are saved ! 
 
 AN EXCEPTION TO A RULE. 
 
 Whenever a man exclaims that all mankind are vil- 
 lains, be assured that he contemplates an instant offer of 
 himself as an exception. 
 
 THE FAMILY OF STAND-STILL. 
 
 There's a sort of people in the world that can't bear 
 making any progress. I wonder they ever walk, unless 
 they walk backwards ! I wonder they don't refuse to go 
 out when there's a new moon ; and all out of love and 
 respect for that " ancient institution " — the old one. 
 
136 JERR OLD'S WIT. 
 
 A WORD WITH A BEGGAR ON HORSEBACK. 
 
 When a man gets to the top of the hill by honesty, he 
 deserves to be taken by the neck and hurled down again, 
 if he's ashamed to turn about and look at the lowly road 
 along which he once travelled. 
 
 THEATRICAL "STARS." 
 
 I knew a pork-butcher who gave it out that he fattened 
 all his pigs upon pine-apples ; he sold them for what price 
 he liked, and people, having bought the pigs, swore they 
 could taste the pine-apple flavour. It's much the same 
 with many of the " stars ; " managers have only to 
 declare that they give 'em ten, twenty, or fifty pounds a 
 night, and the sagacious public proportion their admira- 
 tion to the salary received. 
 
 A RAILWAY SPECULATOR. 
 
 He had as many lines in his face as there are lines 
 laid down. Every one of his features seemed cut up, 
 and all seemed travelling from one another. Six months 
 since he hadn't a wrinkle, and now his face was Hke the 
 map of England. 
 
 THE NATIONAL GALLERY. 
 
 Corner-Cupboard Hall, a tenement known by courtesy 
 as the National Gallery ! 
 
 NOT so BAD AS SHE SEEMS. 
 
 We slander Fortune ; because the wise and bountiful 
 creature will not let us at all times and in all places have 
 our wicked will of her ; like unprincipled rakes, we take 
 poor revenge by calling her naughty names. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. I37 
 
 RAPID FORTUNES. 
 
 Fortunes made in no time are like shirts made in no 
 time — it's ten to one if they hang long together. 
 
 man's blindness. 
 
 What a mole-eyed thing is man ! How he crucifies 
 
 himself with vain thoughts — how he stands upon tiptoe, 
 
 straining his eye-strings, trying to look into the future, 
 
 when at that moment the play is over — the show is done. 
 
 NOBILITY IN SUFFERING. 
 
 Nobly suffered, injuries undeserved do sit as graces. 
 
 beauty's alloy. 
 Every rose has its thorn : you never find a woman 
 without pins and needles. 
 
 poverty's darts. 
 Of all the arrows shot at our miserable nature, is there 
 one that is not made the keener if whetted on the poor 
 man's hearth ? 
 
 outward signs. 
 The names of houses are for the world outside. When 
 folks read "Rose Cottage" on the wall, they seldom 
 think of the lots of thorns that are inside. 
 
 post-mortem rewards. 
 
 It's a great comfort to great men, who, when in this 
 
 world, are thought very small indeed, to think how big 
 
 they'll be upon earth, after they've gone to heaven — a 
 
 comfort for 'em, when they may happen to want a coat. 
 
138 JEKROLD'S WIT. 
 
 to think of the suit of bronze or marble that kings and 
 queens will afterwards give 'em ! 
 
 DEATH. 
 
 Death is a slow paymaster, but the surest. 
 
 "it will do you no good." 
 How often is this belief the barren satisfaction of 
 hungry virtue ! How often does famishing innocence, 
 watching the wicked feeders of the world — the gorbellied 
 varlets, with mouths greasy with the goods of cheated 
 worth — find comfort in the belief that it will do them no 
 good ! Lean virtue shakes the head and cries, " It will 
 do you no good," and rapine still keeps greasy in the 
 face, still grows *' a finger on the ribs." 
 
 BILLIARD-BALLS. 
 
 I have seen mountains of cannon-balls, to be shot away 
 at churches, and into people's peaceful habitations, break- 
 ing the china and nobody knows what ; but there's not 
 one of 'em (thinks the ill-used wife) can do half the mis- 
 chief of a billiard-ball. That's a ball that's gone through 
 many a wife's heart, to say nothing of her children. 
 When once a man is given to playing billiards, the devil's 
 always tempting him with a ball, as he tempted Eve with 
 an apple. 
 
 THE STRUGGLES OF GENIUS. 
 
 There is a golden volume yet to be written on the first 
 struggles of forlorn genius in London — magnificent, mis- 
 erable, ennobling, degrading London. If all who have 
 ^suffered would confess their sufferings — would show 
 themselves in the stark, shivering squalor in which they 
 
JEKROLD'S WIT. I39 
 
 first walked her streets — would paint the wounds which 
 first bled in her garrets — what a book might be placed in 
 the hands of pride 1 what stern wholesome rebukes for 
 the selfish sons of fortune ! what sustaining sweetness for 
 the faint of spirit ! How often should we find the lowly 
 comforting the high — the ignorant giving lessons to the 
 accomplished — the poor of earth aiding and sustaining 
 the richly-endowed ! 
 
 GREAT THINGS FROM SMALL. 
 
 A learned philosopher, at the cost of some words, sets 
 forth the useful lesson he acquired through " an augment- 
 ing-glass, or microscope," showing how a certain vilest 
 animal, " setting himself to wrestle with a flea, was so in- 
 censed that his blood ran down from head to foot, and 
 from foot to head again ! " True philosopher ! who from 
 the bickerings of small despised animals, extracts bitter 
 wisdom, learns surer self-government, than the unthinking 
 million carry from a dog-fight, yea, from a bull-bait ! 
 
 UNION IS STRENGTH. 
 
 When some women get talking, they club all their 
 husbands' faults together ; just as children club their 
 cakes and apples, to make a common feast for the whole 
 
 set. 
 
 SOMETHING TO LOVE. 
 
 The human heart has of course its pouting fits ; it de- 
 termines to live alone ; to flee into desert places ; to have 
 no employment, that is, to love nothing ; but to keep 
 on sullenly beating, beating, beating, until death lays his 
 little finger on the sulky thing, and all is still. It goes 
 away from the world, and straightway, shut from human 
 
140 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 company, it falls in love with a plant, a stone — yea, it 
 dandles cat or dog, and calls the creature darling. Yes, 
 it is the beautiful necessity of our nature to love some- 
 thing. 
 
 THE OLDEST INHABITANT. 
 
 There is something solemn in the oldest inhabitant: 
 he is the link between the dead and the living ; in the 
 course of nature the next to be called from among us ; his 
 place immediately supplied by a second brother. Gener- 
 ations have gone, passed into the far world, and left him 
 here their solitary spokesman — the one witness of the 
 wonders that had birth among them. He remains here 
 to check the vanity of the present by his testimony to the 
 past. Where would be all human experience without the 
 oldest inhabitant ? 
 
 THE PERILS OF AUTHORSHIP. 
 
 Books ! their worth is a matter of fancy, say of weak- 
 ness, to the weaker part of mankind ; they have no stand- 
 ard value, none at their birth. Hence the unknown 
 maker of a book — I speak especially of the time when I 
 first sinned in ink — is a sort of gipsy in the social scale ; 
 a picturesque vagabond, who somehow or the other con- 
 trives to live on the sunny side of the statutes ; but is 
 nevertheless vehemently suspected of all sorts of larceny 
 by respectable householders. 
 
 HOW TO KNOW A MAN. 
 
 The sharp employ the sharp. Verily, a man may be 
 known by his attorney. 
 
 DIAMONDS. 
 
 A diamond is a diamond, though you shall put it on the 
 
JEKROLD'S WIT. 141 
 
 finger of a beggar. Only that on the finger of a beggar, 
 nobody would believe it to be a diamond. Does not men- 
 dicant genius every day offer the " precious jewel in its 
 head " for sale, and yet, because the holder is mendicant, 
 does not the world believe the jewel to be of no value ? 
 Men have died with jewels in their brains ; and not until 
 the men were dead, were the gems owned to be of the 
 true water. 
 
 WORDSWORTH — POET LAUREATE. 
 
 Sad work this ! Very melancholy, that bay leaves 
 should be pinched from the garland of the poet, and only 
 to give flavour to a court-custard ! 
 
 THE DEBTOR. 
 
 In England, Hesperian soil ! the debtor wears no 
 slavish yoke, loses no limb, is fixed to no stake, bears no 
 ignominious impress. No, in this our happy country, 
 where Law is the bright babe begotten by "Wisdom upon 
 Justice, the debtor is only — skinned alive ! 
 
 THE LONDON ''DIRECTORY." 
 
 The riches of India — the spices of the Moluccas — 
 blaze and are fragrant in the pages of the " Directory." 
 It awakens in us recollections of bold discoveries, hardy 
 enterprise, cunning invention, patient toil ; and all for 
 the wide family of England, not for the tyrannous and 
 haughty few, made tyrannous by the sense of exclusive 
 enjoyment. The " forked animal " man cons the page of 
 the " Directory," and sees a thousand merchants offering 
 ten thousand triumphs won by the ingenuity, the skill, 
 the labour, and daring of his kind. He reads the name 
 and abode of a dealer in oil, and he thinks of the bold 
 
142 JEEKOLD'S WIT. 
 
 mariner, harpooning the leviathan amidst Polar ice. A 
 " grocer " in the next line sends his thoughts, far, far 
 away among the mandarins. A " tallow-chandler," and 
 he is riding in the Baltic, that the good folks at home 
 may not go to bed without a candle. 
 
 CHARACTER. 
 
 Character flies. Yes, it has wings ; and, of course, the 
 lighter it is, the quicker it goes. 
 
 THE soldier's DEATH IN BATTLE. 
 
 That soft delicious bed, with Death the maker — the 
 bed of glory. 
 
 THE DIGNITY OF COSTS. 
 
 The hangman flourishes his whip ; the attorney scourges 
 with costs. To make justice cheap would doubtless make 
 her contemptible : she is therefore dignified by expense ; 
 made glorious by the greatness of costs. 
 
 WORTH NOTHING. 
 
 When a man tells the world he is worth nothing, the 
 world always takes him at his own valuation. 
 
 DEAD TREES. 
 
 Eloquently doth a dead tree preach to the heart of 
 man ; touching its appeal from the myriad forms of life 
 bursting about it ! Yes, the dead oak of a wood, for a 
 time, gives wholesome check to the heart, expanding and 
 dancing with the vitality around. In its calm aspect, its 
 motionless look, it works the soul to solemn thought, lift- 
 ing it upwards from the earth. 
 
JEKROLD'S WIT. 143 
 
 EVERLASTING TRUTH. 
 
 Beautiful truth ! never young and never old ; but 
 keeping, through all change and all time, its bloom and 
 grace of Paradise, even to the Judgment. 
 
 THE DOWNFALL OF ENGLAND. 
 
 Beautiful is the blending of the patriot with the stoic ! 
 Whenever England is destroyed — and considering how 
 often this calamity has occurred, the British lion ought 
 certainly to give place to the British cat — her political 
 Jeremiahs neither rend their Saxony nor sprinkle ashes 
 on their bursting heads ; but straightway ship their woes, 
 and steam to a tavern. 
 
 " England, beloved England " — cries our modern pa- 
 triot — " is wiped from the world ! Waiter, some Bur- 
 gundy ! " 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF WEALTH. 
 
 When people make money without earning it, it's like 
 taking a lot of spirits at one draught. It gets into their 
 head, and they don't know what they're about. There's 
 a tipsiness of the pocket as well as of the stomach. 
 
 CONFIDENCE TAKEN FROM THE FRENCH. 
 
 On the first night of the representation of one of Jer- 
 rold's pieces, a successful adaptator from the French ral- 
 lied him on his nervousness. " I," said the adaptator, 
 " never feel nervous on the first night of my pieces." 
 
 " Ah, my boy," Jerrold replied, " you are always 
 certain of success. Your pieces have all been tried 
 before." 
 
144 JEKROLD'S WIT. 
 
 BILLIARD SHARPERS. 
 
 There are fellows who go every day into billiard-rooms 
 to get their dinners, just as a fox sneaks into a farm-yard 
 to look about him for a fat goose. 
 
 A BEAUTIFUL CHILD. 
 
 A lady one day spoke to Jerrold about the beauty 
 of an infant. In the enthusiasm of her affection, she 
 said : — 
 
 " Really, I cannot find words to convey to you even a 
 faint idea of its pretty ways." 
 
 " I see," Jerrold replied, " its a child more easily con- 
 ceived than described." 
 
 VIRTUE WITH CLAWS. 
 
 Virtue's a beautiful thing in women, when they don't 
 go about, like a child with a drum, making all sorts of 
 noises with it. There are some women who think virtue 
 was given them as claws were given to cats — to do 
 nothing but scratch with. 
 
 PAINTED CHARMS. 
 
 Of a celebrated actress, who, in her declining days, 
 bought charms of carmine and pearl-powder, Jerrold said, 
 " Egad ! she should have a hoop about her, with a notice 
 upon it, ' Beware of the paint.' " 
 
 BUBBLE SCHEMES. 
 
 They're like treacle to flies ; when men are well in 
 them, they can't get out of them ; or if they do, it's often 
 without a feather to fly with. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. I45 
 
 THE RULING PASSION. 
 
 Every body seems for turning their farthings into 
 double sovereigns, and cheating their neighbours of the 
 balance. 
 
 A SUGGESTIVE PAIR OF GREYS. 
 
 Jerrold was enjoying a drive one day with a well-known 
 — a jovial spendthrift. 
 
 " Well, Jerrold," said the driver of a very fine paii' of 
 greys, " what do you think of my greys ? " 
 
 " To tell you the truth," Jerrold replied, " I was just 
 thinking of your duns ! " 
 
 THE MOST FINISHED GENTLEMAN IN EUROPE. 
 
 Every Englishman felt very proud indeed of this best- 
 wigged monarch of history, when he assured himself that 
 George IV. was " the most finished gentleman in Europe." 
 He died ; and, having controlled the violence of our grief, 
 we must, even at this moment, award him the hke char- 
 acter, merely defrauding him, to speak in the slang of 
 the day, of two syllables : — hence, for " finished gentle- 
 man," read " finished gent." 
 
 THE RIVER STYX. 
 
 He is the wisest man in the world who loves nothing. 
 Did you ever hear of the river Styx ? One dip in it 
 makes a man invulnerable to all things ; stones, arrows, 
 bludgeons, swords, bullets, cannon-balls. It would save 
 a good deal in regimentals, if the soldiers might bathe 
 there. So much for Styx upon the outward man ; but I 
 have often thought it would be a capital thing if people 
 could take it inwardly ; if they could drink Styx, like the 
 10 
 
146 JEEROLD'S WIT. 
 
 Bath waters. A course or two, and the interior of a man 
 would then be insensible of foolish weakness. . But you 
 would never get the women to drink it. 
 
 ELECTION COMPLIMENTS. 
 
 How unfit must be the man for the duties of his office 
 — for the trials that, in the House of Commons, he must 
 undergo — if he cannot, properly and respectfully, receive 
 at the hands of an enlightened constituency, any quantity 
 of mud, any number of eggs or potatoes ! No, I look 
 upon eggs and potatoes as, I may say, the corner-stones 
 of the constitution. 
 
 THE MAN OF THE WORLD. 
 
 To praise a man for knowledge of the world is often to 
 commend him only for his knowledge of its dirty lanes 
 and crooked alleys. Any fool knows the broad paths — 
 the squares of life. 
 
 "how did you know I EVER HAD A WIFE?" 
 
 You look as if you had ; there is a sort of married 
 mark upon some people — a sort of wedding-ring mark — 
 just like the mark of a collar. 
 
 SLUGS AND SLANDER. 
 
 Slugs crawl and crawl over our cabbages, like the 
 world's slander over a good name. You may kill them, 
 it is true, but there is the slime — there is the slime. 
 
 MUSIC AT AN ELECTION. 
 
 There is nothing like music to bring folks up to the 
 poll. Fools are always led by the ears. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. I47 
 
 MOTHER EARTH. 
 
 The earth, like dear old Eve, is always a mother to us ; 
 whereas when men deal with men, how often do they go 
 to work like so many Cains and Abels, only they use 
 thumping lies instead of clubs. 
 
 MONEY. 
 
 Scholars, when they want to raise man above the mon- 
 key — heaven forgive the atheists ! — call him a laughing 
 animal, a tool-making animal, a cooking animal. They 
 have all missed the true description ; they should call him 
 a coining animal. 
 
 LYING IN STATE. 
 
 Ostrich feathers, — Genoa velvet, — and an "unparal- 
 leled cofBn ! ! ! " Well, when we remember what coffins 
 hold at the best, such a show is rightly named; it is 
 " Lying in State," and nothing better. 
 
 MAY-DAY. 
 
 To-day is May -day. Did ever God walk the earth in 
 finer weather ? And how gloriously the earth manifests 
 the grandeur of the Presence ! How its blood dances 
 and glows in the splendour ! It courses the trunks of 
 trees, and is red and golden in their blossoms. It spar- 
 kles in the myriad flowers, consuming itself in sweetness. 
 Every little earth-blossom is as an altar burning incense. 
 The heart of man, creative in its overflowing happiness, 
 finds or makes a fellowship in all things. The birds have 
 passing kindred with his winged thoughts. He hears a 
 stranger, sweeter triumph in the skyey rapture of the 
 lark ; and the cuckoo — constant egotist ! — speaks to him 
 
148 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 from the deep, distant wood, with a strange swooning 
 sound. All things are living, a part of him. In all he 
 sees and hears a new and deep significance. In that 
 green pyramid, row above row, what a host of flowers ! 
 How beautiful, and how rejoicing ! What a sullen, soul- 
 less thing the great pyramid to that blossoming chestnut ! 
 How different the work and workmen ! A torrid monu- 
 ment of human wrong, haunted by flights of ghosts that 
 not ten thousand thousand years can lay — a pulseless car- 
 case built of sweat and blood to garner rottenness. And 
 that pyramid of leaves grew in its strength, like silent 
 goodness, heaven blessing it : and every year it smiles, 
 and every year it talks to fading generations. What a 
 congregation of spirits — spirits of the spring ! — is gath- 
 ered, circle above circle, in its blossoms ; and verily they 
 speak to man with blither voice than all the tongues of 
 Egypt. 
 
 SCHOOL GIRLS. 
 
 Dear little things ! we never see their line of bonnets 
 that we do not drop plumb and fathom down in contem- 
 plation. We ask it of Time — sweet little girls ! where, 
 at this moment, are your husbands ? How many of them 
 are playing at top, wholly thoughtless of the blessings 
 blossoming for them ? How many trundle the hoop, and 
 dream not of the wedding-ring that even now may be 
 forged for them ? How many fly their long-tailed kites, 
 without a thought of coming curl-papers ? How many, 
 heedless of the precious weight of matrimony, are taught 
 to " knuckle down," like boys at marble ? 
 
 EVENING. 
 
 The day is closed, for evening has stolen, like a pensive 
 
JERKOLD'S WIT. 149 
 
 thought, upon us ; the moon hangs, a silver shield in 
 heaven, and the nurse nightingale sings to the sleeping 
 flowers. 
 
 BOARDING-SCHOOLS. 
 
 We know not how it is, but we have always felt a 
 particular respect for boarding-schools for young ladies. 
 We have a knack of looking upon such abiding-places as 
 great manufactories of the domestic virtues — as the salt- 
 cellars of a vain and foolish world. We are, moreover, 
 prone to consider them as towers and castles — whence 
 (as in the precious old times) young ladies walk forth, 
 their accomplishments breaking like sunbeams about 
 them, to bless, elevate, and purify ungrateful, wayAvard, 
 earthly man. 
 
 THE SMILING SUN. 
 
 The sun seems to smile more sweetly on truth flourish- 
 ing in beauty. 
 
 THEORY AND PRACTICE. 
 
 Man, as a lover, professes to admire the theory of 
 knowledge in all its matters of filigree. As a husband, 
 he demands the sternness of practice. He who with his 
 affianced will talk of mounting to the stars, when married 
 will expect his wife to descend to the affairs of the 
 kitchen. 
 
 YES AND NO. 
 
 For good or evil, the giants of life. 
 
 man's vulnerable POINT. 
 
 From the very weakness of woman may we expect the 
 
150 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 greater strength. The weapons to subdue man are not 
 to be found in the library, but in the kitchen ! The 
 weakest part of the crocodile is his stomach. Man is a 
 crocodile. 
 
 A SLIGHT DIFFERENCE. 
 
 Jerrold was describing the sordid avarice of a certain 
 Hebrew bill-discounter. He said : " The only difference 
 
 between Moses and Judas Iscariot is that Moses 
 
 would have sold our Saviour for more money." 
 
 FLAX AND LATTREL. 
 
 This fellow, with a lacquer look of false mirth, lived for 
 a month and more on counterfeit half-crowns, his own 
 base-begotten copper ones. He is badged, and chained, 
 and stamped most infamous. Be it so. He wears in his 
 cap the sprig of flax ; his garland is of hempen make. 
 And now we open the book of history. Here in a few 
 years are twenty false half-crown coiners ; but then their 
 own crowns are gold — crowns, placed upon their conse- 
 crated heads by sweet religion. Yet only to think of the 
 copper they have put off upon the unwary as the true 
 metal — as coined wealth. But then, again, they poured 
 it in a shower upon thousands, and did not, with felon 
 aspect, sidle to a counter, with one base bit to rob a 
 baker of a roll. And so, one crowned counterfeitmonger 
 shall be called the Great ; he shall wear the laurel, and 
 the half-crown felon bear the flax. 
 
