Editor's Drawer.

It was Thomas Hood, if we remember rightly ("poor Tom's a-cold" now)! whose "Bridge of Sighs," and "Song of the Shirt," both of them the very perfection of pathos, will be remembered when his lighter productions are forgotten, or have ceased to charm—it was Tom Hood, we repeat, who described, in a characteristic poetical sketch, the miseries of an Englishman in the French capital, who was ignorant of the language of that self-styled "metropolis of the world." He drew a very amusing picture of the desagrémens such as one would be sure to encounter; and among others, the following

"Never go to France, Unless you know the lingo, If you do, like me, You'll repent, by Jingo! "Signs I had to make, For every little notion; Arms all the while a-going, Like a telegraph in motion. "If I wanted a horse, How d'you think I got it? I got astride my cane, And made-believe to trot it!"

There was something very ridiculous, he went on to say, we remember, about the half-English meaning of some of the words, and the utter contradiction of the ordinary meaning in others. "They call," said he,

"They call their mothers mares, And all their daughters fillies!"

and he cited several other words not less ludicrous. The celebrated Mrs. Ramsbottom, and her accomplished daughter Lavinia, the cockney continental travelers, those clever burlesques of "John Bull," were the first, some thirty years ago, to take notice of this discrepancy, and to illustrate it in their correspondence. The old lady, writing from Paris to friends in her peculiar circle in London, tells them that she has been to see all the curious things about the French capital; and she especially extols the bridges, with their architectural and other adornments. "I went yesterday afternoon," she wrote, "to see the statute of Lewis Quinzy, standing close to the end of one of the ponts, as they call their bridges here. I was told by a man there, that Lewis Quinzy was buried there. Quinzy wasn't his real name, but he died of a quinzy sore-throat, and just as they do things here, they called him after the complaint he died of! The statute is a more superior one than the one of Henry Carter (Henri Quatre), which I also see, with my daughter Lavinia. I wonder if he was a relation of the Carters of Portsmouth, because if he is, his posteriors have greatly degenerated in size and figure. He is a noble-looking man, in stone." The same old ignoramus wrote letters from Italy, which were equally satirical upon the class of would-be "traveled" persons, to which she was assumed to belong.

Speaking of Rome, and certain of its wonderful and ancient structures, she says: "I have been all through the Vacuum, where the Pope keeps his bulls. Every once in a while they say he lets one out, and they occasion the greatest excitement, being more obstinater, if any thing, than an Irish one. I have been, too, to see the great church that was built by Saint Peter, and is called after him. Folks was a-looking and talking about a knave that had got into it, but I didn't see no suspicionary person. I heard a tedium sung while I was there, but it wasn't any great things, to my taste. I'd rather hear Lavinia play the 'Battle of Prag.' It was very long and tiresome." Not a little unlike "Mrs. Ramsbottom," is a foreign correspondent of the late Major Noah's paper, the "Times and Messenger," who writes under the nom de plume of "A Disbanded Volunteer," from Paris. He complains that the French language is very "onhandy to articklate;" that the words wont "fit his mouth at all" and that he has to "bite off the ends of 'em," and even then they are cripples. "The grammer," he says, "is orful, specially the genders, and oncommon inconsistent. A pie is a he, and yet they call it Patty, and a loaf is a he, too, but if you cut a slice off it, that's a she! The pen I'm a-driving is a she, but the paper I'm a-writing on is a he! A thief," he goes on to say, "is masculine, but the halter that hangs him is feminine;" but he rather likes that, he adds, there being something consoling in being drawn up by a female noose! F-e-m-m-e, he contends, "ought to spell femmy—but I'm blowed if they don't pronounce it fam!"

Like the English cockney travelers, he was pleased with the public monuments, particularly one in the "Plaster La Concord," built by Louis Quartz, so called, in consequence of the kind of stone used in its erection. The "Basalisk of Looksir," and the "Jargon da Plant," also greatly excited his admiration. No one who has ever studied French, but will be reminded by the "Disbanded Volunteer's" experience of the difficulty encountered in mastering the classification of French genders.

We find, on a scrap in our "Drawer," this passage from a learned lecture by a German adventurer in London, one "Baron Vondullbrainz." He is illustrating the great glory of Mechanics, as a science: "De t'ing dat is made is more superior dan de maker. I shall show you how in some t'ings. Suppose I make de round wheel of de coach? Ver' well; dat wheel roll five hundred mile!—and I can not roll one, myself! Suppose I am de cooper, what you call, and I make de big tub to hold de wine? He hold t'ons and gallons; and I can not hold more as fives bottel!! So you see dat de t'ing dat is made is more superior dan de maker!"

The following domestic medicines and recipes may be relied upon. They are handed down from a very ancient period; and, "no cure, no pay:"

"A stick of brimstone wore in the pocket is good for them as has cramps.

