A GENTLEMAN’S FASHION.

In the reign of Henry VII.  Sir Philip Calthorpe, a Norfolk knight, sent as much cloth of fine French tawney, as would make him a gown, to a tailor in Norwich.  It happened, one John Drakes, a shoemaker, coming into the shop, liked it so well, that he went and bought of the same, as much for himself, enjoining the tailor to make it of the same fashion.  The knight was informed of this, and therefore commanded the tailor to cut his gown as full of holes as his shears could make.  John Drakes’s was made “of the same fashion,” but he vowed he would never be of the gentleman’s fashion again.

C. F E.

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CONVEYANCING.

The oldest conveyance of which we have any account, namely, that of the Cave of Macpelah, from the sons of Heth to Abraham, has many unnecessary and redundant words in it.  “And the field of Ephron, which was in Macpelah, which was before Manire, the field, and the cave which was therein, and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the borders round about, were made sure unto Abraham.”  The parcels in a modern conveyance cannot well be more minutely characterized.

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SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

THE HUSBAND’S COMPLAINT.

  “Will she thy linen wash and hosen darn?”

GAY.

  I’m utterly sick of this hateful alliance
  Which the ladies have form’d with impractical Science! 
  They put out their washing to learn hydrostatics,
  And give themselves airs for the sake of pneumatics.

  They are knowing in muriate, and nitrate, and chlorine,
  While the stains gather fast on the walls and the flooring—­
  And the jellies and pickles fall wofully short,
  With their chemical use of the still and retort.

  Our expenses increase, (without drinking French wines.)
  For they keep no accounts, with their tangents and sines-. 
  And to make both ends meet they give little assistance,
  With their accurate sense of the squares of the distance.

  They can name every spot from Peru to El Arish,
  Except just the bounds of their own native parish;
  And they study the orbits of Venus and Saturn,
  While their home is resign’d to the thief and the slattern.

  Chronology keeps back the dinner two hours,
  The smoke-jack stands still while they learn motive powers;
  Flies and shells swallow up all our every-day gains,
  And our acres are mortgaged for fossil-remains.

  They cease to reflect with their talk of refraction—­
  They drive us from home by electric attraction—­
  And I’m sure, since they’ve bother’d their heads with affinity,
  I’m repuls’d every hour from my learned divinity.