 THE BOOK OF GLORY. 
 
 The leaves smell of rottenness. And yet how beauti- 
 fully they are written, and flourished over, and illuminated 
 with colours celestial. Here is a man, crowned, sceptred, 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 151 
 
 robed, and called the Great. And wherefore ? Feigning 
 a wrong, he broke into ten thousand thousand houses ; 
 and as no divine constabulary thought fit to arrest him, 
 the mightiness of his mischief was the measure of his 
 fame. He is crowned with laurel, and called the Great. 
 Surely there is a school whereat angels might minister as 
 teachers ; a school with only one lesson to be taught, and 
 that the proper way to spell that mis-spelt syllable 
 " great." How many centuries have we boggled at it ; 
 the devils themselves enjoying our miserable duncehood ! 
 
 BABYHOOD. 
 
 We are profoundly convinced that the first year of a 
 child's life is the most tremendously important of any 
 succeeding twelvemonth, though the creature shall num- 
 ber threescore and ten. Consider the blank sheet of 
 paper with which the head of every baby, according to 
 the philosopher, is lined. Think of it, and shudder when 
 you see nurses and nursemaids writing their pothooks and 
 hangers upon it, as though they wrote with rolling-pins, 
 or, at the best, wooden skewers ! Poor human papyrus ! 
 How many after-scratchings and cuttlefish-rubbings it 
 shall take to scratch and rub out the marks — that, after 
 all, may never wholly be effaced, but remain dingy and 
 dark under snow-white hairs ! 
 
 England's wooden ttalls. 
 Did you ever, on a summer's day, rocked and dream- 
 ing on the shining sea, look upon those well-sung walls, 
 until, the fancy working, they have returned to their first 
 green life ? The oak has budded, the masts have been 
 hung and garlanded with leaves ! Again, when the last 
 autumn gust is blowing, the last ere winter strikes in, 
 
152 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 growling his rattling joy, and the oaks, like uncrowned 
 kings, stand all new, yet proud in their disgrace — still 
 steaming, have you, then, changed oaks to ships, that 
 with a thought, the wood has swum ? Once more : when 
 spring has tipped the youthful oaks with green, have you, 
 with fantasy leaping from your heart, wooed thence by 
 the simple odour of the earth, smelling of unblown vio- 
 lets — have you felt the pagan thought, that haply with 
 these tender leaves, born of the acorn, child of a parent, 
 swimming in the sea, there went forth some strange 
 intelligence with old forefather oaks, exiled and floating 
 in the Indian main ? 
 
 THE GROWTH OF A SHIP. 
 
 This piece of ship anatomy was a few months since the 
 home of singing birds ; and its green leaves danced and 
 twinkled to their music. And now, though stripped and 
 seeming dead, it will live a gallant life ; it will feel a 
 noble sympathy with giant being ; it will pulsate to the 
 billow ; it will be a portion of a living ship ; a beautiful 
 and fearful thing, full-breasted, robed in flowing snow ; a 
 thing where grace and mightiness marry, and are indi- 
 visibly harmonized. The growth of a ship ! The growth 
 of a human thing ! Why, it is alike. The earth and 
 sky — all the elements have done their ministering, nurs- 
 ing the primal germ. And then as the babe is to the 
 man, so is the timber to the craft. The child becomes an 
 honest trader, or a sinful thief. The oak swims as a 
 merchant, or plunders as a buccaneer.' 
 
 eve's first sin. 
 How fortunate for the success of man that woman first 
 pressed her pearls in that apple ! For ever since — 
 
JEKROLD'S WIT. I53 
 
 shocked by that original wrong inflicted upon us — we 
 have eaten our apple with a proud defiance. Peeling it 
 with a golden knife, and giving the mere outside — the 
 tough dull rind — to the weaker creature, we have mag- 
 nanimously remembered to take all the best of the pulp 
 to ourselves. 
 
 THE STRENGTH OF WOMAN. 
 
 Is it not wonderful that, down to the present time, 
 women have really never discovered their own tremen- 
 dous strength ? They have only to be of one accord, 
 and in some hundred years at most, the human race 
 would fade clean from the earth, fade like an old multi- 
 plication sum from a school-boy's slate. And this truth is 
 either so profound, that, like a well sunk to the anti- 
 podes, woman is afraid to look into it — her little head 
 would turn so giddy at the very brink — or, by some acci- 
 dent, it is one of the wells of truth (and she has many) 
 that Rebecca has not yet discovered. 
 
 THE BIRTH OF A PRINCE. 
 
 Hark to the guns ! A strange fashion to welcome a 
 little wayfarer from the stars with such thundering 
 music. Unconscious little traveller! but half an hour 
 arrived at this caravanserai from a far-off home of mys- 
 tery ! An immortal jewel set in a piece of clay ! — An 
 eternal gem shut up for a while in a casket of red 
 earth ! 
 
 THE sculptor's REWARD. 
 
 For two years his heart has been pulsating in that bit 
 of marble, whence by degrees the wings of Cupid have 
 unfolded themselves — that crystal lump of stone has 
 
154 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 warmed with his daily doings, into winged life. The arms 
 and legs break from the block — the body throbs from it 
 — the clustering ringlets are shaken out — and the soul 
 dawns upon the Cupid's face, as light steals upon a lily. 
 
 BIRTHDAYS. 
 
 Men celebrate their birthdays as only so many victor- 
 ies over Time, with not a recollection of the many good 
 gentle hopes and thoughts they may have wounded or 
 destroyed in the battle. 
 
 A BASE ONE. 
 
 A friend was one day reading to Jerrold an account 
 of a case in which a person named Ure was reproached 
 with having suddenly jilted a young lady to whom he 
 was engaged. 
 
 " Ure seems to have turned out to be a base 'un," said 
 Jerrold. 
 
 A "diamond in the sky." 
 A new star is discovered — another diamond upon the 
 frontlet of eternity, and unborn millions are inheritors of 
 the glory of its knowledge. 
 
 THE HEIGHT OF DEPRAVITY. 
 
 A gentleman of a somewhat ardent temperament paid 
 great attention to his pretty servant in the absence of his 
 wife. The good wife, before leaving London, had made a 
 store of pickles and preserves, that were to adorn her 
 table till the following year. But the husband, taking 
 Time vigorously by the forelock, shared the sweets of the 
 year with the temporary object of his affections. When 
 the wife returned, the pickle-jars were empty. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 155 
 
 « Conceive his baseness, my dear," said the injured wife 
 to a female friend,—" he not only destroyed my peace of 
 mind, but with a depravity that makes one shudder, he 
 actually ate all my pickles." 
 
 In the following spring Jerrold met *the husband and 
 wife in Covent Garden Market, walking lovingly. 
 
 Jerrold— ^ointmg to a sieve of young walnuts—" Go- 
 ing to do anything in this way this year ? " 
 
 THE TONGUE OF RUMOUR. 
 
 Tubal Cain must have turned pale when he first tried 
 the scale upon the first trumpet made for Rumour, who, 
 when the world was thinly peopled, could do all she 
 willed by unassisted sound of mouth. 
 
 A PERFECT EXPLANATION. 
 
 Speaking of an ex-pubUcan, a friend said to Jerrold :— 
 " My dear fellow, he has no head." 
 "That's easily explained," Jerrold replied; "he gave 
 it all away with his porter." 
 
 A PUa NOSE. 
 
 One of those charming, almost eatable pugs ; dear little 
 knobs, especially made for men to hang their hearts, like 
 hats, upon. 
 
 BOZ'S BOSWELL. 
 
 Some friends were talking with Jerrold about an emi- 
 nent literateur, who was a devoted admirer, and constant 
 companion, of Charles Dickens. 
 
 " In fact," said one of the friends, " he is to Dickens 
 what Boswell was to Johnson." 
 
 « With this difference," Jerrold replied, " that ■ 
 
 doesn't do the Boz well." 
 
156 JEKROLD'S WIT. 
 
 A POOR-LAW OFFICER. 
 
 A worthy who holds the coin of the parish as " the 
 instrumental parts of his religion ; " a man who can nose 
 a pauper as a bloodhound snufFs a runaway African. 
 
 THE AUTHOR OF " ION." 
 
 " Well, Talfourd," said Jerrold, on meeting the late 
 eminent judge and author one day near Temple Bar, 
 *• have you any more Ions in the fire ? " 
 
 THE ORDER OF LITERATURE. 
 
 Literature has its order ; and bitterly, most bitterly, do 
 those who, forgetful of its true dignity, seek for extraneous 
 importance in the masquerade of fortune — bitterly do 
 they expiate the treason. For to them it is but a mas- 
 querade ; a finery to be worn too often with an aching 
 heart ; a finery to be in part paid for by misery and moral 
 degradation. 
 
 THE ESTATE OF THE MIND. 
 
 There are estates in this merry England held by single 
 owners — estates which a good horseman could scarcely 
 cover between sunrise and sunset. How glorious the 
 scenes ! What majestic woods — temples for time itself! 
 What bright and bounteous waters ! What hills, golden 
 and waving with the triumphs of the sower ! What 
 varying richness of hill, dale, forest, and flood ! And all 
 this belongs to one man. But are there no other estates 
 as true (albeit not as tangible) as the earthly domain of 
 the earthly noble? Give him a few sheets of paper, and 
 in a few days or weeks a noble of another sort will create 
 a domain which neither scrivener can convey nor usurer 
 
JEEROLD'S WIT. 157 
 
 seize upon. Here are woods never to be overthrown by 
 gambler's dice — corn-fields and meadows that defy the 
 ace of trumps, ay. all the honours, let them be packed 
 and shuffled with the rarest dehght. Eternity alone can 
 foreclose upon them. 
 
 AN HONEST BENEDICT. 
 
 He loved his wife in a plain, straightforward fashion ; 
 and as he was never lavishly tender to her before com- 
 pany, there is the greater reason to beheve that he was 
 neither savage nor silent to her when alone. For some 
 married folks will keep their love like their jewelry, for 
 the eyes of the world ; thinking it too fine and too pre- 
 cious to wear every day at their fireside. 
 
 THE DIGNITY OF LETTERS. 
 
 There are men who in their souls would still wear the 
 liveries of titled wealth ; men who would degrade and 
 falsify the glorious attributes which God has bestowed 
 upon them, by aping the adventitious distinctions of the 
 mere purse. It is not enough for them that they are 
 endowed with the noblest, the proudest quality of the 
 human intellect — a power to arrest and dignify the mind 
 of the world — that they are enabled to hold a glorious 
 communion with their species, making to themselves in 
 ten thousand hearts, and from the solitude of their cham- 
 bers awakening, the finest sympathies of life : this glori- 
 ous prerogative is not sufficient ; no, they must doff their 
 Prosperous gown, lay down the charming-rod, and become 
 — men of fashion ! 
 
 A YOUNG lady's description OF A STORM AT SEA. 
 
 The sun went down like a bale of dull fire, in the 
 
158 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 midst of smearing clouds of red-currant jam. The wind 
 began to whistle worse than any of the lowest orders of 
 society in a shilling gallery. Every wave was suddenly 
 as big and high as Primrose Hill. The cords of the ship 
 snapped like bad stay-laces. No best Genoa velvet was 
 ever blacker than the firmament, and not even the voices 
 of the ladies calling for the stewardess, were heard above 
 the orchestral crashing of the elements. 
 
 A RUNAWAY KNOCK. 
 
 Douglas Jerrold describing a very dangerous illness 
 from which his daughter had just recovered, said — "Ay, 
 sir, it was a runaway knock at Death's door, I can assure 
 
 you." 
 
 woman's protection. 
 How beautifully has Nature, or Fashion, or whatever 
 it may be, ordained that woman-should never be without 
 pins. Even as Nature benevolently guards the rose with 
 thorns, so does she endow woman with pins ; a sharp 
 truth not all unknown to the giddy and frolicsome. 
 
 A HAPPY SUGGESTION. 
 
 "When Jenny Lind gave a concert to the Consumption 
 Hospital, the proceeds of which concert amounted to 
 £1,776 155., and were to be devoted to the completion of 
 the building, Jerrold suggested that the new part of the 
 hospital should be called " The Nightingale's Wing." 
 
 A CONSOLING THOUGHT. 
 
 There is no trouble, however great, that has not in the 
 core of its very greatness some drop of comfort ; for the 
 human heart, like a bee, will gather honey from poison- 
 ous blossoms. 
 
JEEROLD'S WIT. 159 
 
 LOCAL ACTS. 
 
 The statutes are too often the beautiful fictions, whilst 
 local acts are the wicked realities of English government. 
 The law of the land is a fine, gracious, humanizing 
 presence ; but, unfortunately, there is a smart, shrivelled, 
 malign-eyed imp, called Local Act, active and most potent 
 m all sorts of mischief. 
 
 THE DRUM DRUMMED OUT. 
 
 Mighty is the drum, raising as it does a lust of glory 
 in the Christian's heart, stirring him to slaughter, and 
 making bloodshed beautiful ; sending him forth a terrible 
 reaper in the fields of carnage, and smearing him with 
 human gore as earth's best painting ! And yet the drum 
 — though beat by a destroying angel — sounds not so 
 musical to us as the panting and snorting of the railway- 
 engine. The piston is a more noble weapon than the 
 sword — the whirl and rush and thunder of the train 
 grander, more truly sublime, more suggestive of all that 
 ennobles man in his purest thoughts and deepest sympa- 
 thies towards his fellow, than the tramp and measured 
 step of glistening thousands, shaking the earth they too 
 soon are about to defile with fire and sword. 
 
 A LIFE OF REPOSE. 
 
 An existence to which the tongue of woman becomes 
 silent as echo, when not spoken to. Dear Echo ! that, 
 lady-like, always has the last word. 
 
 A PAUPER. 
 
 What a concentration of all human infamy is in the 
 word! What an object for English respectabihty to 
 
160 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 shun, to flee, to pluck its purple robe from, to look warily 
 at its fine linen ruffle, lest the leper should have jostled 
 against it and left some mortal abomination there ! 
 
 THE ENGINEER. 
 
 The engineer is in our eyes something more human- 
 izing than the soldier: borne onward by the sublime 
 energy of the thing of his creation ; harnessing, so to 
 speak, the very elements to his use, and checking and 
 controlling them as might some magician of a fairy tale, 
 he sweeps from place to place, distributing in his way all 
 the gentler influences of civilization, and knitting more 
 closely together the family of man, by teaching them the 
 strength, the value, and what is more than all, the abound- 
 ing peacefulness of a wise union. 
 
 THE VIRTUES OF THE KITCHEN. 
 
 In this our harlequin-coloured life, no young lady 
 knows to what far land fate may call her. The first 
 mandarin of the first peacock's feather — the sultan of 
 both the Turkeys — the emperor of Morocco — each may 
 be caught by his national dish ; and therefore no young 
 woman's education should be thought complete who had 
 not made a Cook's voyage round the globe. 
 
 THE VIRTUES OF BRASS. 
 
 The sympathies of human nature are mysteriously 
 touched by the sounds of a trumpet; brass is the greatest 
 essential to human civilization. The trumpet is at once 
 the voice of pomp and of imposture. It cries forth the 
 glory of a crown and publishes the whereabout of a fire- 
 eater. It is in its excellence the music that keeps the 
 civilized world together. It has a voice that calls upon 
 
JERKOLD'S WIT. 161 
 
 all hearts, whether the thing to be seen is a royal proces- 
 sion or a wax-work. What would be a monarchy with- 
 out its trumpets ? Verily, a dumb peacock. 
 
 THE CHARM OP PROGRESS. 
 
 We would go no step backward, but many in advance, 
 our faith still increasing in the enlarged sympathies of 
 men ; in the reverence which man has learned, and is still 
 learning, to pay towards the nature of his fellow-men ; in 
 the deep belief that whatever change may and 77ii(st take 
 place in the social fabric, we have that spirit of wisdom 
 and tolerance waxing strong among us, — so strong that 
 the fabric will be altered and repaired brick by brick and 
 stone by stone. Meanwhile the scaffolding is fast growing 
 up about it. 
 
 TRIUMPH OVER EVIL. 
 
 We are rewarded for every triumph we make over 
 temptation. I will suppose there are many who have 
 struggled against the vanity of vain pleasures ; many who 
 have put down evil thoughts with a strong will ; many 
 who, after a long, and it may be, an uncertain conflict 
 with the seduction of the world, at length have triumphed. 
 I will put it to them, whether, when they have combated 
 and so prevailed against the evil, whether their hearts 
 have not softened and melted within them, whether they 
 have not felt within their bosoms a seraphic influence ? 
 They have so felt ; and so it will ever be. No sooner 
 shall they have driven from them the tempting demon of 
 pride, of vanity, of anger — no sooner shall the devil have 
 left them, than angels will come and minister unto them. 
 
 THE MUSIC OF THE NURSERY. 
 
 It is an astonishing truth — a truth little considered by 
 11 
 
162 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 man, when in his bridegroom lust he stands before the 
 ahar, for the moment manipidating the ring end of the 
 chain ere he fixes it, that there is no househohl noise like 
 the noise of a baby when determined to make a ruffian 
 of itself. There was not a macaw in Noah's ark that 
 could not have been silenced by Sliem's baby, had the 
 little one resolved to test its screams. 
 
 STEAM. 
 
 Let the man who lives by his daily sweat pause in his 
 toil, and with his foot upon his spade, watch the white 
 smoke that floats in the distance ; listen to the lessen- 
 ing thunder of the engine, that, instinct with Vulcanian 
 life, has rushed, devouring space before it. That little 
 curl of smoke hangs in the air, a thing of blessed promise ; 
 that roar of the engine is the melody of hope to unborn 
 generations. But now, the digger of the soil looks mood- 
 ily at that vapour, and his heart is festering with the curse 
 upon the devil Steam ; that fiend that grinds his bones 
 beneath the wheels of British Juggernaut. Poor crea- 
 ture ! The seeming demon is a beneficial presence, that, 
 in the ripeness of time, will work regeneration of the 
 hopes of men. 
 
 man's discontent. 
 From the very discontent and fantasticalness of his na- 
 ture, man is apt to look backward at what he thinks the 
 lost Paradise of another age. He affects to snuff the 
 odour of its fruits and flowers, and, with a melancholy 
 shaking of the head, sees, or thinks he sees, the flashing 
 cf the fiery swords that guard them ; and then, in the 
 restlessness of his heart, in the peevishness and discontent 
 of his soul, he says all sorts of bitter things of the genera- 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 163 
 
 tion he has fallen amongst, and from the vanished glory 
 of the past, predicts increasing darkness for the future. 
 Happily the prophesying cannot be true ; but then there 
 is a sort of comfort in the waywardness of discontent — at 
 times, a soothing music to the restlessness of the soul, in 
 the deep bass of hearty grumbling. 
 
 THE BEST JUDGE. 
 
 A lady said to her husband, in Jerrold's presence, 
 " My dear, you certainly want some new trousers." 
 " No, I think not," replied the husband. 
 " AYell," Jerrold interposed, " I think the lady who 
 always wears them ought to know." 
 
 nature's clockwork. 
 Beautiful is the regularity, the clockwork of nature ; 
 and certain and severe the penalty on man for playing 
 tricks with it. Though Bacchus himself lend you his 
 thyrsus, overnight, to advance the hands and post on the 
 hours, it is ten to one that in the morning you will have 
 a smart knock upon the head for your boldness; and 
 even if the knock be delayed — why, it is only deferred, 
 that it may pay itself with interest — all the knocks coming 
 down in after-years as double ones ; for Time, when it 
 trusts at all, takes huge interest of intemperance. 
 
 tea-table talk. 
 Turning the tea-tables upon man. 
 
 A JOKE WITH A TAX-GATHERER. 
 
 The tax-gatherer once said to Jerrold — 
 " Sir, I'm determined to put a man in the house." 
 Jerrold replied, with a laugh, " Couldn't you make it a 
 woman ? " 
 
164 't 'EOLD'S wit. 
 
 PATERNAL HONOURS. 
 
 Y^Q sometimes speak of a baby as if it were a sort 
 weio-h^ bestowed by fate upon a man for early hours 
 hunc^ <i conduct, 
 forty 
 
 THE MEASURE OF A BRAIN. 
 
 ifternoon, when Jerrold was in his garden at Put- 
 Oi -Jying a glass of claret, a friend called upon him. 
 1. • juversation ran on a certain dull fellow, whose 
 wealth made him prominent at that time. 
 
 " Yes," said Jerrold, drawing his finger round the edge 
 of his wineglass, " that's the range of his intellect, only it 
 had never anything half so good in it." 
 
 THE TIMIDITY OF BEAUTY. 
 
 It's a great comfort for timid men, that beauty, like the 
 elephant, doesn't know its strength. Otherwise, how it 
 would trample upon us ! 
 
 THE ZODIAC CLUB. 
 
 On the occasion of starting a convivial club, somebody 
 proposed that it should consist of twelve members, and 
 be called " The Zodiac," each member to be named after 
 a sign. 
 
 " And what shall I be ? " inquired a somewhat solemn 
 man, who was afraid that his name would be forgotten. 
 
 Jerrold. — " Oh, we'll bring you in as the weight in 
 Libra." 
 
 CARLYLE. 
 