"A loadstone put on the place where the pain is, is beautiful in the rheumatiz.

"A basin of water-gruel, with half a quart of old rum in it, or a quart, if partic'lar bad, with lots o' brown sugar, going to bed, is good for a cold in the 'ead.

"If you've got the hiccups, pinch one o' your wrists, and hold your breath while you count sixty, or—get somebody to scare you, and make you jump!

"The Ear-Ache: Put an inyun in your ear, after it is well roasted!"

How old Dr. Johnson did hate Scotland! His severity of sarcasm upon that country is unexampled by his comments upon any thing else, however annoying. On his return from the Hebrides, he was asked by a Scottish gentleman, at an evening party in London, how he liked Scotland. "Scotland, sir?" replied Johnson, with a lowering brow, and savage expression generally, "Scotland? Scotland, sir, is a miserable country—a contemptible country, sir!" "You can not do the Almighty the great wrong to say that, Dr. Johnson," answered the other, deeply nettled at so harsh a judgment: "God made Scotland, sir." "Yes, sir," was the cutting rejoinder: "God did make Scotland, but He made it for Scotchmen! God made hell also, sir!" On another occasion, when asked how he liked certain views of scenery in that country, he replied: "The finest and most satisfactory view in Scotland, sir, is the view looking from it, on the high-road to London!" The same spirit was manifested in his reply to a friend, who was consoling him for the loss of a favorite cane with which he had traveled in the north of Scotland. "You can easily replace it, Dr. Johnson," said his friend. "Replace it, sir! Consider, where I'm to find the timber for such a purpose in this barren country!" It strikes us that a lack of trees or shrubbery could not be more forcibly exemplified than by this sarcastic reply.

Somebody, in one of the newspapers, has been telling a story of a schoolmistress, who had a hopeful boy-pupil, whose intelligence was scarcely "fair to middling," if one may judge from one of his "exercises" in spelling. "I got him," said the schoolmarm, "clean through the alphabet, and he would point out any letter, and call it by its right name. One bright Monday morning I put him, when he was sufficiently advanced, into words of two syllables; but I was obliged to tell him some fifty times what was the nature of a syllable; and after all, his brain was opaque as a rock. In order to interest him, however, I said to him:

"Do you love pies?"

"Yes, marm, I guess I do!"

"Well, then, 'apple' and 'pie,' when put together, spell 'apple-pie,' don't they?"

"Yes, marm."

"By the same rule, 'la' and 'dy,' spell 'lady?' You understand that, don't you?"

"Very well. Now, what do 'mince' and 'pie' spell?"

"I know!—Mince-Pie!"

"That's right: well, now what do 'pumpkin' and 'pie' spell? Speak up."

"I know that: that's pumpkin-pie!"

"That's correct. Now, what does 'la' and 'dy' spell?"

"Custard-Pie!" exclaimed the urchin, with great exultation at his success.

Now, this is very good, and very possibly it may have occurred, precisely as narrated; but we have a suspicion—perhaps not a "shrewd suspicion"—that the whole thing was borrowed from the following dialogue, which is indubitably an actual occurrence:

"James," said a schoolmaster to a dull pupil, after the morning chapter had been read in the school, "James, we have read this morning that Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth; now, James, will you tell us who was the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth?"

"Sir?" said James, inquiringly.

"Why, James," answered his colloquist, "you have seen that Noah had three sons, and that their names were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. These were Noah's sons, James. Now, who was the Father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth?"

"Sir?" said James, dubiously pondering the full extent of the query.

"Why, James," said the preceptor, "don't you know who the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth was, after I've told you so much?"

"No, sir—I d' know!"

"You are very dull, James—very! You know Mr. Smith, don't you, that lives next to your house?"

"Sartain!—Bill and Jo Smith and I play together. Bill took my cross-gun, and owes me—"

"Very well: Mr. Smith has three boys, William, Joseph, and Henry. Who is the father of William, Joseph, and Henry Smith?"

"Mr. Smith!" exclaimed James, instantly; "Mr. Smith: guess I know that!"

"Certainly, James. Very well, then. Now, this is exactly the same thing. You see, as we have been reading, that Noah had three sons, like Mr. Smith; but their names were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now, who was the father of Noah's three sons?"

James hesitated a minute, with his finger in his mouth; and then, as if the difficult question had been suddenly solved in his mind, he exclaimed:

"I know now: Mr. Smith!"

