sledge-hammer joke. “I tell you what,” said the petulant Major Pepper, late of the "Bilious Buffs," "you shall hear my sentiments, you shall know my mind!" "My dear Major,” coolly replied the imperturbable Mr. Wenham, "I neither wish to listen to anything ridiculous, nor do I desire to become acquainted with folly in any shape."

We can well imagine the following, for it is truly characteristic.

"The Scotchman, doctor," said Boswell,"thinks much of his banks and braes." "Sir," replied the surly lexicographer, "a Scotch bank may be to a Sawney a needful affair, but as I detest the brays of a jackass, far less is it my wish to listen to those of a Scotchman."

Boswell never looked so like a donkey before. We here take the opportunity of correcting a popular delusion prevalent among the Scotch nurses. They foolishly imagine that the English are cannibals, for, strange to say, no juvenile Scotchman going to England was ever known to return. We beg to state they are not eaten, for no sane man could ever stomach a Scotchman.

The following would have floored a sober

"I am not

man, let alone one in "his cups." out of temper, Sir," said a half-drunken sot, whose face was adorned with grog-blossoms of some years' standing; "there is," continued he, in an insulting tone, to Mr. Walham Green, "there is an amazing deal of humour in me." I have no doubt of it," replied our friend, any man who looks in your face can see that at a glance.”

CHAPTER XII.

THE YANKEE JOKE.

In order to be a Yankee joker many qualifications are requisite. First of all, repudiate truth; secondly, call everything a fact but the truth; thirdly, the joker must be well grounded in the works of Munchausen, and a firm believer in the veracity of Gulliver's Travels. The Yankee joker must stick at nothing. After about six months' sharp practice, something like the following may be perpetrated. "Talk of

Crockett !-why Ezekiel Nash, a genuine downeaster, could send him to eternal smash right slick off. Nash chaws chain cables for “bakey,” takes gunpowder for snuff, and blows his nose with a tin pocket handkerchief; he sleeps between iron sheets, which in winter are made red hot. Instead of rats and mice, wolves and grisly bears prowl about his room at night, but he sleeps so sound he 's obliged to be thrown out of window every morning to wake him. Mother missed him when he was a baby, and found him at last seated on a hornet's nest, playing at bopeep with a couple of rattle-snakes. As an infant, 'Zekiel was a wonder, I guess; he had razors and bayonets for toys, walked in top-boots when he was three days old, sucked hot coals, and used to rub his gums with a nutmeg grater: they weaned him the very day he was born, and fed him on pap made of flint stones and lignum vitæ soaked in prussic acid. His appetite for a boy was awful, he once eat a buffalo and three parts of a horse, and then asked if tea wasn't ready. When Nash travels by rail, he gets out to walk a trifle of forty or fifty miles, and waits an hour or two till the train overtakes him. The engine comes up panting and blowing, and often says

with a forced laugh, "Bust my biler, 'Zekiel, but of all mortal critters you 're the biggest ; I reckon your father was a flash of lightning, and your mother an airthquake. Darn me, if you aint an ornament to creation."

As a speculator, Nash is cruel lucky. He held some canal shares once, which went to such a premium, he was obliged to send the broker up in a balloon to sell out.

The Effects of Gaming.-A gentleman at Baltimore was such an inveterate gambler, that one night he not only got completely cleaned out of all he possessed, but he actually lost his way home.

Not American like at all.-Impudence often shoves a fellow on in life, but a gentleman downeast is so remarkably diffident it requires three clerks to bring forward his balance at the bankers.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE NATIONAL JOKE.

THE renowned "live lions stuffed with straw," and the equally celebrated red lion of Brentford, prove all stuff and nonsense if once the British lion walks into the field. Shakspeare, the universal and mighty Shakspeare, must have put the British lion into Bully Bottom's eye, when the monopolising weaver exclaims, "Let me play the lion, I will roar that I will make the duke say, let him roar again, let him roar again. I will roar you as gently as any sucking-dove, I will roar you an 'twere any nightingale."

It was evidently the intention of Bottom to establish a sort of sliding scale in roars.

But the British lion, is he a reality or a joke? If a reality, where does he lodge? Who is his keeper? What is his feeding time, and finally does he live as secluded as a hermit, or is he on visiting terms with the conservative aristocracy. Britannia, too, at the mention of whose name,