 " Here," said Jerrold, having objected to Carlyle, that 
 he did not give definite suggestions for the improvement 
 of the age which he rebuked — " here is a man who beats 
 
JERROLD'S W -• 167 
 
 a big drum under my windows, and when I com. 
 
 down stairs, lias nowhere for me to go." 
 
 ;^ family 
 
 PATIENCE. 
 
 Patience is a virtue, peculiarly a female virtt. -• 
 though it is greatly encouraged, it meets with so 
 reward. ^arly 
 
 RED REPUBLICANISM. lisics, 
 
 es m 
 
 A wild republican said, profanely, that Louis 
 was next to our Saviour. ' 
 
 " On which side ? " Jerrold asked. 
 
 A DRINKER. 
 
 The man had a loose, potatile look. It was plain that 
 his face, like hothouse fruit, had ripened under a glass. 
 
 AN AWFUL WEAPON. 
 
 Somebody told Jerrold that a friend of his, a prolific 
 writer, whom we will call Scissors, was about to dedicate 
 a book to him. 
 
 " Ah ! " replied Jerrold, with mock gravity, " that's an 
 awful weapon Scissors has in his hands ! " 
 
 THE BIRTH OF A PRINCE. 
 
 Jerrold was at a party when the Park guns announced 
 the birth of a prince. " How they do powder these 
 babies ! " Jerrold exclaimed. 
 
 RAPID PAYMENT. 
 
 " Is the legacy to be paid down on the nail ? " some- 
 body asked Jerrold, referring to some celebrated will 
 case. 
 
 " On the coffin-nail," Jerrold replied. 
 
- „ERROLD'S WIT. 
 RAILWAY V. CANNON. 
 
 have always been of the opinion that a hundred- 
 ,of iron, expended on a raih^oad, was worth a 
 
 ired times the value of the same metal used up in 
 
 -pounders. 
 
 A PLAT WRITTEN TO ORDER. 
 
 1 being told that a recently-produced play had been 
 done to order, Jerrold replied — 
 
 " Ah ! and it strikes me it will still be done to a good 
 many orders." 
 
 A HAPPY COUPLE. 
 
 They were proud, delighted with their chains. And is 
 it not a charming sight — a touching matter to think of — 
 to see married love, like the thief m the " Beggar's Opera," 
 dancing to the music of its own fetters ? 
 
 YOKED BIOGRAPHERS. 
 
 Carlyle and a much inferior man being coupled by 
 some sapient reviewer, as biographers, Jerrold ex- 
 claimed — 
 
 " Those two joined ! You cannot plough with an ox 
 and an ass ! " 
 
 PROPOSED EPITAPH FOR CHARLES KNIGHT. 
 
 Good Night ! 
 
 the' queen in state. 
 Her Majesty glistened with diamonds, as if she had 
 walked out of the centre of the sun ; and as for her voice, 
 it was as sweet and as clear as melted sugar candy. 
 
•JEREOLD'S WIT. jgy 
 
 COMMERCIAL GLORY. 
 
 A glory that wins the noblest conquests for the family 
 of man, for its victories are bloodless. 
 
 MATRIMONY IN THE CRADLE. 
 
 When one reads of the baby girls and boys sent yearly 
 into the world, spangling the earth plentifully as daisies, 
 it is a curious speculation to think how the wife lies in 
 the cradle, thoughtless of the tyrant who is destined to 
 enslave her ; and how the despot himself takes his morn- 
 nig pap, his white sheet-of-paper of a mind yet unwritten 
 with the name of her who may have in the far years to 
 sit up for him ; sitting and watching with the resolution 
 to tell him what she thinks of him, when, at unseasonable 
 hour, he shall return zig-zag home ! 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF THE DAY. 
 
 The growing spirit of our day is the associative spirit. 
 Men have gradually recognized the great social truth 
 vital in the old fable of the bundle of sticks, and have 
 begun to make out of what would otherwise be individual 
 weakness, combined strength. 
 
 RIGHT. 
 
 Right is a plant of slow growth. Yon can't tell how 
 long Justice herself was a baby at the breast of Truth, 
 before Justice could run alone. 
 
 A GRAVE REFLECTION. 
 
 How small it is for what it has to hold ! Nothing 
 packs so much, so closely as a grave, Lotty. Nothing in 
 the world so big, nothing so fine, that it will not swallow 
 
163 JEREOLD'S WIT. 
 
 All Job's camels and flocks, when Job flourished again, — 
 nay, all Solomon's temple — in so far as Job and Solomon 
 were touched, all went into a hole called a grave ; a hole 
 that, always swallowing, is for ever empty ! 
 
 HAPPINESS. 
 
 Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be 
 picked in strangers' gardens. 
 
 FAIRY TALES. 
 
 Nothing can be truer than fairy wisdom. It is true as 
 sunbeams. 
 
 THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE. 
 
 Fair is the morn, happy the bride and bridegroom. 
 They depart rejoicingly upon their pilgrimage, one money- 
 bag between them. How the sun laughs ; and how the 
 very hedge-flowers smile and twinkle as the pilgrims go 
 onward, onward! The money-bag hangs over the wheel. 
 Lovelier and lovelier shines the day, and bride and bride- 
 groom, lapped in sweet contentedness of heart, see and 
 think of nothing but themselves. They are all alone, 
 alone with their happiness. The flowers beneath them 
 send an incense-offering to their blissful hearts ; the 
 glorious skylark, ever above their heads, scatters music 
 down upon them. The day wears ; the sinking sun glows 
 with a solemn good-night ; and the hearts of the lovers 
 are touched and softened, yea, glorified by the hour. The 
 resting-place is reached. The wheel stops ! The money- 
 bag is light ; the money-bag has a hole in it ; for still and 
 still, turning and turning, the hole in the money-bag has 
 been ground by the wheel. And thus, thoughtless, care- 
 less of the future, insolent in our wealth, we may travel 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 169 
 
 onward, the hole in the money-bag, whilst we sport and 
 jest, and play the wanton — the hole in the money-bag 
 being worn by Fortune's Wheel ! 
 
 THE WORKHOUSE TEST. 
 
 What may be called a workhouse test is very often like 
 the test of an air-pump — an invention to test the duration 
 of vitality, and not to aid it. 
 
 woman's mission. 
 Woman's mission may be admirably indicated at a 
 husband's fireside ; in the rearing of children ; in those 
 offices of household wisdom, those noiseless unobtrusive 
 activities of domestic life, that make the home of the man 
 a temple consecrated to the affections ; a place of quiet, 
 cheerful happiness, let the world flounder and bluster as 
 it may without. This we take to be a part of woman's 
 mission, whether the woman rule in a palace or sit at 
 her own-swept hearth. 
 
 A TRUE PATRIOT. 
 
 Talk of your O'Connells and Smith O'Briens ! The 
 truly great illustrations of Ireland's genius are men hke 
 Dargan — men who work more than they talk ; who prom- 
 ise sparingly and perform prodigiously ; who appeal to 
 no prejudice and rouse no evil passion ; but go calmly on 
 with the daily task, offering everywhere the example of 
 industry covered with success, and developing on all sides 
 the energies of the people and the resources of the soil. 
 
 THE REWARD OF SELF-SACRIFICE. 
 
 Luther, in the depth of his disappointment, declared 
 the whole Protestant world to be nothino; in action but 
 
170 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 the Ten Commandments reversed. Had he known the 
 greatness of the struggle, with the smallness of the 
 reward, he would, he says, have remained a monk. And 
 all political and social history from time to time shows 
 the same spectacle : the old reformer, grey-headed in the 
 cause of truth and justice, lamenting, almost at the last, 
 the short-comings of stiff-necked generations. The man 
 has hoped and looked for self-sacrifice — total abnegation 
 of all that is personal, and sees nothing but a wind-puffed, 
 strutting vanity. He has yearned for simple earnest men, 
 and found human peacocks. 
 
 CORRUPTION IN A DOCKYARD. 
 
 Corruption is as common to, in fact a part of, a dock- 
 yard, as corruption is common to a dead dog, with the 
 full sun of patronage breeding all sorts of crawling things 
 for the benefit of place and political power. Corruption 
 is the common character of dockyards, even as vilest 
 odour is the common character of common pole-cats. 
 
 THE IRISH PRIESTHOOD. 
 
 In speaking of the classes of men from which the Irish 
 priesthood are chosen, they have been called hodmen. 
 Truly they are hodmen, with this further evil about them, 
 that they never seem so happy as when, in their function 
 of hodmen, they are helping to build some new Tower 
 of Babel. 
 
 THE ANATOMY OF FUNERALS. 
 
 A man's funeral may be morally anatomized, even as 
 a man's dead clay may be materially dissected. After 
 this fashion a dead duke may in his ashes be almost as 
 useful as the duke alive ; his Egyptian sarcophagus as 
 instructive as his robes and ermine. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 171 
 
 A HAPPY BRIDE. 
 
 How unsuspecting, beautiful she looks, in her tears and 
 smiles, April gliding into May, as the bride turns from 
 the altar to cross the threshold, a rejoicing married 
 woman ! 
 
 THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 A tree that should yield a common food to all men. 
 Taxes on knowledge are so many government dragons 
 chained about the tree ; monsters to guard the very fruit 
 that, by the confession of the state, is so sustaining, so 
 purifying, and having in it even celestial, immortal 
 flavour. 
 
 USELESS M.p.'s. 
 They are like clucking fowls upon chalk eggs ; they sit 
 week after week, but hatch nothing ; and having eaten 
 daily barley, will doubtless cluck to sit again. 
 
 THE ROMANCE OF THE BROADSHEET. , 
 
 After all, the newspaper is the real romance. The re- 
 porter deals with droller materials than the novelist. 
 
 A FELLOW OF THE COLLEGE OF QUACKS. 
 
 His patient dies. What says the quack ? " Die ! of 
 course. He took my pills, but forgot the great principle : 
 he didn't take enough." — " Enough, doctor ! Why he 
 took — yes, five hundred." — " What of that ? He should 
 have taken a thousand." — " Now I think again, it was — 
 yes, it was a thousand he took." — " Only one thousand ! 
 Only one ! If he had really wished to recover, he should 
 have taken two^^ 
 
172 JEKEOLD'S WIT. 
 
 PIGS AS SEEN BY THE CHTJRCH. 
 
 Pigs were created, not to yield bacon for ploughmen, 
 but for the higher purpose of supplying little pigs to 
 parsons. 
 
 THE SWINISH MULTITUDE. 
 
 In the heyday of my time that was the name for the 
 nobodies ; but where are the pigs now ? The swine seem 
 to have been raised upon their hind-legs, and are called 
 the masses — the million ! The pigs have absolutely 
 become the people ; though certainly not a few of them 
 are still made to wear rings in their noses, for fear they 
 should grub up by the very roots, the British oak, the 
 tree of the constitution. 
 
 NOISE AND MOONSHINE. 
 
 We have heard of a man, reasonable in all other mat- 
 ters, who declared that he had been ruined, all his vast 
 property swallowed, by an earthquake. But when asked 
 by strangers, " What earthquake — and where ? " the 
 ruined man, with a deeper look of injury upon him, 
 would reply confidentially, " That's it, that's just it. 
 That earthquake, sir, was most shamefully hushed up." 
 In the like way the approach of an old Tory's democracy 
 is very quiet ; it may, like the sign of the Red Lion, 
 have a very fierce aspect ; but somehow it never roars, 
 and it never strides on. 
 
 JOHN BULL. 
 
 Somehow John Bull seems to have so broad a basis, 
 with such a wholesome steadying quantity of lead in him, 
 that he may be likened to a well-known Dutch toy, that. 
 
JEKROLD'S WIT. I73 
 
 knock it to the right or left, or forwards, is sure funda-- 
 mentally to right itself, after a little rocking and rollino- ; 
 coming up and seriously sitting squat, the while it shows 
 the same jolly countenance, the same red and white in its 
 cheeks, and the like laugh at its mouth and twinkle at its 
 eye ; in fact, in all its aspect the same erect thing as 
 before the blow that sent it rolling and tumbling. 
 
 THE BISHOPS. 
 
 We would relieve them from the duty of sitting in 
 
 Parhament. We would take them from the House of 
 
 Lords, that they might wholly devote themselves to the 
 
 House of the Lord. And this removal is but a matter 
 
 I of time. The men, the elect, the chosen of the world, 
 
 I whose sacred task it is to teach their erring fellows the 
 
 ' hollowness, the worthlessness of the world's possessions, 
 
 1 against the besetting care for earthly substance — the very 
 
 I men who, with golden balance, should weigh our future 
 
 I hopes against our present lucre, these men are foremost 
 
 ' to higgle and battle for the advantage, and, with the 
 
 I eagerness and hubbub of chapmen of a market, to grasp 
 
 ! the market profit ! Truly, thus worn, the black apron, 
 
 I like charity, covers a multitude of sins. 
 
 THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. 
 
 I We know not — and we say it wdth grief, but with a 
 profound conviction of the necessity of every man giving 
 
 I fullest utterance to his thoughts — we know not in this 
 
 ' world of ours, in this social out-of-door masquerade, a 
 
 j more dreamy short-coming, a greater disappointment to 
 
 I the business and bosoms of men, than the Established 
 
 I Church. Its essence is self-denial ; its foundations are in 
 
 I humility, in poverty. Its practice is self-aggrandizement 
 
174 JEKROLD'S WIT. 
 
 ►and money-getting. Could the Apostles, in their old- 
 world attire, enter a London church, the beadle, with a 
 big look, would waive them from the pews, and motion 
 them down upon the benches. And the Apostles would 
 sit there, pitying the sleek pluralist in the pulpit, to 
 whom even Jacob's ladder has its rungs encased with 
 purple velvet to make the footing softer. 
 
 MR. DRUMMOND'S view OF THE SPHERES. 
 
 What, to the philosophic organ, is the music of the 
 spheres? Why, no other than Tantara-rara-rogues all! 
 It was in the original Adam ; not entirely composed — not 
 he — of fine red earth, but with a liberal admixture of 
 mud to temper his clay, and make him a thorough-going 
 rascal. As for Truth — if she ever lived — she has been 
 long ago drowned in her own well ; and only taints and 
 makes noisome the waters, that fools, in her name, draw 
 up in her long-relinquished bucket. Truth has taken 
 refuge in the parish pump, and only appears — and that 
 by proxy — when men are pumped upon. 
 
 THE GAME OF CHANCE. 
 
 Of all diseases none so virulent, so fatal, as the fever 
 of chance. And the pestilence walks alike on the course 
 of Ascot, bosom companion of titled men, as it crouches 
 even in doorways, bosom companion of beggars. 
 
 DEAD WARRIORS. 
 
 Great warriors fight from their graves. Let war rage, 
 and the very memory of a Wellington would be to us as 
 half an army, his immortal spirit flashing along our 
 ranks, and the battle-flag speaking with words whose 
 every syllable would be the pulse of the nation's heart. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. I75 
 
 A LESSON TO WOULD-BE ORATORS. 
 
 It is told of a would-be French orator that, to give him 
 confidence in the hour of trial, he was wont to rehearse 
 his maiden speech in his garden to a large assembly of 
 cabbages. And he got on admirably. Calmly consider- 
 ing the lines of cabbages, and by a slight operation of the 
 fancy, convincing himself that every cabbage was a sol- 
 emn senator, he would pour forth his speech as freely 
 and as limpidly as his gardener would pour out water. 
 At length the hour of trial came, and our orator rose, not 
 to cabbages, but to a human assembly. His lips were 
 glued together ; his heart beat thick ; he was icy-cold and 
 red hot ; and at length confessed to his inability of speech 
 in these words : — " Gentlemen, I perceive that men are 
 not cabbages." A wholesome moral, this, for stump- 
 orators ! 
 
 THE INSTINCT OF RIGHT. 
 
 When they themselves know it not, men's hearts will 
 work; a sense of right will sometimes steal upon their 
 sleep, and an instinct of goodness will gush forth like 
 silver water from the rock. 
 
 FULL-BODIED TEA. 
 
 A gentleman, when the cholera was raging in London, 
 complained to his landlady that the water with which she 
 made his tea, had a strong and unwholesome flavour. 
 
 " Well, sir," said the landlady, " I can only account for 
 it by the graveyard at the back of the house. The 
 spring must pass through it ! " 
 
 The lodger rushed frantically from the house, and 
 presently met Jerrold, to whom he communicated his 
 trouble. 
 
176 JEEROLD'S WIT. 
 
 Jerrold. — " I suppose your landlady thought you liked 
 your tea like your port — with plenty of body in it ! " 
 
 MORAL BLACKNESS. 
 
 Certain constituencies are to certain boroughs what 
 certain maggots are to certain cheeses — born of corrup- 
 tion ; — they live and wriggle in it. Bribery is their 
 inheritance ; and to be bought and sold, their birthright. 
 The white slave who sells himself has this distinction 
 from the negro bondsman of Virginia — he drives his own 
 bargain, and driving it, wears his black with a difference 
 — being black inside. 
 
 ELECTION AGENTS. 
 
 Agents of all sorts abound in merry England ! Bold, 
 unscrupulous, wary, jocose fellows — for there is a great 
 variety — all of them, after their own peculiar style, able 
 to manage an election ; potent to bring in — stating the 
 price in advance, and that too within a hatful of hundreds 
 — " their man." Now, these adroit thriving chapmen, 
 these purchasers of free-born Britons for the market of 
 Westminster — are the continuing curse of the boroughs 
 they trade in. They study the morals of the constituency 
 as a matter of business ; or rather, they contemplate the 
 condition of the voters as the election approaches, with 
 feelings akin to the breeders of cattle, as the Baker-street 
 exhibition comes on. 
 
 PEACE. 
 
 We love peace, as we abhor pusillanimity; but not 
 peace at any price. There is a peace more destructive of 
 the manhood of living man than war is destructive of his 
 material body. Chains are worse than bayonets. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. I77 
 
 A COINCIDENCE. 
 
 A celebrated barrister — a friend with whom Jerrold 
 loved to jest — entered a certain club-room where Jerrold 
 and some friends were enjoying a cigar. The barrister 
 was in an excited state, and exclaimed — 
 " I have just met a scoundrelly barrister ! " 
 Jerrold^ interrupting. — " What a coincidence ! " 
 
 SNAPDRAGONS. 
 
 Human, worldly life is a game at snapdragons ! Reader, 
 cast up a few of your acquaintance on your fingers and 
 thumbs, and say, — have we not propounded a truth subtle 
 as light, and " deep almost as life ? " Have we not, by 
 the magic of the sentence, brought to your memory the 
 pushing, elbowing, scrambling, successful folks, who, in- 
 tent upon the plums, have dashed their hands into the 
 world's bowl, and clutched the savoury fruit ? And do 
 you not now remember the weak and luckless, who have 
 been pushed and pushed away from the feast, who have 
 now plucked up heart, and tried to scramble to the bowl 
 — have now grasped the hot plums, have carried them 
 within hair's-breadth of their lips, — and lo ! they have 
 been suddenly jerked, or pushed, or elbowed hence ; the 
 plums have dropped from their fingers, and, dejected, 
 worn out, they have retired from the struggle, feeling 
 that it was not for them that plums were gathered and 
 the bowl was filled ? 
 
 WELLINGTON. 
 
 As known to the outside world — as contemplated in his 
 public position by Englishmen — the Duke of. Wellington 
 stood nobly, majestically in the eye of his country ; a man 
 12 
 
178 JERKOLD'S WIT. 
 
 to whom every year added dignity and moral influence, 
 for every year his practical mind made good some new 
 claim to the regards of his countrymen. And thus, year 
 following year, and claim following claim, the Duke be- 
 came almost a living institution in the minds of English- 
 men ; and time touched him so lightly, it may be said so 
 lovingly, that time, preserving him from decrepitude, 
 crowned and clothed him with what was simply venerable. 
 So for many, many years has Wellington been among 
 men ; so has he departed. So recently too has he been 
 associated in the mind of the country by his words as a 
 senator, and his familiar daily habits as a citizen, that the 
 Duke of WelHngton seems not so much to have died as 
 to have ceased. But such men die not, neither do they 
 cease ; for their examples, their deeds, are vital, and for 
 all time beget a kindred greatness. The Duke somehow 
 became symbolized in the English mind as the invincible 
 genius of the country — the embodied assurance to all 
 men of the might, the forethought, and the serene gran- 
 deur of Britain. The popular memory of the past was 
 enshrined in him, and with the past the confiding hope- 
 fulness of the future. 
 
 The Duke almost appeared in his own person — quiet, 
 unostentatious as he was in his citizen whereabout — a 
 guarantee of destiny ; the pledge of fate, that which had 
 been, and was, would be ; an assurance of the continuing 
 genius that still and still developed with generations ; the 
 genius that has made England invincible and will keep 
 her so. We admire men who are enthusiastic in their 
 calling. It matters not whether the man be a Stephen- 
 son, mighty creator of tubular bridges ; a Jeremiah Sneak, 
 maker of pins ; we admire men who are earnest, for being 
 so unflinching in the vindication of the dignity of their 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 179 
 
 business. The scavenger could admire his brother scav- 
 enger, strong and able at the rough work ; but despised 
 him when he neglected the nice delicacy of hand that 
 " sweeps round a post." 
 
 AN INGENIOUS LATCH-KEY. 
 
 A popular writer began a series entitled " The Latch- 
 key," in two or three new publications. But each foiled 
 before the series was half finished. 
 
 " Tut," said Jerrold, " that latch-key seems to be made 
 to open and shut any publication." 
 
