Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/33

 pamphlet?" "No, dear friend; I only read his great works: the three, four, and five-volumed ones suit me best." "Ah! you jest, and mean something." "Certainly: a great extent of water—a lake, sea, ocean—is a fine thing; but in a teaspoon I cannot stand it."

Heine said of one of his acquaintances, "The man is really cracked; but I will confess that he has lucid intervals when he is only foolish." This was the same person whom Heine had in his mind when he said to a caller, "My head to-day is perfectly barren, and you will find me stupid enough; for a friend has been here, and we exchanged ideas."

The old age of Lamartine exhibited a painful decline of his truly great qualities, and an exaggeration of his foibles. A French paper concluded his obituary with the remark, "He has ceased to survive himself."

These are caustic specimens; but the last one contains a high per cent of pleasure, because we are left uncertain whether it was a serious case of wit. But none of them can scald as Douglas Jerrold did, when, meeting a man who was such an abject toady that if his friend Jones had the influenza he would contrive to get up a cold, Jerrold said to him, "Have you heard the rumor that is flying around town?" "No." "Well, they say that Jones pays the dog-tax for you."

That is bitter. But when one gentleman during a supper of sheep's heads throws down his knife and fork in rapture, and exclaims, "Well, sheep's heads for ever, say I," and Douglas Jerrold remarks, "There's egotism," we have a point tempered in the flame of fun. So, too,