'Now,' said the professor, his little sharp eyes twinkling with fun, 'that brings to my recollection what once happened to a friend of mine, a minister in the country.

Being a scholarly man he was sometimes betrayed into the use of words in the pulpit which the people were not likely to understand; but being very conscientious, he never detected himself in this, without pausing to give the meaning of the word he had used, and sometimes his extempore explanations of very fine words were a little like what we have just had from Mr .-- --, rather too flat and commonplace.

On one occasion he allowed this very word 'catastrophe' to drop from him, on which he immediately added, 'that, you know, my friends, means the _end_ of a thing.' Next day, as he was riding through his parish, some mischievous youth succeeded in fastening a bunch of furze to his horse's tail--a trick which, had the animal been skittish, might have exposed the worthy pastor's horsemanship to too severe a trial, but which happily had no effect whatever on the sober-minded and respectable quadruped which he bestrode.

On, therefore, he quietly jogged, utterly unconscious of the addition that had been made to his horse's caudal region, until, as he was passing some cottages, he was arrested by the shrill voice of an old woman exclaiming, 'Heh, sir! Heh, sir! there's a whun-buss at your horse's catawstrophe!'" I have several times adverted to the subject of epigrams.

A clever impromptu of this class has been recorded as given by a judge's lady in reply to one made by the witty Henry Erskine at a dinner party at Lord Armadale's.