 ILL-USED MERIT. 
 
 There are some people who think public men very like 
 oranges, with no self-renewing power ; squeeze them well, 
 and then fling them away. 
 
 PIG WIT. 
 
 " Give a dog a bad name and "hang him," says the old 
 saw ; now certainly the worst and the shortest name to 
 give him is— wit. Men of wit and genius, it is said, are 
 incapable of figures— it is only dulness that can master 
 arithmetical combinations. The only animal that becomes 
 a genius by counting is — a pig. 
 
 MONUMENTS. 
 
 Men in honouring greatness by erecting to it monu- 
 ments, do not pay greatness a debt in full of all demands, 
 so much as acknowledge their continuing obligation 
 to it. 
 
 A COMMON WANT. 
 
 In the midst of a stormy discussion, a gentleman rose 
 
180 JEREOLD'S WIT. 
 
 to settle the matter in dispute. Waving his hands majes- 
 tically over the excited disputants, he began : — 
 
 " Gentlemen, all I want is common sense " 
 
 " Exactly," Jerrold interrupted, " that is precisely what 
 you do want ! " 
 
 The discussion was lost in a burst of laughter. 
 
 A PATTERN OF BENEVOLENCE. 
 
 He was so benevolent, so merciful a man, that, in his 
 mistaken compassion, he would have held an umbrella 
 over a duck in a shower of rain. 
 
 CHEAP WEDDING-RINGS AND DEAR DIVORCES. 
 
 At how small a price may the wedding-ring be placed 
 upon a worthless hand ; but, by the beauty of our law, 
 what heaps of gold are indispensable to take it off! 
 
 " I WAS THINKING." 
 
 An eminent artist, celebrated for his love of discussion, 
 paused once in the middle of one of his speeches ; then 
 said, — 
 
 " I was thinking." 
 
 " Thinking ! impossible ! I don't believe it," Jerrold 
 replied. 
 
 THE BRITISH OAK. 
 
 Thank God ! a British man-of-war is an ark of refuge ! 
 The British oak is sacred wheresoever it may float. Still 
 a part of England — still it carries with it the blessings of 
 the English soil that developed the forest giant from the 
 acorn — in its slow growth, and vastness, and unbending 
 strength, a glorious type of English freedom. Float where 
 it may, produced by English earth and nurtured by Eng- 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 181 
 
 lisli skies, it is a piece of England, a part and parcel of 
 this glorious land, whose greatest glory is her protection, 
 of the hapless fugitive, and her stern, calm defiance of the 
 blood-sucking pursuer. The British ark floating on the 
 waters — ^how calmly defiant in its might — how serene in 
 its pride ! 
 
 THE LUXURY OF IDLENESS. 
 
 There are many idlers to whom a penny begged is 
 sweeter than a shilling earned. 
 
 GOLD IN THE DIRT. 
 
 Men are apt not to care how low they stoop, so that 
 what they stoop for may be worth the lifting. Throw 
 ingots and jewels into a cesspool, and what a crowd of 
 even the nicest and whitest-handed folks would scramble 
 for the scattered treasure ! 
 
 A CHRISTMAS CONSCIENCE. 
 
 Surely Christmas is a time when, smitten, stirred by 
 the great cause of Christmas, every man should cleanse 
 every cranny of his soul ; should — as housewives have it 
 — dust his immortal part ; brush down all the cobwebs 
 that keep the light out from between heaven and it ; kill 
 all the nasty spiders that for the last twelve months have 
 been spinning their sordid meshes to catch the " small 
 gilded flies," the shining vanities of the world ; and so 
 having made sweet and wholesome the conscience that for 
 the past year has been somewhat spotted and begrimed, 
 have it fit to entertam Christmas m — to give it a blithe 
 yet holy welcome. 
 
 ATTORNEYS. 
 
 Men with consciences tender as the bellies of alligators. 
 
182 JERKOLD'S WIT. 
 
 KNOWLEDGE AND COTTON. 
 
 Commerce is the teacher of civiHzation. Threads of 
 thought, lessons of human advancement and human pohcy 
 are spun at cotton-mills, and shipped to instruct and civ- 
 ilize the heathen. With a cotton sliirt, the native Indian 
 enrobes himself with lessons, although for a time he may 
 have no knowledge of their influence. The cotton tree — 
 we speak it not irreverently — might be cultivated as the 
 Tree of Knowledge. 
 
 THE LAW OF WAR. 
 
 The law of war between nations, a law illustrated in 
 every page of history, appears to be this — that wars are 
 few or frequent in proportion to the destructive powers of 
 the arms in use. When the club was the only weapon of 
 attack and defence, there was no peace ; every knave had 
 his club, and club-law was universal. When the sword 
 and buckler took its place, war came and went with the 
 season. As soon as the harvest was sown, the Roman 
 went out against his neighbour or his neighbour advanced 
 against him. Gunpowder was a great peace-maker. If 
 with that invention war became more destructive, it ceased 
 to be the normal condition of mankind. It grew more 
 and more terrible — more and more brief. Nations felt 
 how great the loss must be of a collision, and statesmen 
 began to ask themselves if the possible gain would equal 
 the inevitable loss. No doubt, passion, ignorance, per- 
 sonal cupidity, often overleapt the bounds of reason, and 
 plunged all Europe mto horrors ; but the violence never 
 failed to obtam the reproach of public opinion — the brand 
 of history. And no ruler, however powerful, can dispense 
 with the moral support of public opinion ; and hence, 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 133 
 
 however warlike, the most passionate lover of war will 
 hesitate long, and resort to a thousand tricks, as Bona- 
 parte always did, rather than appear to Europe as the 
 open aggressor, the wilful shedder of blood. 
 
 VOTE-BUYERS. 
 
 There would be few thieves, were there not those eager 
 to buy the thieves' plunder. The purchasing receiver is 
 held to be worse than the robber. In like manner, the 
 gentleman candidate who buys the corruption of the 
 moral felon, is guiltier, a far more contemptible object, 
 than the salesman of his own independence. He may be 
 a person of most scrupulous honour, he may have a chosen 
 place in worshipful society ; but if he has chaffered with 
 the self-respect of men, tempting, and finally purchasing 
 them for his own purposes, like cattle, that man is a knave 
 and a traitor to his fellow-men ; and there is no amount of 
 rent-roll, no breadth of acres, that can lessen his knavery 
 — that can hghten his treason. 
 
 WELLINGTON AND NELSON. 
 
 The great ruling principle of Wellington was a sense 
 of duty. This sense shines bright and cold as a sword, 
 throughout his despatches, documents in which the inward 
 mind and heart of the man are graven as with a pen of 
 iron on a tablet of rock. As towards a soldier in the 
 field, we have not the same feeling of affection for him as 
 for Nelson on his quarter-deck. The popular ear has not 
 been gladdened with so many anecdotes of the general as 
 of the admiral. Wellington always seemed to be at the 
 head of his army — Nelson in the heart of his fleet. 
 
 THE BISHOP OF VINEGAR. 
 
 Oil is very soothing — but how conservative is the prop- 
 
184 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 ertj of vinegar! How good alike for pickles or for 
 priests, for cucumbers or for churches ! Hence is the 
 bishop of Exeter the ecclesiastical vinegar-cruet. There 
 is nothing he would not preserve in it — nothing, from a 
 dead church mouse to a dormant church trust. And the 
 acid is of the strongest — not vinegar that has been wine, 
 not small-beer vinegar, but strong biting acid from the 
 wood — acid that cuts the tongue as with an edge of steel. 
 And how has this particular acid preserved the man and 
 nourished the bishop ! Look at him ! What a monu- 
 mental record of acidity ! The very lines of his apostolic 
 face seem cut, bitten in — as the engravers say of aqua 
 fortis — with sharpness. 
 
 BETTING-HOUSES. 
 
 Betting-houses we look upon as something worse than 
 the wigwams of savages, where, in token of the victory 
 (whether won by cunning or by skill,) hang the scalps of 
 so many victims, ripped from the yet warm skulls by the 
 conquering barbarian. There is hardly a doorway of one 
 of these betting-houses that has not — could we but see it — 
 some horrid trophy — some bloody memento of the scalp- 
 ing of the English savage within — of the tribe of Black- 
 legs, a large tribe, and larger than the olden Chacktaws, 
 and widely scattered throughout this our Christian Lon- 
 don ; yes, scattered — some in drawing-rooms, some in 
 kitchens, and some in saloons. A betting-house is some- 
 thing like a den-of-ease to a gin-palace, starmg with pain 
 and ghttering with Dutch metal letters. 
 
 A MISANTHROPE. 
 
 He enjoys the corruption of human nature, as an 
 epicure enjoys venison long, long kept, and to his nose 
 and palate all the more fragrant, succulent. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. Ig5 
 
 CAMBRIDGE FLOWER-SHOW. 
 
 The floAver of all flowers at this exhibition was — 
 Bachelor's Buttons ! 
 
 MARRIAGE OF THE METALS. 
 
 Scene: — Room in Royal Institution. 
 
 Professor Smith. — " Very extraordinary ! I say, Jones, 
 have you read this ? No ! Well, then, the Post says 
 that the Duke of Wellington — the iron duke — is going to 
 marry Miss Burdett Coutts." 
 
 Professor Jones. — " Nonsense — it can't be true ! " 
 
 Professor Smith. — " But if it should be true, what 
 would you thmk of such a match ? " 
 
 Professor Jones. — " Think of it ? Why, with the duke 
 and the heiress, I would think it a most extraordinary 
 union of iron and tin ! " 
 
 MOTTO FOR DRAMATIC TRANSLATOR FROM THE FRENCH. 
 
 "Aut scissors aut nullus." 
 
 THE BILLET SYSTEM. 
 
 Certainly the English publicans are apt to be rigorously 
 treated by ParHament, as among the worst of sinners. 
 What can be more unjust to a certain body of men, than 
 to compel them, because they deal in victuals and house- 
 room, to give lodgings to soldiers and mihtia-men ? The 
 publican is a licensed victualler only to the civil part of the 
 community : to the army he is not a victualler licensed, 
 but a victualler compelled. With him the place he lives 
 in is always hkely to be in a state of occupation, and his 
 bar and tap-room given up to be sacked. Bad to the 
 publican is chalk, but nothing so bad as pipeclay. 
 
186 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 THE KNOWLEDGE OF PRINCES. 
 
 Princes always " evince considerable knowledge." If a 
 prince were made king of M. Leverrier's new planet, just 
 discovered, his majesty would at once " evince consider- 
 able knowledge " of all its plains and mountains, and a 
 very intimate acquaintance with some of the principal 
 inhabitants. 
 
 COURT FOOLS. 
 
 In the good old times, kings and statesmen kept fools. 
 It was something that even, and in its most wayward 
 hour, tyranny would listen to the rebuke of humanity, 
 when uttered by an " innocent." The bitter truth was 
 sugared with nonsense, and so swallowed. Had the 
 words of such fools more prevailed, haply the page of 
 history had been less stained with blood and tears. 
 
 THE BEST RULERS. 
 
 The kings and caliphs who in disguise have mixed 
 with the people, sharing their amusements and hstening 
 to their sorrows, have made themselves acknowledged by 
 their deeds as the very best and wisest rulers. They hve 
 enshrined in history, and their names through generations 
 glow in story, and are melodious in ballads. In like 
 manner, a future House of Lords, that, in its infancy, has 
 known the sufferings, and above all, the heroism, of the 
 working men, cannot but legislate in the noblest and most 
 benevolent spirit for the sons of labour. The fine porce- 
 lain of the world will really know something more of the 
 mere red Adam, and make juster laws for their brother 
 accordingly. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 187 
 
 THE BREAD-TREE. 
 
 Not without meaning is the beautiful superstition of 
 certain Indians, who have so holy and so affectionate a 
 regard for the bread-tree, that they have a legend that 
 the first bread-tree was formed from the dust of the earth 
 that made the first man. In this manner is exquisitely 
 symbolized the nature of bread ! It is a part and parcel 
 of humanity ; and he who would make bread scarcer and 
 dearer to the labouring man, commits an offence against 
 the very sacredness of man, persecuting him in his flesh, 
 his blood and his bones. 
 
 THE VrORKHOUSE PRISON. 
 
 A miserable sight — a hideous testimony of the thank- 
 lessness of prosperous man — is the rural Union, with its 
 blank dead wall of brick ; a cold blind thing, the work of 
 human perversity and human selfishness, amidst ten 
 thousand thousand evidences of eternal bounty. How 
 beautiful is the beauty of God around it ! There is not a 
 sapling, having its green tresses of June, that does not 
 make the heart yearn with kindliness ; not a field-flower 
 that does not, with its speaking eye, tell of abundant 
 goodness. The brook is musical with the same sweet 
 truth ; all sights and sounds declare it. The liberal love- 
 liness of Nature, turn where we will, looks upon and 
 whispers to us. "We are made the heirs of wealth inex- 
 liaustible, of pleasures deep as the sea, and pure as the 
 joys of Paradise. And our return for this, our offer- 
 ing to the wretchedness of our fellow-creatures, is 
 yonder prison, with its dead wall turned upon the 
 pleasant aspects of Nature, lest the pauper captives 
 within should behold what God has done for that 
 
188 , JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 world, in which, according to the world's justice, they 
 have nothinjr ! 
 
 THE GLORY OF THE DEPARTED GREAT. 
 
 Great prmciples are the unmortal heirs of great men, 
 as wicked ones are the enduring reproach of the iniqui- 
 tous. Light continually streams from some graves, as 
 mists arise from others. The glory of a dead Romilly 
 still darts along the path of living men, as the fogs from 
 the grave of the doubter Eldon do still arise, for all we 
 have done to purify and scatter them, and half suffocate 
 poor wheezing Practice in Chancery. 
 
 MELTING MOMENTS. 
 
 It occasionally happens that a bear afloat on an iceberg 
 drifts into a warmer latitude than the latitude of eternal 
 frost ; and as the iceberg melts and melts under the 
 increasing heat, the bear shifts and shifts, finding liis 
 footing passing from beneath him ; and at length howls 
 piteously, to know the dissolution of the iceberg must in 
 time occur. "VVe would not compare a minister of state 
 to a polar bear, nevertheless, even a Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, as he finds Parliament melting, and a disso- 
 lution inevitable, will sometimes change his music. 
 
 THE TURF. 
 
 The great plea for the turf is our breed of horses. The 
 horse ought indeed, to be both strong and generous, to 
 bear and yet forgive the atrocities that are placed upon 
 the noble animal's shoulders. 
 
 THE PEOPLE. 
 
 The millions that make the world, even as millions of 
 ants make an ant-hill. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. Igg 
 
 A TITLED MAGNIFICO. 
 
 He was a huge, gigantic nobleman ! When he rose to 
 his full height, his head almost, in his own belief — 
 knocked against the stars. He was amongst ordinary 
 peers what the fossil elephant of thirty feet high is to the 
 live elephant, that, of ordinary stature, peaceably eats its 
 carrot in the park. The duke woke and slej^t in his 
 pride, armed in it like the rhinoceros in its coat of mail. 
 In the oj)inion of his Grace, this visible world was ex- 
 pressly made for noblemen ; and it was not mere Adam, 
 but his Grace the Duke of Eden, that took possession ot 
 Paradise ! 
 
 PIGS AND LIONS. 
 
 Let us for a moment consider the increased value of 
 pigs as placed against the worth of lions and eagles. Let 
 us consider the superiority of the pig when considered 
 with even a royal lion or an imperial eagle. Put pig in 
 one scale and lion in another, and whilst every morsel of 
 your pig is a morsel of some value, more or less, your 
 lion, with the exception of his tawny hide, may be sunk 
 as so much offal. And then turning to the cost of the 
 keep of a lion. Consider the expense. How much beef 
 will the beast, with that rasp-like tongue of his, strip from 
 bullock's shins, and what the use of him, when gone the 
 way — the royal way — of even regal lions ! A carcase — 
 a foul, rank carcase — all his worth, and all his beauty, 
 just skin-deep. Flay him, and he is good for nothing 
 better than the imperial eagle that, living, lives a life of 
 prey, and dying, is garbage, even as the leonine offal. 
 How different the pig ! In his life he is quiet — we mean 
 of course when civilized, reclaimed from the savage kin- 
 
190 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 ship of wild swinishness — and in his death he is beneficent, 
 beautiful ! Consider the qualities of a dead pig ; think of 
 him in his great and luscious variety ; in his power of 
 hams ; in his conservative phase of sides of bacon. His 
 very blood is a fountain of plenty, and meanders into 
 puddings. 
 
 In every way, in even every smallest manifestation, 
 from bowels to bristles, what a worth and a blessing to a 
 man is a dead pig — a mere vulgar, mire-rejoicing pig, in 
 comparison with the stately, the terrible, the magnanimous 
 Uon! 
 
 COSTLY FUNERALS. 
 
 One of the great social evils is the foolish — in too many 
 cases the wicked — expense forced upon people by the 
 extravagant cost of funerals. The poor are made poorer 
 by the practice ; a calamity is made more calamitous by 
 increasing and perpetuating the privation that, with the 
 first blow, it inflicts. 
 
 A RECEIPT IN FULL. 
 
 " Whatever promises a man may make before mar- 
 riage," said Jerrold, "the license is as a receipt in 
 fuU." 
 
 PLACEMEN. 
 
 The people have been to placemen what dolls are to 
 scapegrace boys : things for wilful exj^eriment, to be put 
 up and flung aside, and now to have the bran poked out 
 of them, and now to be cast in a corner, and now to be 
 trodden under foot. But the times are changed. The 
 doU has become flesh and blood, and resolute and earnest 
 brain, no longer to be treated with the cold-blood, which 
 marked the conduct of bygone statesmen. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 191 
 
 davidge's death. 
 
 Daviclge, the avaricious manager of the Surrey Theatre, 
 died early one evening. A friend carried the news to 
 Jerrold. 
 
 " Hang it," said Jerrold, " I should have thought he 
 would w^ait till the half-price had come in." 
 
 A SMALL POET. 
 
 He bears the same situation to the poet as the kitten 
 with eyes just opened to the merits of a saucer of milk, 
 bears to the lion in his majesty, glaring athwart the 
 desert. There is the true Helicon, and there is such a 
 thing as the smallest of small beer over-kept in a tin mug 
 — with the dead flies in it. 
 
 A NATIONAL MOTTO. 
 
 " Ask for nothing but what is right, and submit to 
 nothino; that is wrong." This should be the motto of 
 every wise and every powerful state. There is more true 
 strength, more real and enduring power, in the end, in 
 that sentence, than in the destructive roar of broadsides, 
 in the mortal belcliings of artillery. 
 
 FREEDOM. 
 
 A wise freedom is an attribute of God. 
 
 THE CELT. 
 
 Talk not to us of the irreclaimable genius of the Celt : 
 in his mud cabin, under the influence of his priest, and 
 in the midst of ignorance, poverty, superstition, he is 
 what most other men would be in such cabins and under 
 priestly influence. But take him thence, throw light into 
 
 V 
 
192 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 his miiid, put food into his stomach, give freedom to his 
 thought, and a motive to his industry, and there is no 
 better fellow in the world. With his bellj full of food, 
 his priest a thousand miles away, liis wife happy at his 
 side, and the morrow not yawning at his feet like a felon's 
 grave, the virtues and genialities of the true Irishman 
 come out brightly ; and in a few years he is remarkable 
 among his fellows for his warm heart — ^liis ready mind — 
 his sympathetic tear; for the love of his cliilcben — 
 the steadiness of his industry — the freedom of his 
 thinking. 
 
 "born to greatness." 
 Certain families only have been born to government ; 
 there is an acknowledged breed of statesmen, even as 
 Lord Derby has an immaculate breed of game ban- 
 tams. 
 
 A SINE QUA NON. 
 
 A Lord Mayor without the show must be hke mince- 
 pie without brandy — turbot without lobster sauce — calf s 
 head without parsley and butter. 
 
 PLURALIST PARSONS. 
 
 Pluralists take the cure of souls as men take the cure 
 of herrings, at so much per hundred — with this difference, 
 that the soul-curers do nothing, and the herring-curers 
 fulfil their contract. We have no faith in these polypi 
 parsons ; pulpit things, with many stomachs and no 
 hearts ; no faith in them, not a jot of reverence for them ; 
 and the sooner the things shall cease to exist, the better 
 for the institution they deform and scandalize. 
 
JEKROLD'S WIT. I93 
 
 philanthropy's pets. 
 Every impostor rewarded, is a worthy poor man 
 wronged. We do not respect the philanthropy that has 
 its especial pets ; and yet those pets abound. 
 
 PUBLIC opinion. 
 
 A despised seed, which, although sown amid the scorn 
 and laughter and derision of society, grows into a tree 
 of strongest root and robust dimensions. 
 
 AN EPITAPH FOR "PROTECTION." 
 HERE LIES 
 
 PROTECTION: 
 
 IT LIED THROUGHOUT ITS LIFE, 
 AND NOW 
 
 LIES STILL. 
 
 DANGER TO THE STATE. 
 
 Weak and wicked is the principle that creates unneces- 
 sary danger, even if no evil come of it. A man may, if 
 it so please him, play tricks with a red-hot poker ; but 
 we would rather be out of the neighbourhood if he flour- 
 ished it in a powder-mill. 
 
