Page:Bassetts scrap book 1907 03-1909 02.djvu/45

Rh a cabbage-leaf, to make an apple-pie. Up comes a great she-bear—pops his head into the shop, 'What, no soap!' so he died.

"And she very imprudently married the barber, and there were present the Joblilies, and the Garyulies, and even the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little red button at top.

"And they all fell to playing, 'Catch as catch can,' till the gunpowder ran out of the heels of their boots."

Can anyone give me the history of this piece of nonsense? I have heard that it was written by some literary person, to test the memory of another person who boasted that he could repeat anything that he had heard once.

Ans.—This "piece of nonsense" was written by Samuel Foote, the comic dramatist and player, to test the memory of a person who boasted of the wonderful retentiveness of this faculty in himself, and who agreed to get Foote's balderdash by heart in twelve minutes, and repeat it without making the slightest mistake. It is said that the actor won the wager. It may be recalled that Verdant Green, in the hazing examination to which he was subjected at Oxford, was required to translate Foote's remarkable English into Ciceronian Latin.

Kosher.—What is "Kosher" meat? and whence the term?

Ans.—"Kosher" means clean, lawful, conforming to the requirements of the Talmud. "Kosher" meat is meat that has been killed in accordance with