"OH NO, WE NEVER MENTION IT."--The KENDALS have got a Play by a young American Author with the very uncompromising name of DAM. He, or his Play, may be Dam good, or just the reverse: still, if he does turn out to be the "big, big D," then all the Dam family, such as Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Schiedam, and so forth, will be real proud of him. Future Dams will revere him as their worthy ancestral sire, and American Dam may become naturalised among us (we have a lot of English ones quite a _spécialité_ in that line, so the French say), and become Dam-nationalised. What fame if the piece is successful, and DAM is on every tongue! So will it be too, if unsuccessful. Englishmen will welcome the new American playright with the name unmentionable to ears polite, and will recognise in him, as _the_ Dam _par excellence_, their brother, as one of the uncommon descendants of A-DAM. By the way, the appropriate night for its production would be Christmas Eve. Fancy the cries all over the House, calling for the successful Author!!
[Illustration: IMMUNITIES OF THE SEA-SIDE.
"COME UNDER THE UMBRELLA, JACK, IT'S BEGUN TO RAIN, AND YOU'LL CATCH COLD, AND MAMMA'LL BE VEXED!"
"POOH! AS IF SALT WATER EVER GAVE ONE COLD!"]
(_IN THE READING-ROOM OF THE BERNERHOF._)
Although thy name is wrongly spelt Upon thy case, what joy I felt To find a place where thou hast dwelt, My Punsch!
Yet wit and wisdom, even thine, Can't wake up Berne, where folks supine All go to bed at half-past nine, My Punsch!
What art or jokes could entertain, Such sleepy people? True, they feign It's later, for they say "_halb zehn_," My Punsch!
My German "_Punsch_," what gender thine? They who accept, likewise decline, "_Das Weib_" might feminine assign-- Die Punsch!
No matter which, if I behold Thy pages, worth their weight in gold-- It's true they're more than three weeks old, My Punsch!
AN ODD FELLOW OUT.--The Church-breaking thief (_vide_ the _Standard's_ provincial news) who was arrested at Oswestry (fitting that a Church-thief should have been arrested by Os-Westry-men--which sounds like a body of mounted ecclesiastical police), explained that he was a "monumental mason of Dublin." Perhaps the Jury will find him monu-mentally deranged.