 IRISH ANGLING 
 
 An Irish patriot angling for martyrdom does not realize 
 
 j the Johnsonian picture of a fisherman. There is not the 
 
 worm at one end and the fool at another. Nevertheless, 
 
 the angling is peculiarly Irish, inasmuch as Mitchell, 
 
 to c^tch gudgeons, baits with — a pike. 
 
 13 
 
194 JEEROLD'S WIT. 
 
 THE "watery element." 
 
 A certain number of emigrants having been presented, 
 by a Teetotal Society, with a banner depicting the four 
 quarters of the world, Jerrold wrote — " Europe, we are 
 told, is represented by the figure of a horse ; Asia, by a 
 camel ; Africa, by an elephant ; and America, by an elk. 
 We hardly think the selection very significant of tem- 
 perance. The camel, it is known, will take at one drink 
 enough liquid to supply him for days. The horse will not 
 refuse toast steeped in ale, or, as Comines tells us, a pail- 
 ful of wine ; whilst the drunkenness of elephants, with 
 the means and opportunities of obtaining arrack, is, for 
 the outward gravity of the hypocrites, a scandal upon 
 elephants in general. The elk, as representing America, 
 is perhaps the best ; inasmuch as we have never heard of 
 elks addicted either to sherry-cobblers or mint-juleps. 
 Still, in preference to the elk typical of America, the 
 Temperance Society might have adopted the whole hog. 
 We would suggest as figures for a future banner, neither 
 elk, nor horse, nor elephant; but frogs — bull-frogs in a 
 pond ; for they only muddy where they stir, and their 
 monotonous croak is of water." , 
 
 temperance brawlers. 
 Temperance is an admirable quality, even as peace is. 
 a blessing ; but somehow, as there ai^e certain men Avho 
 become public disturbers in the name of peace, so are 
 there teetotallers who make more noise upon water than 
 other men make upon wine. They have continual water 
 on the brain, and, hke an overflowing pump, it continually 
 runs out of their mouths. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. X95 
 
 time's annual shave. 
 Nutts^harher (loqaitiir). — As the clock strikes twelve 
 on the 31st of eveiy December, he takes up his scythe, 
 which is Time's razor, — and what that's stropped upon 
 'twould make a man's fortin to find out — for wliat cuts 
 like it, I should wish to know ! Well, he takes up his 
 I scythe, and holding himself by the nose, begins the opera- 
 tion. His glass is the Frozen Ocean, and he shaves by 
 the Northern Lights, Presently, like a new-born babby, 
 Time hasn't a hair on his chin. No ! I consider him a 
 nice smart young chap, with a ver^ clear face, a very 
 straight back, a merry twinkle in his eye, a sprig of green 
 i holly in his mouth, and quite ready to draw, wherever 
 ; he's invited, for Twelfth-cake, and dance with all the 
 
 women afterwards, 
 t 
 
 I TAMED ANIMALS. 
 
 I Not many years since, it was loudly declared that the 
 ^ people, as the mass, were not to be trusted in public mu- 
 : seums and public gardens. Nevertheless there has been 
 I a gathering of thousands in the Zoological Gardens; 
 I and up to the present hour, Mr. Mitchell, the secretary 
 j (to whose high intelligence and remarkable energy may 
 
 • be solely attributed the present magnificent condition of 
 
 i the gardens), Mr. Mitchell has missed nothing. Not a 
 1 single lion has been carried off. The elephant and the 
 ^ elephant's little one are where they were. Every hyena, 
 j if called, would laugh and answer to the muster-roll, and 
 \ every leopard purr to the voice of the keeper. No woman 
 j decamped with a live bird in her reticule, and no mis- 
 ; chievous urchin left the gardens with a rattlesnake in his 
 
 * pocket. Nay more, with this gathering of upwards of 
 
^96 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 twenty-one thousand, tliere was not a shrub despoiled, 
 nor a rosebush broken. Such is the moral teaching of 
 such visits. 
 
 CHILDREN OF THE STREET. 
 
 Wretched untended creatures, almost seemingly come 
 into life without human agency ; animals swarmed from 
 gutter? and dunghills, even as, in midsummer heat, myr- 
 iads of insects take their existence from stagnant pools. 
 In their infancy, in their babyhood, is the ignorance that 
 kills the soul of the future man— is the germ of the pas- 1 
 sions that make hin> grow up Uke a wild beast, hereafter ^ 
 to prey like a winter wolf upon the society that in his ' 
 infant need has despised and neglected him. 
 
 THE LITERARY FUND. 
 
 It seems that in seven years the donations and sub- 
 scriptions to the Literary Fund amounted to £6,703 Is. 
 Of this sum (not over-magnificent by the bye for a 
 wealthy country like England, being less than £1,000 
 a year) not less than £5,397 7s. 7c?. were spent in the 
 costs of collection and the annual dinners. Charity, it is. 
 said, covers a multitude of sins ; but then, in the case of 
 charity dinners, such as the above, the " covers " should 
 be dish-covers. 
 
 HATS. 
 
 Advices from Munich speak of the constructive treason 
 of certain hatters, who have furnished sundry young men 
 with Calabrian broad-brimmed hats ; the depth of their 
 disaffection to be measured by the circumference of the 
 felt. The young men were taken to prison, not for what 
 was in their heads, but for what was upon them ; not for 
 what they thought, but for what they wore. Hats have 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. I97 
 
 played a distinguished part in politics ever since men had 
 heads, Switzerland owes something to Gesler's hat. 
 After all, " uneasy lies the head that wears a crown," if 
 the crown be in fear of the hat. For somehow, sooner 
 or later, the crown — fine and glittering as it is — is sure to 
 get the worst of it. 
 
 THE FOUR GEORGES. 
 
 We have had four Georges, and can say nothing in 
 favour of either. George the First and George the 
 Second were average moralists of that corner-cupboard 
 court, the small court of Germany. Each of them 
 burned his father's will ; an act that might have savoured 
 of Tyburn in the case of vulgar mortals. George the 
 Third was constant to a leg of mutton, and a pattern of 
 the conjugal virtues ; but, as a set-off to this, he was 
 (could he help it?) the father of George the Fourth, 
 alias Mrs. Fitzherbert's husband. Thinking of this royal 
 ill-luck hanging about the name, let us not have another 
 George. 
 
 VELVET AND FUSTIAN. 
 
 There can be no doubt that of late years noblemen have 
 
 been more and more impressed with the belief that they, 
 
 noblemen as they are, are nevertheless the same animals 
 
 1 as workmen. Stars and garters are no amulets against 
 
 typhus fever. Lords have learned that even they have 
 
 I an interest — yes, a personal interest — ^in the comforts and 
 
 1 decencies of labourers. There is no coat of mail, no 
 
 magic in the woof of the earl's velvet, against the malady 
 
 slumbering under the fustian jacket. Disease and death 
 
 are the most tremendous preachers, striking on all hearts 
 
 with the affrightening force of a sudden knell. 
 
198 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 THE BALLOT. 
 
 Give ns the ballot, and the butchers' daughters will go 
 unkissed ; for how can you know how Mr. Chops will 
 vote? Give us the ballot, and candidates will not go 
 like licensed hawkers from door to door, humbly begging 
 that they may make known the contents of their pack of 
 principles, and be thereupon honoured with patronage. 
 Give us the ballot, and you give the death-blow to a cor- 
 ruption that too often, throughout whole boroughs, walks 
 the streets, poisoning — is it not so, O Canterbury? — even 
 the sanctity of cathedral places. 
 
 TRAITORS IN EFFIGY. 
 
 The Chief Justice of England having expressed his 
 belief that a deputation of merchants, bankers, and 
 traders of the city of London, who had been to Paris to 
 offer their congratulations to the French Emperor upon 
 a recent national event, had been guilty of treason, Jer- 
 rold wrote, — "Are we to have no satisfaction for the 
 affront passed upon the English nation by the late visitors 
 and worshippers who saluted the toe of the French em- 
 peror ? Certainly, on reconsideration, we become less 
 sanguinary, and should be sorry for the renewal of the 
 time that should promote three head? — a merchant's, a 
 banker's, and a trader's — to the height of Temple Bar. 
 Nevertheless, we would have certain of the deputation 
 punished, if not in the flesh, by effigy. For instance, 
 we would require of three of them a complete suit of 
 clothes each — a suit well known in the market and on 
 'Change — and these clothes, duly stuffed with straw, 
 should be surmounted by a mask, being a faithful like- 
 ness of Lord Campbell's traitors. These effigies — 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. I99 
 
 (think of the pain of pocket, the torture of the till, for 
 the prince merchant and the warm trader to be repre- 
 sented bv mere men of straw !) — these effigies should be 
 drawn on hurdles from Birch's, where the authorities 
 should take a basin of turtle (in historic imitation of the 
 last tipple that was quaffed in Tyburn ride at St. Giles's 
 Pound), then straightway proceed to the site of Aldgate 
 pump. There decapitation should take place, and the 
 heads for the space of two months should be exhibited, 
 even as in the olden times were heads of bone and flesh, 
 above Temple Bar ! There would be an especial mean- 
 ing in this mockery ; a sharp significance in this very- 
 flam. 
 
 AN ENEMY TO PROGRESS. 
 
 He would, no doubt, have opposed vaccination, as 
 interfering with the marked privileges of the smallpox. 
 
 THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS. 
 
 He was the incarnation of the Evil Spirit, permitted 
 for some mysterious end awhile to menace human pro- 
 gress — to check and paralyze the force and freedom of 
 human aspirations. At this age of the world, a sad and 
 sickening thought that it should be so ! To know that 
 even the merest outbreak of temper of one man may call 
 down misery and suffering on millions ! Thus thought 
 of, even the biliary secretions of a military ogre, such 
 as Nicholas, are matters of consequence to Europe. The 
 state of the world may depend upon one man's stomach ; 
 and thus it may be of the greatest importance to consider 
 what an emperor eats, or what an emperor avoids, for 
 supper. From pickled salmon and cucumber may break 
 forth a desolating war ! Fearfully and wonderfully are 
 
200 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 we all made ; but how fearfully, how wonderfully, when 
 the nervous system of one man is so intimately bound up 
 with a milHon of swords and parks of artillery. 
 
 READY-MADE WOOD PAVEMENT. 
 
 When the Marylebone vestrymen were discussing the 
 propriety of laying down wood pavement within their 
 parish, and were raising difficulties on the subject, Jer- 
 rold^ as he read the report of the discussion, said, — 
 
 " Difficulties in the way ! Absurd. They have only 
 to put their heads together, and there is the wood pave- 
 ment." 
 
 This joke has been erroneously given to Sydney 
 Smith. 
 
 BLACK AND WHITE. 
 
 A very pleasant sight to behold, those fair ladies who 
 curtsy their homage to the Queen on drawing-room 
 days, blooming and happy as though this world was to 
 last for ever, and the grave-digger was as fabulous an 
 animal as the unicorn. But grave thoughts arise from 
 the array of finery displayed. How many lives does it 
 cost ? To trim up the duchess, how many poor girls — 
 delicate, unformed creatures, in that transition state of 
 girlhood when nature demands free development — are 
 doomed, it may be, to an early grave ? How many toil 
 their sixteen hours a day ? Nay — how many work, 
 work, work, in close, contaminating air, throughout the 
 night, in a stifling room, that the peeress may blaze in 
 the perfumed atmosphere of a royal palace? Now, 
 these are thoughts that will arise from a passing contem- 
 plation of the dresses at the drawing-room. We see the 
 most fanciful, the most brilliant apparel ; we behold 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 201 
 
 female raiment in every beautiful form and fashion. And 
 looking a little deeply, we may see Death there — Death 
 the milliner. 
 
 A CONTRAST. 
 
 The Church of England is a church of purple and fine 
 linen, and a church of rags and tatters. Or we might 
 paint the Church, as an old pictorial moralist painted 
 Death and the Lady : one half all glowing plumpness and 
 beauty, fresh to the eye and more than pleasing to the 
 heart ; the other an outline of bone, a gaunt, naked mis- 
 ery. Or we might give the real thing ; for no fancy can 
 improve upon the actual wretchedness of contrast pre- 
 sented, by half-bishop, half-curate. 
 
 CONSCIENCE. 
 
 A man — so to speak — who is not able to bow to his 
 own conscience every morning, is hardly in a condition 
 to respectfully salute the world at any other time of the 
 day. 
 
 THE TWO BUSTS. 
 
 In a certain exhibition of the works of French artists 
 are two busts placed side by side — so close together, we 
 are informed, as almost to touch. One bust is that of our 
 Saviour, crowned with thorns ; the other is that of Louis 
 Napoleon, crowned with laurels. After all, there is 
 another and a deeper meaning in this juxtaposition of 
 heads — a meaning too subtle for blundering sycophancy. 
 We know that the Head crowned with thorns had at the 
 hour another head on each side of it. Well, Louis Na- 
 poleon (with the mockery of laurel) supplies the one ; but 
 as to which, let the reader furnish the interpretation ! 
 
202 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 THE INCOME-TAX. 
 
 The country puts up with the injustice, fed, not only by 
 hope, but by what makes a more tangible show — untaxed 
 food. Hope, with her anchor, smiling at heaven, makes 
 a very pretty picture for a mantel-piece ; but is all the 
 prettier for the eatables in the cupboard. The housewife 
 enjoys her hope all the more, if with it she can have cheap 
 sugar and cheap tea. And thus do we bear awhile with 
 a nqanifest injustice, mollitied by compensating good for 
 the present ; and by hope for future direct taxation. 
 
 CCEUR DE lion's HEART. 
 
 It has been suggested that, should Baron Marochetti's 
 statue of Richard I. be finally adopted as an enduring 
 memorial of the Crystal Palace, Richard's heart — buried 
 at Rouen — should be solicited of Louis Napoleon, to be 
 reinterred in England under the statue. This may be 
 accepted as the emperor's contribution ; who — if he can 
 find the relic — will no doubt very readily " down with the 
 dust." 
 
 MARTYRDOM. 
 
 No sacrifice so easy as to endure the martyrdom of 
 other people. Skin a martyr alive, and we can imagine 
 a beholder who, with the highest admiration for the hero- 
 ism of the sufferer, shall take a pinch of snuff and cry, 
 "Noble fellow!" 
 
 THE saints' SUNDAY. 
 
 If it were given to these saints — with souls in black — 
 to do what they list with Sunday, what would they make 
 of it ? They would surely mount even Jacob's ladder, to 
 hang the Sunday heavens with Sunday sackcloth. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 203 
 
 A NAME FOR NICHOLAS. 
 
 No potentate better knew the value of time, and how 
 its loss to others became a value to him ; no ruler ever 
 knew how to make more despatch or delay. Certain 
 kino-s have come down to us named after their habits, 
 virt'ues, personal excellences, or defects. We have 
 Philip the Bald, Wilham the Silent, Louis the Fat. 
 Now, Nicholas of Russia, by the political use he makes, 
 now of celerity, and now of procrastination, may, in de- 
 fault of any other title, descend to posterity as the Nick 
 of Time. 
 
 WORLDLY SUCCESS. 
 
 The face of the world is not apt to frown at success ; 
 no, it is too ready to break into smiles at any gigantic 
 prosperity, no matter how darkened the means by which 
 it was attained. 
 
 MAIDS OF HONOUR. 
 
 Poor, inanimate, unreal dolls, with just will enough of 
 their own to onen their eyes and shut them. 
 
 THE CAT-O'-NINE TAILS. 
 
 ' Surely the devil himself sows the seed that grows the 
 hemp, and the devil's demons twist it. 
 
 FIGHTING MEN. 
 
 Mahomet engraved texts of the Koran on the biood- 
 shedding scimitar; but surely "love one another "was 
 not written even on the sword of St. Peter. Let us pay 
 all reverence to fighting men— all needful honours. In 
 our transition state, they are our best guarantees of na- 
 tional freedom. But let us hope that the Gospel has a 
 
204 JERROLD-S ^MT. 
 
 brighter light thau that which gleams from bayonets. 
 Gunpowder is not the best frankincense. 
 
 GEORGE THE THIRD. 
 
 He was the anointed of obstinacy. Had he been bom 
 a fai'mer, he might haply have invented a new snare for 
 weasels, or have successfully given liis mind to the hu- 
 mane and dexterous treatment of boar-pigs at a critical 
 time of pig-Hfe. We had then escaped his statesmanship 
 in the blunder and the debt of an American war; for 
 which achievement he is immortalized in unchangeable 
 bronze before the windows of Ransom and Co., his pig- 
 tail pointing the way opposite to his head, the way of the 
 wise — due East. 
 
 QUEEN charlotte's COURT. 
 
 Cold and dismal court ! TVhy, the freedom of a white- 
 washed garret must have been happiness, joUit}- itself 
 compared with it. 
 
 THE cabman's sixpence. 
 
 Give a sixpence to a showman's elephant, and the 
 sagacious animal — its small eye wide awake to money — 
 at once knows the value of the bit of silver, and exchanges 
 it for buns. How much more sensible is the elephant 
 than- the cabman ! For lay a sixpence in the hands of a 
 cabman, and his look of ignorance is almost affecting. It 
 would seem that the coin was perfectly new to him ; that 
 he had no more notion of its value than if it were a shekel 
 struck in Jerusalem. 
 
 A COURT NOBLE 
 
 To him the court of England was no doubt more sub- 
 
JERPvOLD-S yvjT. 205 
 
 lime than the court of Solomon. Indeed, to climb the 
 back-stairs was to mount the true Jacob's ladder, that led 
 directly to the stars — and garters ! 
 
 THE LIMIT OF THE LAW. 
 
 Men will not be made temperate or virtuous by the 
 strong hand of the law, but by the teaching and influence 
 of moral power. A man is no more made sober by act 
 of parliament than a woman is made chaste. 
 
 POTTER GROTVS. 
 
 The eaglet must have time. The beak that, in due 
 season, will cleave a skull, at first has merely power to 
 chip the egg. 
 
 ROWING IX THE SAME BOAT. 
 
 " We row in the same boat, you know," said a literary 
 friend to Jerrold. This literary friend was a comic 
 writer, and a comic writer only. 
 
 Jerrold replied, " True, my good fellow, we do row in 
 the same boat, but with very different skuUs." 
 
 MILITARY CATECHISM FOR YOTSG LADIES. 
 
 Q. — "What is a soldier ? 
 
 A. — If in the infantry, a dear ; if in the cavalry, a 
 duck. 
 
 Q. — Who, of all men, best deserve the fair? 
 
 A. — The brave. 
 
 Q. — Why should a woman prefer a soldier above all 
 other male creatures ? 
 
 A. — Because he wears such a very handsome dress ; 
 carries gold upon his shoulders ; gold all over his coat ; 
 wears a sword at his side, and a love of a feather in his 
 helmet or cap. 
 
206 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 Q. — What is the noblest work of woman ? 
 
 A. — The work in regimental colours. 
 
 Q. — And when does she appear to the best advantage, 
 as the refining comforter of man ? 
 
 A. — When, having worked the aforesaid colours, she, 
 in an appropriate speech about glory, to the regiment, 
 presents them. 
 
 Q. — Describe your notion of military glory. 
 
 A. — A review in Hyde Park. 
 
 Q. — And laurels ? 
 
 A. — A ball, and supper afterwards. 
 
 "the best of husbands." 
 This is a very rare animal ; but he is to be found. 
 The existence of the unicorn has been successfully dis- 
 puted ; and that very handsome and graceful animal, 
 instead of being harnessed to Her Majesty's state car- 
 riage, as assuredly the species should be, could eight of 
 them be procured, is merely employed upon heraldic duty ; 
 namely, to support Her Majesty's arms. But the good 
 husband — let all our virgin readers take heart — is not 
 fabulous. We cannot, certainly, make out, with the 
 degree of precision that in things of value we love, his 
 habitat. We do not think the creature is to be found at 
 public masquerades, or billiard-rooms, or in soiled boots 
 dancing the polka at the Casino de Venus, de Bacchus, or 
 any other casino of any other disreputable heathen deity. 
 The habits, too, of the best of husbands vary with the 
 best of wives. Some are best for one particular virtue — 
 some for another — and some for virtues too numerous to 
 specify. Some best of husbands are always buying best 
 of wives new gowns ; some best, again, are continually 
 taking their better-best to the opera or play ; in fact, in 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 207 
 
 ten thousand different modes do the best of husbands show 
 their superiority to the second-best, and the middling, 
 and the fine ordinary, and those merely good for families. 
 But Mr. Brown, the best husband of the best Mrs. 
 Brown, did — according to that excellent woman — in the 
 most devoted manner, display the paramount excellence of 
 his marital qualities. Mrs. Brown herself, only on Thurs- 
 day last, informed her dear friend Mrs. Smith, of the 
 peculiarity that blest her with the best of men. Mrs. 
 Smith had dropped in to talk of nothing, and have a dish 
 of tea. Mrs. Smith had left her bonnet, muff, and cloak, 
 in Mrs. Brown's bed-room, and was seated at Mrs. 
 Brown's fire. Mrs. Smith put her hands to her head, 
 and softly sighed. 
 
 Mrs. Brown. — What's the matter, my dear ? You 
 don't look well ; nothing particular, I hope ? 
 
 Mrs. Smith. — Oh, no ! nothing. Only Smith again, 
 as usuah 
 
 Mrs. Brown. — Poor thing ! Well, I do pity you. What 
 is it? 
 
 Mrs. Smith. — Oh ! my love, that club. He wasn't 
 home till two this morning, and I sitting up, and — yes, 
 but you are a happy woman — 'tis no doubt, noWj that, 
 Mr. Brown 
 
 Mrs. Brown. — Bless you, my dear ! He was reading 
 the paper to me all the evening. 
 
