What speaks of thieves and purses taken, Abroad, at home, infirm or stout, The Paper. The Paper? It's worth and merits then revere, Think not you e'er can buy too dear The Paper. A PUNNING EPITAPH ON AND BY A PUNSTER. A REPORT having been circulated in the Four Courts, of the death of a certain great Law Lord, he himself was supposed to have been the author of it, for the purpose of affording him the opportunity of giving the following lines to the public, and of enjoying the merit of them in his lifetime: He's dead! alas! facetious punster, Whose jokes made learned wigs with fun stir: Stand to your ropes, ye sextons, ring, * Lord Norbury's name. LIFE IN THE CHAMBERS, AND LOVE IN THE STREET. THERE is not in this great metropolis, any place more prolific in love adventures than the various inns of court. Here are congregated together every variety of male biped, from the steady old bachelor of sixty, who shudders at the very name of wife, to the frisky young student of twenty-one, who is eating his Terms, and preparing himself for the forensic robe. Here too live in solitary singleness, many a London Reporter, and shoals of mad wags, Eccentrics, and Peep-o'-day Boys, who in chambers are under no restriction as to hours; and if they bribe the watchman, experience very little difficulty in any other way. Most of the latter are more occupied in their devotions at the shrine of beauty or of Bacchus than in the dull study of the law; and out of these very natural propensities arise many an adventure, of which the following may be taken as a fair specimen. Late one evening a fair damsel, in a richly-braided blue pelisse and plume-crowned bonnet, was brought into the office, faintly struggling-by two gentlemen. The lady was weeping-dropping tears "as fast as the Arabian trees their med'cinal gum," as Othello says. Having deposited her on the long seat at the lower end of the office, they waited patiently for their turn to approach the magisterial table. At length the approach being clear, the gentleman in the spruce olive surtout stepped forward, and leaning over the table as far as he could, for he was but a little one, he said his name was Barraclough; and that he had been dreadfully annoyed by the lady at the lower end of the office. "Let the lady, then, be brought forward, if you have any charge to prefer against her," said the Magistrate, and the officers in waiting led her forward: but she had not half crossed the room before her feet refused to walk, and the officers bore her to the table stiff and slantingly-her sable plumes drooping in sorrow, as it were, over her brawny shoulders, her eyes closed, and her whole countenance of that pallid death-like hue which distinguishes a full-blown Provence rose. In this state they held her before the bench, whilst Mr. Barraclough essayed to go on with his story but the Magistrate being somewhat of opinion that the lady was in an actual swoon, directed the officers to carry her carefully into the open air, and endeavour to recover her; and Mr. Barraclough was desired to remain silent till she came in again, inasmuch as it was right she should hear what he had to say against her. In a quarter of an hour the officers again led her in, and again she became stretched out and stiffening in their arms as they advanced, and they carried her up to the table again, as lifeless and blooming as ever. The Magistrate was doubtful how to proceed, but as it was growing late-much beyond the usual time of sitting, and all other business disposed of, he told Mr. Barraclough he might proceed-so Mr. Barraclough began again. He was a man of mild speech and few words; but it was clear to every body that he felt deeply. By what little he did say, however, we gathered that he and the lady had been very much enamoured of each other's charms, but that latterly "the reciprocity has been all on one side" the lady's side; for somehow or other the love of Mr. Barraclough-such love as it was, had evaporated.-(By the by, "Barraclough" is but an unlovely sort of name for a lover). Well, they had been enamoured, and might have been so still, as Mr. Barraclough seemed to signify, only he found out that "she had got-to her heart a second lot," and, therefore became extremely desirous of cutting the connection; but the lady would not be so cut ; she had no idea of being "whistled off" so easily; and so, the more he tried to cut, the more she stuck true. She almost "built her a willow cabin at his door, and call'd upon her love within his chambers," knocking and calling continually till the whole inn re-echoed to her love, and Mr. Barraclough was, of course, greatly scandalized. She even went so far as to intrude upon him in his tenderest moments, viz.-when he was walking along the Strand with another young lady !— She came up to him, whilst he was so walking, split the young lady's Leghorn by one thump of her fist, and boxed his ears, at one and the same moment. He bore these annoyances as long as he could, and then made up his mind to put an end to them. "Aye," said his Worship, "you begin to find it is easier to get into a scrape of this kind than to get out of it; and you want me to assist you?" In reply, the lady stated that her name was "Miss Ann Gerald"-fits-Gerald, we presume), that her father resided three miles and a half out of town; that she had no other love in the world but Mr. Barraclough; and that Mr. Barraclough had used her very ill by deserting her, to take up with another. But as she promised faithfully, as she said, that she never more would trouble herself about him, she was suffered to depart; and sometime afterwards the following pathetic lines, written on the back of a featherdresser's card, were picked up, near the spot where the officers had endeavoured to recover the lady from her fainting fit: WHO TOOK ENTRANCE-MONEY FOR A CONCERT, AND RAN OFF WITH IT. THO' short his tune, his touch was neat, Our gold he freely finger'd; Where lies the wonder of the case? Yet while we blame his hasty flight, |