 Mrs. Smith. — Ha ! Mr. Brown is a good man. 
 
 Mrs. Brown. — A good man, my dear ? If I were to 
 tell you all, you would say so. In fact, he's the best of 
 husbands ; and one little thing will prove it. 
 
 Mrs. Smith. — What's that, Mrs. Brown ? 
 
 Mrs. Brown. — Why this, Mrs. Smith. You wouldn't 
 once think it of the dear, kind soul ; but he's so fond of 
 
208 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 me, that all this bitter cold weather, he always goes 
 
 up first to bed, to warm my place ! Now, I call 
 
 that 
 
 Mrs. Smith (raising her eyes and folding her hands, 
 exclaims) — The Best of Husbands. 
 
 THE KIT AND FIDDLE. 
 
 " Well, what do you think ? " said Brougham to Sib- 
 thorp, *' we shall be just overrun with Tom Thumbs and 
 pigmies ; Scotland even threatens us to send us a whole 
 kit of dwarfs ? " 
 
 " With all my heart," exclaimed the great colonel, " she 
 may send us the hit, so long as she keeps the Jiddle." 
 
 A MAN OF DOUBTFUL ORIGIN. 
 
 Of a mysterious gentleman who spoke many languages, 
 and all equally well, and whose native country could not 
 be ascertained, Jerrold said, " It's my faith he was born 
 in a balloon." 
 
 TRUE PATRIOTISM. 
 
 The " new piece " was over, and the audience were 
 delighted. Jones sat silent and motionless. " How is it, 
 Jones," said Brown, " you do not applaud the new 
 drama ? " 
 
 " Brown," replied Jones, " I am an Englishman and a 
 patriot ; how then can I applaud these frequent successes 
 of the French?" 
 
 AN OBLIGING OFFER. 
 
 (A Chemist's Shop — Shopman and Old Lady.) 
 Old Lady. — Now, are you sure this is carbonate of 
 soda — not arsenic ? 
 
 Shopman. — Quite certain, ma'am, — try it. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 209 
 
 ABSENCE OF MIND, AND MONEY TOO. 
 
 " Call that a kind man ? " said an actor in the Hay- 
 market green-room of a mauvais sujet who was in the 
 habit of neglecting his kindred, — " a man who is away 
 from his wife and family, and never sends them a far- 
 thing ! You call that kindness ! " 
 
 " Yes, unremitting kindness," chimed in Jerrold. 
 
 A MORNING IN " THE BARBEIl's CHAIR." 
 
 Scene : — A Barber's Shop in Seven Dials. 
 
 NuTTS {the harler) shaving Nosebag. Pucker, Bleak, 
 Tickle, Slowgoe, Nightflit, Limpy, and other 
 custo77iers come in and go out. 
 
 Nightflit. — Any news INIr. Nutts? Nothing in the 
 paper ? 
 
 Nutts. — Nothing. 
 
 Nightflit. — Well, I'm blest if, according to you, there 
 ever is ! If an earthquake was to swallow up London 
 to-morrow, you'd say " There's nothing in the paper, only 
 the earthquake ! " 
 
 Nutts. — The fact is. Mister Nightflit, I've had so much 
 news in my time, I've lost the flavour of it — couldn't 
 relish anything weaker than a battle of Waterloo, now ; 
 even murders don't move me — no, not even the pictures 
 of 'em in the newspapers, with murderer's hair in full 
 curl, and a dress-coat on him, as if blood, like prime 
 Twankay, was to be recommended to the use of families. 
 
 Tickle. — There you go again, Nutts, always biting at 
 human natur. It's only that we're used to you, else I 
 don't know who'd trust you to shave him. 
 14 
 
210 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 Sloivgoe. — Tell me, is it true what I have heard — are 
 the Whigs really in ? 
 
 Nutts. — In ! Been in so long, they're half out by this 
 time ! As you're always so long after everybody else, I 
 wonder you ain't in with 'em. 
 
 Bleak. — Come now — I was born a Whig, and won't 
 stand it ! In the battle of the constitution, arn't the Whigs 
 always the foremost ? 
 
 Nutts. — Why, as in other battles, that sometimes de- 
 pends upon how many are pushing 'em behind. 
 
 Tickle. — There's another bite ! Why, Nutts, you don't 
 believe good of nobody. What a cannibal you are ! It's 
 my belief you'd live on human 'arts. 
 
 Nutts. — Why not ? It's what half the world lives 
 upon — Whigs and Tories ! 'Tell you Avhat ! you see 
 them two cats ; one of them I call Whig, and t'other 
 Tory — they are so like the two-legged ones. You see Whig 
 there, a-wiping his whiskers — well, if in the night he kills 
 the smallest mouse that ever squeaked, what a clatter he 
 does kick up — ^lie keeps me and my wafe awake for 
 hours ; and sometimes — now this is so like a Whig — to 
 catch a mouse not worth a fardin, he'll bring down a row 
 of plates, or a teapot, or a punch-bowl, worth half a 
 guinea; and in the morning, when he shows us the 
 measly little mouse, doesn't he put up his back, and purr 
 as loud as a bagpipe, and walk in and out my legs for all 
 the world as if the mouse was a dead rhinoceros ! Doesn't 
 he make the most of a mouse that's hardly worth lifting 
 with a pair of tongs and throwing in the gutter ? Well, 
 that's Whig all over. Now there's Tory lying all along 
 the hearth, and looking as innocent as though you might 
 shut him up in a dairy with nothing but his word and 
 honour. Well, when he kills a mouse, he makes hardly 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 211 
 
 any noise about it. But, this I will saj — he's a little 
 greedier than Whig ; he'll eat the varmint up, tail and 
 all. No conscience for that matter. Bless you, I've 
 known him make away with rats that he must have lived 
 in the same house with for years. 
 
 Bleak. — Well, I hate a man that has no party. Every 
 man that is a man ought to have a side. 
 
 Nutts. — Then I'm not a man ; for I'm all round like a 
 ninepin. That will do, Mr. Nosebag. Now, Mister 
 Slowgoe, I believe you're next. (^Slowgoe takes the 
 chair.) 
 
 Slowgoe. — Is it true what I have heard, that the Duke 
 of Wellington (a great man the Duke, only Catholic 
 'mancipation is a little speck upon him) — is it true that 
 the Duke's to have a 'questrian statue on the Hyde Park 
 arch ? 
 
 Tickle. — Why it was true, only the cab and 'bus men 
 have petitioned Parliament against it. They said it was 
 such bad taste. Would frighten their horses ! 
 
 Slowgoe. — Shouldn't wonder. And what's become of 
 it? 
 
 Tickle. — Why, it's been at livery in the Harrow-road, 
 eating its head off, these two months. Sent up the iron 
 trade wonderful. Tenpenny nails are worth a shilling 
 now. 
 
 Slowgoe. — Dear me ! how trade fluctuates ; and what 
 will Government do with it ? 
 
 Tickle. — Why, Mr. Hume's going to cut down the 
 army estimates — going to reduce 'em — on Life Guards- 
 men, one of the two that always stand at the Horse 
 Guards, and vote the statue of the Duke there instead. 
 Next to being on the top of an arch, the best thing, they 
 Bay, is to be under it. Besides, there's economy ; for 
 
2j^2 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 Mr. Hume has summed it up ; and in two hundred years, 
 two days, and three hours, the statue— bought at cost 
 price, for the horse is going to the dogs— will be cheaper 
 by five and twopence than a Life Guardsman's pay for 
 the same time. 
 
 Slowgoe.— The Duke's a great man; and it's my 
 
 opinion 
 
 jVm^^5.— Never have an opinion when you're being 
 shaved. If you whobble your tongue in that way I shall 
 nick you. 'Sorry to do it ; but can't wait for your opin- 
 ion. 'Have a family, and must go on with my business. 
 Any thing doing at the playhouses, Mr. Nosebag ? 
 
 JSTosebag.—WeW, I don't know ; not much. I go on 
 sticking their bills, in course, as a matter of business ; 
 but I never goes. Fash'nable hours— for now I always 
 teas at seven— won't let me. As I say, I stick their 
 posters, but I hav'n't the pride in 'em I used to have. 
 
 YlcMe.—liow's that, Nosey ? 
 
 Msebag.—Whj, seriously, they have so much gam- 
 mon. I've stuck "Overflowing Houses" so often, I 
 wonder I hav'n't been washed off my feet! And then 
 the " Tremendous Hits " I've contin'ally had in my eye ! 
 —oh, for a lover of the real drama— you don't know my 
 feelings ! 
 
 JSTutts.— The actors do certainly bang away in large 
 
 type, now. 
 
 JSTosehag.— The worst of it is, Mr. Nutts, there seems a 
 fate in it: for the bigger the type, the smaller the player. 
 I could show you a play-bill with Mr. Garrick's name in 
 it, not the eighth of an inch. And now, if you want to 
 measure on the wall "Mr. Snooks, as Hamlet," why you 
 must take a three-foot rule to do it. Don't talk ^ on it. 
 The players break my heart ; but I go on sticking 'em, of 
 course. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 213 
 
 Nutts. — To be sure ; business before feelings. Have 
 you seen Miss Rayshall, the French actress, at the St. 
 James's ? 
 
 Nosebag. — Not yet. I'm waiting till she goes to the 
 Ay market. 
 
 Tickle.- — But she isn't agoing there. 
 
 Nosebag. — Isn't she ? How can she help it ? Being 
 of the French stage, somebody's safe to translate her. 
 
 Tickle. — Ha ! so I thought. But all the French players 
 have been put upon their guard ; and there isn't one of 
 'em will go near the Draymatic Authors' Society without 
 two policemen. 
 
 Pucker. — Well, I'm not partic'lar ; but really, gen'lmen, 
 to talk in this way about plays and players — on a Sunday 
 mornino; too — is a shocking waste of human life. I was 
 
 about to say, 
 
 Nutts. — Clean as a whistle, Mr. Slowgoe. Mr. Tickle, 
 now for you. ( Tickle takes the chair.) 
 
 Pucker. — I was about to say, it's sich encouragement 
 to go a soldiering — this flogging at Hounslow. 
 
 Nutts. — Yes ; it's glory turned a little inside out. For 
 my part, I shall never see the ribands in the hat of a 
 recruiting soldier again — the bright blue and red — that I 
 shan't think of the weals and cuts in poor White's back. 
 
 Pucker. — Or his broken heart-strings ! 
 
 Nutts. — What a very fine thing a soldier is, isn't he ? 
 See him in all his feathers, with his sword at his side, a 
 sword to cut laurels with; and, in my 'pinion, all the 
 laurels in the world was never worth a bunch of whole- 
 some water-cresses. See him, I say, dressed and pipe- 
 clayed, and polished, and turned out as if a soldier was 
 as far above the working man as a working-man's above 
 his dog. See him in all his parade furbelows, and what a 
 
214 JEKROLD'S WIT. 
 
 splendid cretur he is, isn't he ? How stupid 'prentices 
 gape at him, and feel their foolish hearts thump at the 
 drum parchment as if it was played upon by an angel 
 out of heaven ! And how their blood — if it was as poor 
 as London milk before — burns in their bodies ; and they 
 feel for the time — and all foi' glory — as if they could kill 
 their own brothers. And now the women 
 
 Female voice {from the hack). — What, are you talking 
 about the women, Mr. Nutts ? Better go on with your 
 shaving, like a husband and a father of a family, and 
 leave the women to themselves. 
 
 Nutts. — Yes, my dear. {Confidentially^ — You know 
 my wife ? Strong-minded cretur. 
 
 Pucker. — For my part, to say nothin' against Mrs. 
 Nutts, I hate women of strong minds. To me, they 
 always seem as if they wanted to be men, and couldn't. 
 I love women as women love babies — all the better for 
 their weakness. 
 
 Nosebag. — Go on about the sojer. 
 
 Nutts (i7i a loiv voice). — As for women, isn't it dread- 
 ful to think how they do run after the pipe-clay ? See 
 'em in the park, if they don't stare at rank-and-file, and 
 fall in love with hollow squares by the heap ; it is so nice, 
 they think, to walk arm-in-arm with a bayonet. Poor 
 gals ! I do pity 'em. I never see a nice young woman 
 courtin' a soldier — or the soldier courting her, as it may 
 be — that I don't say to myself, — " Ha ! it's very well, my 
 dear. You think him a sweet cretur, no doubt ; and you 
 walk along with him as if you thought the world ouglit to 
 shake with the sound of his spurs, and the ratthng of his 
 Bword ; and you hold on to his arm as if he was a giant 
 that was born to take the wall of everybody as wasn't 
 sweetened with pipe-clay. Poor gal ! You little think 
 
JERK OLD'S WIT. 215 
 
 that that fine fellow — that tremendous giant — that noble 
 cretur with mustarshis to frighten a dragon, may, to-morrow 
 morning, be strip of his skin, and tied up, and lashed till 
 his blood — his blood, dearer to you than the blood in your 
 own good-natured heart — till his blood runs, and his skin's 
 (ut from him ; and his officer, who has been, as he says, 
 ' devilishly ' well whipt at school, perhaps, and therefore 
 thinks flogging very gentlemanly — and his officer looks 
 on with his arms crossed, as if he was looking at the 
 twisting of an opera-dancer, and not at the struggling 
 and shivering of one of God's mangled creturs ; and the 
 doctor never feels the poor soul's pulse (because there is 
 no pulses among privates) — and the man's taken to the hos- 
 pital to live or to die, according to the farriers that lashed 
 him. You don't think, poor gal, when you look upon 
 your sweetheart, or your husband, as it may be — that 
 your sweetheart, or the father of your children — may be 
 tied and cut up this way to-morrow morning, and only for 
 saying ' Hallo ! ' in the dark, without putting a ' sir ' at 
 the tail of it. No ; you never think of this, young wo- 
 man ; or a red coat, though with ever so much gold lace 
 upon it, would look like so much raw flesh to you." 
 
 Nosebag. — I wonder the women don't get up a Anti- 
 Bayonet 'Sociation — take a sort of pledge not to have a 
 sweetheart that lives in fear of a cat. 
 
 Slowgoe. — Doesn't the song say, " None but the brave 
 desarve the fair ? " 
 
 Nosehag. — Well, can't the brave desarve the fair with- 
 out desarving the cat-o'-nine-tails ? 
 
 Nutts. — It's sartainly a pity they should go together. 
 I only know they shouldn't have the chance in my case, 
 if I was a woman. 
 
 Mrs. Nutts (from within). — I think, Mr. Nutts, you'd 
 better leave the women alone, and 
 
216 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 Mitts. — Certainly, my dear. {Again confidentially.) — 
 She's not at all jealous ; but she can't bear to hear me 
 say any thing about the women. She has such a strong 
 mind ! Well, I was going to say, if I was a sojer, and 
 was floo;ojed 
 
 CO 
 
 Nosebag. — Don't talk any more about it, or I shan't 
 eat no dinner. Talk of somethin' else. 
 
 Slowgoe. — Tell me, is it true what I have heard? 
 Have they christened the last little princess ? And what's 
 the poppet's name? 
 
 Nosebag. — Her name ? "Why Hel-ena Augusta Vic- 
 toria. 
 
 Slotcgoe. — Bless me ! Helleena. 
 
 Nosebag. — Nonsense ! You must sound it Hel — there's 
 a goin' to be a act of Parliament about it. Hel — with a 
 haccent on the first synnable. 
 
 Slowgoe. — What's a accent ? 
 
 Nosebag. — Why, like as if you stamped upon it. 
 Here's a good deal about this christening in this here 
 newspaper ; printed, they do say, by the 'thority of the 
 Palace. The man that writes it wears the royal livery : 
 scarlet run up and down with gold. He says (reads) — 
 " The particulars of this interesting event are subjoined ; 
 and they will be perused by the reader with all the 
 attention wdiich the holg rite, as well as the lofty rank of 
 the parties present, must command." 
 
 Niitts. — Humph ! " Holy rite " and " lofty rank," as 
 if a little Christian was any more a Christian for being 
 baptized by a archbishop ! Go on. 
 
 Nosebag. — Moreover, he says (reads) — " the ceremony 
 was of the loftiest and 7nost magnificent character, befit- 
 ting in that respect at once the service of that all-power- 
 ful God who commanded his creatures to worship Him in 
 pomp and glory, under the old law " 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 217 
 
 Nutts. — Hallo ! Stop there. What have we to do 
 with the " old law " in Christianity ? I thought the 
 " old law " was only for the Jews. Isn't the " old law " 
 repealed for Christians ? 
 
 Nosebag. — Be quiet. {Reads.) " The water was brought 
 from the river of Jordan " 
 
 Nutts. — Well, when folks was christened there, I 
 think there was no talk about magnificence ; not a word 
 about the pomp of the old law. Don't read it through. 
 Give us the little nice bits here and there. 
 
 Nosebag. — Well, here's a procession with field-marshals 
 in it, and major-generals, and generals. 
 
 Nutts. — There warn't so much as a full private on the 
 banks of the Jordan. 
 
 Nosebag. — And " the whole of the costumes of both 
 ladies and gentlemen were very elegant and magnificent ; 
 those of the former were uniformly white, of valuable 
 lace, and the richest satins and silks. The gentlemen 
 were either in uniform or full court dress." 
 
 Nutts. — Very handsome, indeed ; much handsomer than 
 any coat of camel's hair. 
 
 Nosebag. — The Master of the Royal Buck-hounds was 
 present. 
 
 Nutts. — With his dogs ? 
 
 Nosebag. — Don't be wicked ; and " the infant princess 
 was dressed in a rich robe of Honiton lace over white 
 satin." 
 
 Nutts. — Stop. What does the parson say ? " Dost 
 thou, in the name of this child, renounce the devil and 
 all his works, the vain pomp and glorg of this world ? " 
 
 Nosebag. (Reads.) " The Duke of Norfolk appeared 
 in his uniform as Master of the Horse. The Duke of 
 Cambridge wore the orders of the Garter, the Bath, 
 
218 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 and St. Michael and St. George. Earl Granville ap- 
 peared " 
 
 Nutts. That will do. There was no " vain pomp," 
 and not a bit of " glory." 
 
 A MASTER OR A MISTRESS. 
 
 Jerrold met a well-known picture-collector, whom he 
 knew, on Waterloo Bridge. The collector was possessed 
 with a passion for Richard Wilson's pictures, and, on the 
 occasion in question, asserted that the canvas he had 
 under his arm was a veritable examj^le of his favourite 
 master, which he had just picked up in the Waterloo- 
 road. Popping the picture against the parapet of the 
 bridge, he drew Jerrold's attention to its evidences of 
 authenticity. 
 
 " See, Jerrold — with those trees — that sky — it must be 
 a Richard Wilson." 
 
 " Well," Jerrold replied, " considering the locality 
 where you found it, are you sure it isn't a Harriet 
 Wilson ? " 
 
 ENGLISH CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 We English are not a very emotional people ; even 
 when we do feel very strongly, we nevertheless think it 
 good breeding to betray nothing of the matter. We are 
 apt to treat even a great feeling as the Spartan boy 
 treated the fox hidden under his garment, suffering it to 
 prey upon our very bowels rather than by any word, 
 gesture," or expression, to discover what we are hai bour- 
 ing. This is our insular characteristic. We all of us 
 have it more or less, from the duke to the duke's foot- 
 man ; the excess of outward indifference being the allowed 
 test of the highest breeding. Educate a man into the 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 219 
 
 insensibility of a post, and you make him a perfect gen- 
 tleman ; render a young lady seemingly pulseless as a 
 prize turnip, and she is the perfection of the very choicest 
 female nature. This is the discipline of high life in its 
 very highest : but the frost descends to the very roots of 
 society. We button up our hearts as we button up our 
 great coats, all the more resolutely if our hearts, like our 
 great-coat pockets, happen to have any thing valuable in 
 them. 
 
 IN MEMORY OF MR. JUSTICE TALFOURD. 
 
 Never did more fervent wishes for a long, and there- 
 fore honoured, enjoyment of a new dignity, accompany a 
 man to the bench than went with Sir Thomas Noon Tal- 
 fourd. Good men rejoiced at this elevation, as at the 
 reward of goodness; and the literary intellect of the 
 country beheld, with grateful pride, that man in the judg- 
 ment seat who, of all men, had best vindicated the sacred 
 right of intellect to its own brain-work. Many years 
 were wished, were confidently hoped, for Judge Tal- 
 fourd ; and with them, honours and happiness manifold. 
 It has pleased Almighty God to rule it otherwise. That 
 pure hand, which held the balance, is now of the clod of 
 the valley ; and that tongue, whose very last accents 
 pleaded for the sacred rights of human nature to the com- 
 passion and brotherly sympathy of brother man — " that 
 tongue is now a stringless instrument." Peace and the 
 growing reverence of the world be with his ashes ! No 
 man was ever wept by a greater number of friends, and 
 no man ever died bequeathing to those of his name and 
 blood a more sacred treasure in a reputation for good- 
 ness, gentleness, unswerving truth, than the poet judge 
 Thomas Noon Talfourd. May his memory remain and 
 
220 JEKEOLD'S WIT. 
 
 flourish green as his laurels, as his life was spotless as his 
 ermine. 
 
 THE DEBT OF ALL. 
 
 All have a debt to pay that it is allowed to us to put 
 off, as long as human foresight and human providence 
 may enable us to defer ; seeing that, defer and postpone 
 and procrastinate as we may, the debt must and will be 
 paid — for Death is the creditor. Therefore, assuming to 
 the full our privilege of putting off, when prudence and 
 knowledge can effect the postponement, the payment of 
 the inevitable debt, it is the solemn duty of every man to 
 " set his house in order." He may sleep under gilding, 
 or under thatch ; he may dwell in a palace or a cabin ; 
 nevertheless, it is alike onerous upon him to set his house 
 in order ; for otherwise — nay, even in despite of his best 
 prudence, his most vigihint watchfulness, — who shall se- 
 cure to him the enjoyment of the tenancy of such habita- 
 tion, be it of marble or of mud ? 
 
 SCHISM AND REPENTANCE. 
 
 A young author, somewhat too proud of a religious 
 work he had written, entitled " Schism and Repentance," 
 wrote to Jerrold, begging him to subscrib(j for a copy. 
 Jerrold replied that " he might put him down for ' Schism ' 
 by all means, but he would advise him to keep ' Repent- 
 ance ' for his publishers and readers." 
 
 THE GOSPEL AND THE BAYONET. 
 
 Let us pay all honour to fighting men ; all needful 
 honour. In our transition state, they are our best guar- 
 antees of national freedom. But let us hope that the 
 Gospel has a brighter light than that which gleams from 
 bayonets. Gunpowder is not the best frankincense. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 221 
 
 MERIT, AND NOT FAVOUR. 
 
 " Merit, and not favour, should be the ground of ad- 
 vancement." How beautiful in their justice are these 
 words, recently put forth by a jDublic officer high in posi- 
 tion ; and how excellent for the country if made appli- 
 cable to all public men of all cpnditions ! Merit, and not 
 favour ! Let this golden rule be the rule of govern- 
 ment, and great indeed must be the change. Why, the 
 backstairs themselves would vanish like sunset clouds, 
 and merit only tread the broad and open path to sure 
 preferment. 
 
 SAINT SUCCESS. 
 
 The Roman calendar is very full of saints, full as the 
 one-shilling gallery on the trial night of a pantomime. In 
 their mortal day, too, not a few of the canonized have 
 been as noisy — sometimes, moreover, about as sweet- 
 mouthed — as the holiday gods at a shilling or sixpence a 
 head. Nevertheless, with a crowded calendar, the world 
 still requires another saint — we mean Saint Success ! We 
 know that the virtue of success (for all success is virtue, 
 vice being inevitably confined to failure) is, after a man- 
 ner, canonized ; but we would have a solemn beatification 
 of success as Saint Success, and no other ; for he who 
 can have success for his protecting saint may renounce 
 all other influences, human or divine. Steep success 
 in blood, and there may be found even bishops to kneel 
 to it. 
 
 THE BOY AND THE MAN. 
 
 The relation of the man to the boy is a solemn matter. 
 Helpless, and appealing for aid and teaching, the boy 
 
222 JEREOLD'S WIT. 
 
 turns his baby face to the man, and bids him write good 
 lessons upon the fair tablet of his mind. Very solemn 
 indeed is the relation of the man to the boy ; and appal- 
 ling is the crime of that man who violates its sanctity, 
 destroying God's truth that is in the boy, by precepts of 
 wicked purpose. 
 
 TEA. 
 
 Tea, with the flowers and scents of the warm East in 
 it, with something hearty and of a downright domestic 
 quality in its vivifying effect ! Of the social influence 
 of tea, in truth, upon the masses of the people in this 
 country, it is not very easy to say too much. It has 
 civilized brutish and turbulent homes, saved the drunkard 
 from his doom, and to many a mother, who would else 
 indeed have been most wretched and most forlorn, it has 
 given cheerful, pe^eeful thoughts that have sustained her. 
 Its work among us in England and elsewhere — aye, 
 throughout the civilized world — has been humanizing — 
 good. Its effect has been, upon us all, something socially 
 healthful ; something that is peaceful, gentle, and hearty. 
 The passionate drinker may sit by his fire, watch his 
 kettle, and in the stream of steam rolling away from it, 
 see all the fallen idols of the East tumbling about ; the 
 long-eared, long-nailed goddesses unceremoniously ban- 
 died hither and thither ; the gaudy temples broken up ; 
 the priests disbanded. 
 
 A MODEL POLICEMAN. 
 
 The policeman stands in a peculiar position, and not in 
 a very pleasant position. He may not mix unreservedly 
 with his own class ; he is not like a common labourer, 
 who, his work being done, wends his way to the gathering 
 
JERKOLD'S WIT. 223 
 
 at which he has a certain influence and standing. He 
 may be the idol of servant-maids, but he is not welcome 
 among most men. His temptations are great ; he is 
 offered bribes every day of his life. Upon his honesty 
 depends the safety of thousands. He may wink at a 
 burglary, turn his back upon any petty peculation, and his 
 reward is at hand. He may not choose to observe brawls 
 in public-houses ; he may liberate drunkards nightly. 
 And then how strong must be his nature to resist, when 
 a fairy from the area railings whispers to him " roast 
 goose," beckons, and vanishes ! In truth, to be an honest 
 policeman, he must be a model man. 
 
 WATER. 
 
 "Water, like wine and fire, is an excellent servant, but a 
 bad master. An enthusiast may become quite as noisy, 
 and, in his enthusiasm, as absurd, at a j)ump as at a wine- 
 cask. 
 
 LEGITIMACY IN FRANCE. 
 
 What is legitimacy at this hour in France but a worn- 
 out Madame Saqui that would still profit by the balance 
 of power, and still, though palsy-shaken, dance on" the 
 tight-rope ? 
 
 THE PARROT OF ST. PAUL's. 
 
 The following advertisement appeared the other day in 
 a morning paper : — 
 
 " Parrot Found, on the dome of St. Paul's, July 
 16th. Full description of size, age, colour, and sayings, to 
 be sent by letter to " 
 
 This parrot is no common thing in feathers, but a 
 parrot of omen alighted, as in the olden days did storks 
 
224 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 ^ 
 
 and eagles, on towers and temples, in augiiiy of good or 
 evil. Our churches, in so far as birds are concerned, are 
 for the shelter and comfort of honest, homely jackdaws — 
 of birds of one plain, simple hue. Now, when gaudy- 
 parrots — parrots, like tulip-beds, of all colours — perch 
 upon cathedral domes, we know too well \v\\i\t they are 
 intended to symbolize, and do most earnestly pray that 
 the warning may not be lost upon the episcopal mind, and 
 upon all nominal Protestant parsons, sniffing, with Roman 
 noses, towards the Seven Hills. 
 
 A NAVAL REVIEW. 
 
 The stuff that makes navies — the bone and blood of 
 Englishmen, — with the indomitable spirit that is their 
 vitality, is still as constant to England as are the waves 
 that hitherto have sanctified our shores. No man, let 
 him be of the highest intellectual power and the most 
 generous sympathies, or of plodding mind and selfish 
 instincts, but must have acknowledged in that great sea 
 solemnity a lesson elevating and assuring. The man's 
 heart must have been no more than a pebble on the beach 
 that did not palpitate with sympathy, as towards living 
 things, towards those glorious ships, seemingly so instinct 
 with life, so majestic with the might of power — beautiful, 
 terribly fascinating, as were the evolutions of those tre- 
 mendous vessels — sublime manifestations of the working 
 mind and working arm of England. When these ships 
 blazed and roared with the lightning and thunder of 
 battle, they uttered a lesson that, stirring to its depths, as 
 with a terrible rapture, the human nature of the listener, 
 was yet to be heard in prolonged, though whispering, 
 dying echoes, in the back parlour of the smallest English 
 shopkeeper — in the poorest cottage of the humblest 
 peasant. 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 225 
 
 mechanics' institutes. 
 The Mechanics' Institute is the saving school for £. s. d. 
 — a school alike for youth, manhood, and old age. In the 
 Mechanics' Institute the scholars, who began and finished 
 their lessons on the forms of the infant school, have les- 
 sons ever beginning, never ending — knowledge still widen- 
 ing like circles in water. In that institute the students, 
 trained by early teaching, early prudence, may find that, 
 whatever be the varieties, the inequahties of life, there is 
 a common ground where all men may meet, may know 
 and be strengthened with the assurance that there are 
 intellectual pleasures, lights of knowledge, as widely open 
 and as free to all men, as are the skies above them and 
 the sunlight around them. 
 
 SELF-RESPECT. 
 
 That a man should be just and respectful towards all 
 mankind, he must first begin with himself. A man — so 
 to speak — who is not able to make a bow to his own 
 conscience every morning is hardly in a condition to 
 respectfully salute the world at any other time of the day. 
 
 QUEEN MARIA OF PORTUGAL. 
 
 She was a good wife, an affectionate mother, and a 
 weak, volatile queen. With no strength of character to 
 vindicate the high duties of her position, she suffered her- 
 self to become the tool of party ; and with an admiration 
 of constitutional liberty upon her lips, in her practice she 
 held to the old bigotry of legitimacy. She had vii-tues 
 for a private station, but wanted the qualities of a consti- 
 tutional queen. Good at the fireside, she was a mere 
 negation on the throne. 
 
 15 
 
226 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 ECONOMY AND WASTE. 
 
 When articles are too cheap, we squander them, and 
 " where there's plenty, put plenty in the pot," says an old 
 fireside adage, that has, we think, a comfort and jollity 
 in the sound of it ; plenty being as distinct from wasteful- 
 ness as a whole sack full of wheat, and a sack with a hole 
 in it for the wheat to run through. But fivepence, ac- 
 cording to the theory of some — fivepence for a quartern 
 loaf — produces waste, whilst elevenpence must engender 
 thrift. Fivepence is a spendthrift, elevenpence is a care- 
 ful economist ! Therefore, up with prices ; for with them 
 up go the fireside virtues ! 
 
 DIPLOMACY. 
 
 Negotiation between nations is, no doubt, for a time, 
 wise, and good, and patriotic, but, too finely spun, becomes 
 a weakness and a mischief. Diplomacy shall work as 
 much calamity as a battle : a few ink-drops, seemingly 
 innocent, shall cost a nation more misery, more eventual 
 wretchedness and exhaustion, than a river of blood. 
 
 MY PARTICULAR FRIEND. 
 
 Said an individual to Jerrold one evening in a green- 
 room — 
 
 " I beheve you know a very particular friend of mine ? 
 Mis. ? " 
 
 Now Mrs. Blank was remarkable for beauty, but it was 
 the beauty of Venus, by no means that of Diana. 
 
 " I have met with an actress named Mrs. Blank," re- 
 phed Jerrold, " but she cannot be the particular friend 
 you allude to." 
 
 " I beg your pardon," said Individual, " it is the same 
 person." 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 227 
 
 " Excuse me, sir," Jerrold replied, " the lady I speak 
 of is not very particular." 
 
 FIRESIDE SAINTS. 
 
 St. Patty Avas an orphan, and dwelt in a cot with a sour 
 old aunt. It chanced, it being bitter cold, that three hun- 
 ters came and craved for meat and drink. " Pack ! " said 
 the sour aunt, " neither meat nor drink have ye here." 
 " Neither meat nor drink," said Patty, " but something 
 better." And she ran and brought some milk, some eggs, 
 and some flour, and beating them up, poured the batter 
 in the pan. Then she took the pan and tossed the cake 
 over ; and then a robin alighted at the window, and kept 
 singing these words — One good turn deserves another. 
 And Patty tossed and tossed the cakes : and the hunters 
 ate their fill and departed. And next day the hunter 
 baron came in state to the cot ; and trumpets were blown, 
 and the heralds cried — One good turn deserves another ; 
 in token whereof Patty became the baron's wife, and 
 pancakes were eaten on Shrove Tuesday ever after. 
 
 ar. SALLY. 
 St. Sally, from her childhood, was known for her inner- 
 most love of truth. It was said of her that her heart was 
 in a crystal shrine, and all the world might see it. More- 
 over, when other women denied, or strove to hide their 
 age, St. Sally said, " / am jive-and-thirty.'' Whereupon 
 next birthday, St. Sally's husband, at a feast of all their 
 friends, gave her a necklace of six-and-thirty opal beads : 
 and on every birthday added a bead, until the beads 
 mounted to foHrscore and one. And the beads seemed to 
 act as a charm ; for St. Sally wearing the sum of her age 
 about her neck, age never appeared in her face. Such, 
 
228 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 in the olden time, was the reward of simplicity and 
 truth. 
 
 ST. BETSY. 
 
 St. Betsy was wedded to a knight who sailed with 
 Raleigh and brouglit home tobacco ; and the knight 
 smoked. But he thought that St. Betsy, like other fine 
 ladies of the court, would fain that he should smoke 
 out of doors, nor taint witli 'bacco-smoke the tapestry. 
 Whereupon the knight would seek his garden, his orchard, 
 and in any weather smoke suh Jove. Now it chanced as 
 the knight smoked, St. Betsy came to him and said, " My 
 lord, pray ye come into tlie house." And the knight went 
 with St. Betsy, who took him into a newly-cedared room, 
 and said, " I pray my lord, henceforth smoke here : for is 
 it not a shame that you, who are the foundation and the 
 prop of your house, sliould have no place to put your 
 head into and smoke ? " And St. Betsy led him to a 
 chair, and with her own fingers filled him a pipe ; and 
 from that time the knight sat in the cedar-chamber and 
 
 smoked his weed. 
 
 • 
 
 ST. PHILLIS. 
 
 St. Philhs was a virgin of noble parentage, but withal 
 as simple as any shepherdess of curds and cream. She 
 married a wealthy lord, and had much pin-money. But 
 when other ladies wore diamonds and pearls, St. Phillis 
 only wore a red and white rose in her hair. Yet her 
 pin-money brought the best of jewelry in the happy eyes 
 of the poor about her. St. Phillis was rewarded. She 
 lived until fourscore, and still carried the red and white 
 rose in her face, and left their fragrance in her memory. " 
 
JERROLD'S WIT. 229 
 
 ST. PH(EBE. 
 
 St. Phoebe was married early to a wilful, but withal a 
 good-hearted, husband. He was a merchant, and would 
 come home sour and sullen from 'change. Whereupon, 
 after much pondering, St. Phoebe in her patience, set to 
 work, and praying the while, made of dyed lambswool a 
 door-mat. And it chanced from that time, that never did 
 the husband touch that mat that it didn't clean his tem- 
 per with his shoes, and he sat down by his Phoebe as mild 
 as the lamb whose wool he had trod upon. Thus gentle- 
 ness may make miraculous door-mats ! 
 
 ST. NORAH. 
 
 St. Norah was a poor girl, and came to England to 
 service. Sweet-tempered and gentle, she seemed to love 
 everything she spoke to ; and she prayed to St. Patrick 
 that he would give her a good gift that would make her 
 not proud, but useful ; and St. Patrick, out of his own 
 head, taught St. Norah how to boil a potato — a sad thing, 
 and to be lamented, that the secret has come down to so 
 few. 
 
 ST. BECKY. 
 
 A very good man was St. Becky's husband, but with 
 his heart a little too much in his bottle. Port wine — red 
 port wine — was his delight, and his constant cry was — 
 bee's-wing. Now as he sat tipsy in his arbour, a wasp 
 dropt into his glass, and the wasp was swallowed, stinging 
 the man inwardly. Doctors crowded, and with much ado 
 the man was saved. Now St. Becky nursed her husband 
 tenderly to health, and upbraided him not ; but she said 
 these words, and they reformed him : " 3fy dear, take 
 
230 JERROLD'S WIT. 
 
 wine^ and hless your heart iviih it — hut wine in modera- 
 tion : else, never forget that the heeh-wing of to-day he- 
 comes the wasp's sting of to-morrow^ 
 
 ST. LILY. 
 
 St. Lily was the wife of a poor man, who tried to sup- 
 port his family — and the children were many — by writing 
 books. But in those days it was not as easy for a man to 
 find a publisher as to say his paternoster. Many were 
 the books that were written by the husband of St. Lily ; 
 but to every book St. Lily gave at least two babes. 
 However, blithe as the cricket was the spirit that ruled 
 about the hearth of St. Lily. And how she helped her 
 helpmate ! She smiled sunbeams into his ink-bottle, and 
 turned his goose-pen to the quill of a dove ! She made 
 the paper he wrote on as white as her name, and as fra- 
 grant as her soul. And when folks wondered how St. 
 Lily managed so lightly with fortune's troubles, she 
 always answered, that she never heeded them, for — 
 troubles were like hahies, and only grew the higger hy 
 nursing. 
 
 ST. FANNY. 
 
 St. Fanny was a notable housewife. Her house was a 
 temple of neatness. Kings might have dined upon her 
 staircase ! Now her great delight was to provide all 
 things comfortable for her husband, a hard-working mer- 
 chant, much abroad, but loving his home. Now one 
 night he returned tired and hungry, and, by some mis- 
 chance, there was nothing for suj^per. Shops were shut ; 
 and great was the grief of St. Fanny. Taking off a 
 bracelet of seed-pearl, she said : " Fd give this ten times 
 over for a supper for my hushand ! " And every pearl 
 
JEEKOLD'S WIT. 231 
 
 straightway became an oyster ; and St. Fanny opened — 
 the husband ate — and lo ! in every oyster was a pearl as 
 big as a hazel-nut ; and so was St. Fanny made rich 
 for life. 
 
 ST. DOLLY. 
 
 At an early age St. Dolly showed the sweetness of her 
 nature by her tender love for her widowed father, a 
 baker, dwelling at Pie-corner, with a large family of 
 little children. It chanced that with bad harvests bread 
 became so dear, that, of course, bakers were ruined by 
 high prices. The miller fell upon Dolly's father, and 
 swept the shop with his golden thumb. Not a bed was 
 left for the baker or his little ones. St. Dolly slept upon 
 a flour-sack, having prayed that good angels would help 
 her to help her father. Now sleeping, she dreamt that 
 the oven was lighted, and she felt falling in a shower 
 about her, raisins, currants, almonds, lemon-peel, flour, 
 with heavy drops of brandy. Then in her dream she 
 saw^ the fairies gather up the things that fell, and knead 
 them into a cake. They put the cake into the oven, and 
 dancing round and round, the fairies vanished, crying, 
 " Draiv the cake Dolly — Dolly^ draw the cake ! " And 
 Dolly awoke and drew the cake, and, behold, it was the 
 first twelfth-cake, sugared at the top, and bearing the 
 images of Faith, Hope, and Charity. Now this cake, 
 shown in the Avindow, came to the king's ear ; and the 
 king bought the cake, . knighted the baker, and married 
 Dolly to his grand falconer, to whom she proved a faith- 
 ful and loving wife, bearing him a baker's dozen of lovely 
 children. 
 
 ST. FLORENCE OR ST. NIGHTINGALE. 
 
 St. Florence, by her works, had her hps blessed with 
 
232 JERKOLD'S WIT. 
 
 comforting, and her hands touched with healing ; and she 
 crossed the sea, and built hosi3itals, and solaced, and re- 
 stored. And so long as English mistletoe gathers be- 
 neath it truthful hearts, and English holly brightens 
 happy eyes, so long will Englishmen, at home or abroad, 
 on land or on the wave — so long, in memory of that East- 
 ern Christmas, will they cry — " God bless St. Florence ! 
 Bless St. Nightingale ! " 
 
 ST. JENNY. 
 
 St. Jenny was wedded to a very poor man ; they had 
 scarcely bread to keep them ; but Jenny was of so sweet 
 a temper that even want bore a bright face, and Jenny 
 always smiled. In the worst seasons Jenny would spare 
 crumbs for the birds, and sugar for the bees. Now it so 
 happened that one autumn a storm rent their cot m 
 twenty places apart ; when, behold, between the joists, 
 from the basement to the roof, there was nothing but 
 honeycomb and honey — a little fortune for St. Jenny and 
 her husband, in honey. Now some said it was the bees, 
 but more declared it was the sweet temper of St. Jenny 
 that had filled the poor man's house with honey. 
 
The following 'paper appeared in the London Atheticeum 
 a few days after the death of Douglas Jerrold. 
 
 Death has taken from among us a man of vast and pecu- 
 liar force. Heroes dwarf in the eyes of their valets ; distance 
 lends encliantment to the view ; but Douglas Jerrold was the 
 greatest marvel to those who knew him best. His reading was 
 wide, and his memory for what he read prodigious. He knew 
 the whole of Shakspeare by heart, and every noble line or 
 beautiful image in Faust and the Inferno slept within his lips 
 like the charge in a gun. He dehghted in Eddas and Zenda- 
 vestas, in the lore of the Rabbis, in science, and in the myste- 
 ries of the schoolmen. Lightfoot was familiar to him as Rabe- 
 lais and Montaigne, Bacon as Fuller and Donne. Yet the 
 powers which made his fame were native. He was most 
 widely known perhaps by his wit ; for wit catches the sense 
 like a torch in a ravine, even though the gold mines may lie 
 unnoticed close by. Prophets who bear torches through the 
 streets will draw a crowd sooner than those who teach the wis- 
 dom of Solomon. And his wit was very nimble, crackling, and 
 original. No man could resist its spontaneity and sparkle, and 
 it wrote its daily story in London life as a thing apart and in- 
 stitutional. But his wit, however bi'illiant, was not his finest 
 gift. Indeed, in his serious moments he would laugh at his 
 own repartees as tricks — as a mere habit of mind — which he 
 could teach any dull fellow in two lessons ! His wit made only 
 
234 DOUGLAS JERROLD. 
 
 one side of his genius — sprung indeed from a central charac- 
 teristic — the extraordinary rapidity of his apprehension. He 
 saw into the hearts of things. He perceived analogies invis- 
 ible to other men. These analogies sometimes made him 
 merry, sometimes indignant. And as he never hung fire, dull 
 people often saw his wrath before they understood his reason ; 
 and they blamed him, not in truth because he was wrong, but 
 because they were slow. 
 
 Jerrold was born in London on the 3d of January, 1803, 
 while Bonaparte was at Boulogne, and London was in the riot 
 of anticipated invasion. He was christened Douglas William 
 Jerrold, Douglas having been the maiden name of his grand- 
 mother. His father, Samuel Jerrold, was manager of the two 
 theatres of Sheerness and Southend, and in these sea-places 
 much of his childhood passed, in sight of ships, breakers, press- 
 gangs, theatrical stars, female and male, black-eyed damsels, and 
 prisoners of war. He was the son of his father's old age, and 
 he held a theory that the children of old men are always ner- 
 vous, facile, and short-lived. Few friends or playmates of his 
 own age came near him in the theatre or in the town ; indeed, 
 he used to say that the only boy he knew familiarly at Sheer- 
 ness was the little buoy at the Nore. Among the theatrical 
 folks who played on his Cither's stage, he remembered Edmund 
 Kean with peculiar vividness ; for the descendant of Halifax 
 pleased him by carrying him on the boards in Jiolla, and still 
 more by his whimsicalities in the pantomime. He appeared 
 also on the stage with Kean as the Stranger's child. Author 
 and actor came together afterwards at Drury Lane — in Jer- 
 rold's early London life ; Kean, who remembered Jerrold, gave 
 him orders and oranges, and Jerrold paid him in admiration 
 and epigrams. Long years of theatrical success — some quar- 
 rels and misunderstandings never cooled the ardour with which 
 •the Author of " Clovernook " always spoke of the great artist 
 who had been gentle to him when a boy. 
 
 Jerrold's school-days were few and the results of his studies 
 at Sheerness unimportant. He used to say, with a merry mel- 
 ancholy, that the only prize he carried home from school was a 
 
DOUGLAS JEREOLD. 235 
 
 prize ringworm. In all wa}s, lie was considered a dull boy ; 
 at nine years of age he could scarcely read. Breakers were 
 the books which he liked to study. Frigates rolling past the 
 Nore, and the grand tramp of war in Belgium, where Bona- 
 parte was staking his last card, drew his imagination towards 
 the sea — conquering for a time even his passion for oil lamps, 
 property men, and the hot applause of the family theatre. To 
 sea he would go and fight the French, — entering His Majesty's 
 service as a midshipman on board the Namur. Middies in 
 those days had not learnt to drink claret, smoke cigars, and 
 quote Keats ; and the mess-room was any thing but a cross be- 
 tween a boudoir in Park Lane and a hole in a Cyder Celler. 
 The life was rough, the usage hard, the dissipation slight. Sea 
 life was then a passion — it is now only a sentiment. Some- 
 thing of Nelson's genius has passed into the navy — inextin- 
 guishable hate of the French. Jerrold caught this fury — 
 natural enough to a boy born in the panic of invasion and 
 trained in a war-port ; and to his last year there remained in 
 his writing and in his conversation a pulse — so to say — a breath 
 — a suspicion — now taking a literary, noAV a social, now a po- 
 litical form — of that stern religion of the English in 1804. 
 Though he afterwards lived in France for years, educated his 
 children there, and spoke its language with the readiness of a 
 practised jester, he never seemed to forget his blue cap and 
 gold band, but rattled among the fish wives of Boulogne and 
 the flower-girls of Paris with the benignant vivacity of a middy 
 just stepped ashore. His commander. Captain Austen, brother 
 of the great novelist, was fond of theatricals, and the officers 
 got up private plays. A man before the mast painted the 
 scenery, and Jerrold superintended the stage. That man be- 
 fore the mast was Stanfield, our incomparable marine artist. 
 When Jerrold was transferred to another ship, they parted 
 company, — to meet again after long years on the stage of 
 Drury Lane, where Stanfield was painting scenery for " The 
 Rent Day." Out of these youthful recollections arose, we be- 
 lieve, that series of amateur theatricals which introduced the 
 extraordinary histrionic genius of Mr. Dickens and Mr. jNIark 
 
236 DOUGLAS JERROLD. 
 
 Lemon to the public, which secured honourable means to two 
 veteran authors, and made the charm of so many London sea- 
 sons. A party of friends were walking over Richmond Park, 
 chatting of other days, when Jerrold cries — " Let's have a 
 play, Mr. Stanfield, hke we had on board the Namur." Mr. 
 Dickens took up the tale and was acclaimed manager ; " Every 
 Man in his Humour " was selected, the parts were cast, and the 
 row began. 
 
 After a few months Jerrold returned to shore, and came to 
 London in search of fortune. He found it in a printer's office, 
 in a court leading from Salisbury Scjuare ; to the proprietors 
 of which he was bound 'prentice. Working steadily, and in 
 process of time a master in the mechanism of his craft, hfe 
 nevertheless only tjonsidered this employment as a means to 
 something higher. At this time, though the hours of labour were 
 long, and there were no compositors' reading-rooms for leisure 
 moments, he attacked Latin and Italian ; rose at three in the 
 morning to construe Virgil and Livy, and passed stormy hours 
 with grammarians and glossaries before he commenced work 
 with the heavy leaders and light sketches of the periodical press 
 — the productions of people enjoying fame and pay for writings 
 in which his quick eye detected the weak points and the faded 
 splendours. He began to scribble verse as socn as he learned 
 to Avrite ; and his sonnets, epigrams, and songs appeared in the 
 sixpenny magazines of the day. He was then a mere boy, 
 and looked, indeed, like a child. An American writer, one 
 of those gentlemen from over sea who print Citizen of the 
 World on their cards and invent pen-and-ink portraits of cele- 
 brities they have never spoken with, once described him as a 
 tiny man who walked up the Strand fumbling his thunderbolts. 
 Tiny he was : and before his fine fell of hair grisled into a lion's 
 mane, he seemed almost infantile in the delicate mould of his 
 face and the exquisite beauty of his expression. Emboldened 
 by success, he wrote for the stage, to which he felt a family 
 call, and produced clouds of pieces ere he was twenty — some 
 of which still keep the stage, like " More frightened than Hurt," 
 performed at Sadler's Wells. He engaged with Davidge, 
 
DOUGLAS JERROLD. 237 
 
 then manager of the Coburg, to produce pieces at a salary ; 
 and some of his plavs at this time, hastily composed, and as he 
 thought unworthy of his powers, appeared under the name of 
 Mr. Henry Brownrig. In consequence of quarrels he went 
 from the Coburg Theatre to the Surrey, with " Black-Eyed 
 Susan " in his hand. He had brought from the Cjuarter-deck 
 of the Namur a love of the sea and a knowledge of the service, 
 which he turned to account on the stage and in his general 
 writings. Salt air sweeps through these latter like a breeze 
 and a perfume. " Black-Eyed Susan," the most successful of his 
 naval plays, was written when he was scarcely twenty years 
 old, — a piece which made the fortune of the Surrey Theatre, — 
 restored Elliston from a long course of disastrous mismanage- 
 ment, — and gave honour and independence to T. P. Cooke. 
 Indeed, no dramatic work of ancient or modern days ever 
 reached the success of this play. It was performed, without 
 break, for hundreds of night. All London went over the wa- 
 ter, and Cooke became a personage in society, as Garrick had 
 been in the days of Goodman's Fields. Covent Garden bor- 
 rowed the play, and engaged the actor, for an after-piece. A 
 hackney cab carried the triumphant William, in his blue jacket 
 and white trousers, from the Obelisk to Bow Street ; and ]\Iay- 
 fair maidens wept over the strong situations and laughed over 
 the searching dialogue which had moved an hour before the 
 tears and merriment of the Borough. On the 300th night of 
 representation the walls of the theatre were illuminated, and 
 vast multitudes filled the thoroughfares. When subsequently 
 reproduced at Drury Lane it kept off ruin for a time even 
 from that magnificent misfortune. Actors and managers through- 
 out the country reaped a golden harvest. Testimonials were 
 got up for Elliston and for Cooke on the glory of its success. 
 But Jerrold's share of the gain was slight :— about £70 of the 
 many thousands which it realized for the management. With 
 unapproachable meanness, Elliston abstained from presenting 
 the youthful writer with the value of a toothpick ; and EUiston's 
 biographer, with a kindred sense of poetic justice, while chauntr 
 ing the praises of Elliston for producing " Black-Eyed Susan," 
 
238 DOUGLAS JERROLD. 
 
 forgets to say who wrote the play ! When the drama had run 
 300 nights, ElHston said to Jerrold, with amusing coolness, 
 " My dear boy, why don't you get your friends to present you 
 with a bit of plate ? " 
 
 Many dramas, comic and serious, followed this first success — 
 all shining with points and colours. Among these were " Nell 
 Gwynne," " The Schoolfellows," and " The Housekce})er." 
 Drury Lane' opened its exclusive doors to an author who had 
 made fortune and fame for EUiston and Cooke. But Mr. Os- 
 baldiston, Avho only timidly perceived the range and sweep of 
 the youthful genius which he woed to his green-room, proposed 
 the adaptation of a French piece, offering to pay handsomely 
 for the labour. Adapt a French piece ! The Volunteer rose 
 within him, and he turned on his heel with a snort. Drury 
 Lane was then in the hands of the French, freshly captured, 
 and the boy who had gone to sea in order to fight Napoleon 
 refused to serve in London under his literary marshals. He 
 returned to the theatre after a while with his " Bride of Lud- 
 gate," the first of many ventures and many successes on the 
 same boards. " The Mutiny at the Nore " had followed the first 
 nautical success, and his minor pieces on the Surrey side con- 
 tinued to run long and gloriously. But the patent theatre?, with 
 a monopoly of the five-act drama, were strongly garrisoned by 
 the French, aided b}'- native troops whom they had raised, — 
 and some of whom, such as Poole and Planche, were men of 
 great technical skill and facile talent ; and he never felt his 
 feet secure in either theatre until the production of his " Rent 
 Day," — a play suggested and elaborated from Wilkie's pictures. 
 Wilkie sent him a handsome letter and a pair of proof en- 
 gravings with his autograph. The public paid him still more 
 ampl)-. 
 
 A selection from the early writings for the stage, made by 
 himself, has been published in the Collected Edition of his 
 works. But many were unjustly condemned, and among those 
 rejected plays the curious seeker will find some of the most 
 sterling literary gold. His wit was so prodigal, and he prized 
 it so Uttle, save as a delight to others, that he threw it away 
 
DOUGLAS JEKROLD. 239 
 
 like dust, never caring for the bright children of his brain, and 
 smiling with complacent kindness at people who repeated to 
 him his jests — as their own ! At the least demur, too, he would 
 surrender his most happy allusions and his most trenchant hits. 
 In one of his plays an old sailor, trying to snatch a kiss from a 
 pretty girl — as old sailors will — got a box on the ear. " There," 
 exclaimed Blue-jacket, " like my luck ; always wrecked on the 
 coral reefs ! " The manager, when the play was read in the 
 green-room, could not see the fun, and Jerrold struck it out. 
 A friend made a captious remark on a very characteristic touch 
 in a manuscript comedy — and the touch went out : — a cynical 
 dog in a wrangle with his much better-half said to her, " My 
 notion of a wife of forty is, that a man should be able to change 
 her, like a bank-note, for two twenties." 
 
 The best part of many years of his life was given up freely 
 to these theatrical tasks, — for his genius was dramatic — his 
 family belonged to the stage — and his own pulpit, as he thought, 
 stood behind the footlights. His father, his mother, and his 
 two sisters all adorned the stage ; his sisters, older than himself, 
 had married two managers, — one the late Mr. Hammond, ah 
 eccentric humourist and unsuccessful manager of Drury Lane, 
 — the other, Mr. Copeland, of the Liverpool Theatre Royal. 
 He himself for a moment retrod the stage, playing in his own 
 exquisite drama, " The Painter of Ghent." But the effort of 
 mechanical repetition wearied a brain so fertile in invention ; 
 and he happily returned to literature and journalism, only to 
 reappear as an actor in the plays performed by the amateurs 
 at St. James' Theatre and Devonshire House. 
 
 After this time appeared, in succession, the greatest and 
 maturest of his comedies. In " The Prisoner of War," in 
 parts cast for them, the two Keeleys harvested their highest 
 comic honours. " Bubbles of a Day " followed, — the most 
 electric and witty play in the English language ; a play with- 
 out story, scenery, or character, but which, by mere power of 
 dialogue, by flash, swirl, and coruscation of fancy, charmed 
 one of the most intellectual audiences ever gathered in the 
 Haymarket. Then came "Tune works Wonders," remark 
 
240 DOUGLAS JERROLD. 
 
 able as being one of the few works in which the di-amatist 
 paid much attention to story. " The Catspaw," produced at 
 the Haymarket, — " St. Cupid," an exquisite cabinet piece, first 
 produced at Windsor Castle, and afterwards at the Princess' 
 Theatre, with Mrs. Kean in Dorothy^ one of the most dainty 
 and tender assumptions of this charming artist, — and " The 
 Heart of Gold," also produced by Mr. Kean, complete the 
 series of his later works. We are glad to announce, however, 
 that the dramatist has left behind a finished five-act comedy, 
 with the title of " The Spendthrift," for which the manage- 
 ments should be making early inquiries. 
 
 Contemporaneously, he had worked his way into notice as a 
 prose writer of a very brilliant and original type — chiefly 
 through the periodicals. His passion was periodicity — the 
 power of being able to throw his emotions daily, or weekly, 
 into the common reservoirs of thought. Silence was to him a 
 pain like hunger. He must talk — act upon men — briefiy, 
 rapidly, irresistibly. For many years he brooded over the 
 thought of Punch. He even found a publisher — and a wood 
 engraver — and a suitable Punch appeared, — but the publisher 
 was less rich in funds than he in epigrams, and after five or 
 six numbers the bantling died. Some time later, his son-in- 
 law, Mr. INIayhew, revived tlie tliought, — and our merry com- 
 panion — now of world-wide name — appeared. All the chief 
 writings of our author — except " A Man made of Money " — 
 saw the light in magazines, and were written with the devil 
 at the door. " Men of Character " appeared in BlaclwoocVs 
 Magazine^ — " The Chronicles of Clovernook " in the Illumi- 
 nated Magazine^ of which he was founder and editor, — " St. 
 Giles and St. James " in the Shilling Magazine^ of which he 
 was also founder and editor, — and " The Storj^ of a Feather," 
 " Punch's Letters to his Son," and " The Caudle Lectures " in 
 Punch. The exquisite gallery of Fireside Saints which ap- 
 pear in Punch's Almanack for the present year is from his 
 hand. Most of these works bear the magazine mark upon 
 them — the broad arrow of their origin ; but the magazine 
 brand in this case, like the brands of famous vintages, if testi- 
 
DOUGLAS JERROLD. 241 
 
 fying to certain accidents of carriage, attests also the vigour and 
 richness of the soil from which they come. " Clovernook " is 
 less perfect as a work of art than many a book born and for- 
 gotten since the Hermit fed on dainty viands and discoursed 
 of sweet philosophy. Some of his essays contributed at an 
 early time to the AOienceum and to Blackwood's Magazine, 
 rank among the most subtle and delicate productions of his 
 muse. But we have recently devoted a long article to the 
 consideration of his literary merits, and need not repeat in 
 this obituary what we have said before with greater leisure 
 and more calmness than we can now command. 
 
 For seven years past he had devoted himself more exclu- 
 sively than before to politics. Politics, indeed, had always 
 attracted him as they attract the strong and the susceptible. 
 In the dear old days when Leigh Hunt was sunning himself 
 in Hoi-se-monger Lane for calling George the Fourth a fat 
 Adonis of forty, and the like crimes, he composed a political 
 work — in a spirit whicli would probably, in those days, have 
 sent him to Newgate. The book was printed, but the publish- 
 ers lacked courage, and it was only to be had in secret. Only 
 a few copies are extant. Of late years he had returned to 
 politics ; as a writer for the hallot under Mr. Wakely, and as 
 sub-editor of the Examiner under Mr. Fonblanque ; returned 
 to find his opinions popular in the country and triumphant in 
 the House of Commons. Of his efforts as a journalist we 
 need not speak. He found Lloyd's Newspaper, as it were, in 
 the street, and he annexed it to literature. He found it com- 
 paratively low in rank, and he spread It abroad on the wings 
 of his genius, until its circulation became a marvel of the 
 press. 
 
 yVe, have neither time nor heart at this moment to draw the 
 portrait of the deceased. An ampler biography will not long 
 be wanting: in which those who knew and loved him — and 
 those who knew him best loved him most — will be able to paint 
 him as the index and interpretation of his work. Yet, even at a 
 glance, the depth of his insight, the subtlety of his analysis, the 
 vividness of his presentation must strike every one who reads. 
 16 
 
242' DOUGLAS JERROLD. 
 
 His place among the wits of our own time is clear enough. He 
 had less frolic than Theodore Hook, less elaborate humour than 
 Sydney Smith, less quibble and quaintness than Thomas Hood. 
 But he surpassed all these in intellectual flash and strength. 
 His wit was all steel points, — and his talk was like squadrons 
 of lancers in evolution. Not one pun, we have heard, is to be 
 found in his writings. His wit stood nearer to poetic fancy 
 than to broad humour. The exquisite confusion of his tipsy 
 gentleman, who, after scraping the door for an hour with his 
 latch-key, leans back and exchilms, " By Jove ! some scoundrel 
 has stolen — stolen — the keyhole ! " comes as near farce as any 
 of his Illustrations. His celebrated definition of Dogmatism as 
 " Puppyism come to maturity " looks like a happy pun, — but is 
 something far more deep and philosophic. Between this, how- 
 ever, and such fancies as his description of Australia — " A land 
 so fat, that if you tickle it with a straw, it laughs with a har- 
 vest" — the distance is not great. In his earlier time, before 
 age and success had mellowed him to his best, he was some- 
 times accused of ill-nature, a charge which he vehemently re- 
 sented, and which seemed only ludicrous to those privileged 
 with his friendship. To folly, pretence, and assumption he 
 gave no quarter, though In fair fight ; and some of tho^^e who 
 have tried lances with him long remembered his home thrust. 
 We may give two instances without offence, for the combatants 
 are all gone from the scene. One of those playwnghts who 
 occupied Old Drury, under the French, against whom he 
 waged ceaseless war of epigram, was describing himself as suf- 
 fering from fever of the brain. " Courage, my good fellow," 
 says Jerrold, " there Is no foundation for the fact." When the 
 flight of Gulzot and Louis Philippe from Paris was the fresh 
 talk of London, a writer of no great parts was abusing the 
 Revolution and pitying Gulzot. " You see," he observed, 
 " Gulzot and I are both historians — we row in the same boat." 
 " Aye, aye," says Jerrold, " but not with the same sculls." Yet 
 such personal encounters were but the play of the panther. 
 No man ever used such powei's with greater gentleness. In- 
 deed, to speak the plain truth, his fault as a man — if it be a 
 
DOUGLAS JERROLD. 243 
 
 fault — was a too great tenderness of heart. He never could 
 say No. His purse — when he had a purse — was at every man's 
 service, as were also his time, his pen, and his influence in the 
 world. If he possessed a shilling somebody would get sixpence 
 of it from him. He had a lending look, of which many took 
 advantage. The first time he ever saw Tom Dibdin, that 
 worthy gentleman and song-writer said to him — " Youngster, 
 have you sufficient confidence in me to lend me a guinea ? " — 
 " O yes," said the author of " Black-Eyed Susan," " I have all 
 the confidence, but I haven't the guinea." A generosity which 
 knew no limit — not even the limit at his bankers — led him into 
 trials from which a colder man would have easily escaped. To 
 give all that he possessed to relieve a brother from immediate 
 trouble was nothing ; he as willingly mortgaged his future for a 
 friend as another man would bestow his advice or his blessing. 
 And yet this man was accused of ill-nature ! If every one who 
 received a kindness at his hands should lay a flower on his 
 tomb, a mountain of roses would rise on the last resting-place 
 of Douglas Jerrold. 
 
 The deceased died, after a few days' illness, from disease of 
 the heart, at his residence, Grcville Place, Kilburn Priory, on 
 Monday last, the 8th of June. No first-class portrait exists 
 of the deceased. Mr. Macknee, of Glasgow, painted him, but 
 the likeness is a failure. Two or three others tried their hands, 
 with even less success. Mr. Mayall and Mr. Watkins have 
 made fair photographs of an extremely difficult face. Dr. 
 Diamond has also obtained some excellent studies, — taken only 
 a few days before his death. But the only Art-memorial which 
 completely and truly represents Douglas Jerrold to the many 
 who are left to mourn his decease, is Baily's bust, — now in the 
 Manchester Exhibition of Art-Treasures. 
 
 The funeral will take place on Monday, at Norwood Ceme 
 tery. It is the desire of the family that it should be strictly 
 private. The friends and admirers of the dead will assemble 
 in the cemetery, to hear the funeral service, and to whisper 
 over the grave the last farewells of the heart. 
 
 THE END. 
 
Boston, 135 Washington Strem. 
 May, 1858. 
 
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