Perhaps some of our readers have heard of that rare compound of all that was quaint, curious, and ridiculous, Lord Timothy Dexter, of Newburyport, Massachusetts. He was an ignorant, eccentric old fellow, who, having made himself a rich man, conceived the original idea of setting up for a lord. Accordingly he proclaimed himself "Lord Timothy Dexter," bought a magnificent mansion, and set up an equipage in splendid style. Every thing that he did and every thing he had about him was original. He sent a ship-load of warming-pans to the East Indies; he filled his gardens with sprawling wooden statues; his dress was a mixture of the Roman senator and a Yankee militia-captain; the ornaments of his mansion were of the most unique stamp; and his literary compositions were more original than all the rest put together. He wrote in the most heroic disregard and defiance of the common laws of etymology and syntax. Here is a specimen of his style, and an illustration of his powers as a philosopher: "How great the SOUL is! Don't you all wonder and admire to see and behold and hear? Can you all believe half the truth, and admire to hear the wonders how great the soul is?—that if a man is drowned in the water, a great bubble comes up out of the top of the water—the last of the man dying in the water; this is mind—the SOUL, that is the last to ascend out of the deep to glory. Only behold!—past finding out! The bubble is the soul! When a man dies in his bed in a house, you can't see his soul go up, but when he is drowned, then you can see his soul go up like a kite or a rocket!"

There is a very amusing story told of a curious fowl called "The Adjutant," in the East Indies. They are as solemn-faced a creature as the owl, the "Bird of Minerva." Sometimes they become great favorites with the soldiers and officers of the army stationed there, and numerous, and not unfrequently ridiculous, were the tricks which the wicked wags played upon them. Sometimes the soldiers would take a couple of half-picked beef-bones, tie them strongly together, at each end of a stout cord, and then throw both where some two or three "Adjutants" would be sure to try to rival each other in the first possession of the desiderated luxury; the consequence of which competition would be, that two of the ravenous birds would attack the treasure at one and the same time: the one would swallow one (for they have most capacious maws) and the other the other. Then there was trouble! Each saw before him a divided "duty," the "line" of which, while it was sufficiently defined (and con-fined) was very far from being convenient to follow, so far as the practice was concerned. But each, in the consequent struggle, rose into the air; a pair of aërial Siamese-twins, with no power of severing their common ligament; so that very soon down they came, an easy prey to their ingenious tormentors. But the funniest trick was this: A soldier would take a similar unconsumed beef-bone; carefully scoop out a long cavity in it, establish therein a cartridge and fusee, with a long leader, lighted, and then throw it out for the especial benefit of the feathered victim. It was of course swallowed at once, and then, like a snake with a big frog in its belly, the uncouth bird would mount upon some post, or other similar eminence, and with one leg crossed like a figure-four, over the other, it would stand, in digestive mood, and with solemn visage, until suddenly the secret mine would explode, and the unsuspicious "Adjutant" would be "reduced to the ranks" of birds "lost upon earth."

He was a right sensible man who wrote as follows; and his theory and advice will apply as well in Gotham as elsewhere: "As to extensive dinner-giving, we can be but hungry, eat, and be happy. I would have a great deal more hospitality practiced among us than is at all common; more hospitality, I mean, and less show. Properly considered, 'the quality of dinner,' like that of mercy, 'is twice blessed—it blesses him that gives, and him that takes.' A dinner with friendliness is the best of all friendly meetings; a pompous entertainment, where 'no love is,' is the least satisfactory.

"I own myself to being no worse nor better than my neighbors, in giving foolish and expensive dinners. I rush off to the confectioner's for sweets, et cetera; hire sham butlers and attendants; have a fellow going round the table with 'still' and 'dry' champagne, just as if I knew his name, and it was my custom to drink those wines every day of my life. Now if we receive great men or ladies at our house, I will lay a wager that they will select mutton and gooseberry-tart for their dinner; forsaking altogether the 'entrées' which the men in white gloves are handing round in the plated dishes. Asking those who have great establishments of their own to French dinners and delicacies, is like inviting a grocer to a meal of figs, or a pastry-cook to a banquet of raspberry tarts. They have had enough of them. Great folks, if they like you, take no account of your feasts, and grand preparations. No; they eat mutton, like men."

As to giving large dinners, morever, Mr. Brown reasons like a philosopher. In the right way of giving a dinner, he contends, "every man who now gives one dinner might give two, and take in a host of friends and relations," who are now excluded from his forced hospitality. "Our custom," he says "is not hospitality nor pleasure, but to be able to cut off a certain number of our really best acquaintances from our dining-list." Again, these large, ostentatious dinners are scarcely ever pleasant, so far as regards society: "You may chance to get near a pleasant neighbor and neighboress, when your corner of the table is possibly comfortable. But there can be no general conversation. Twenty people around one board can not engage together in talk. You want even a speaking-trumpet to communicate from your place with the lady of the house." The sensible conclusion of the whole matter is: "I would recommend, with all my power, that if we give dinners they should be more simple, more frequent, and contain fewer persons. A man and woman may look as if they were really glad to see ten people; but in a 'great dinner,' an ostentatious dinner, they abdicate their position as host and hostess, and are mere creatures in the hands of the sham butlers, sham footmen, and tall confectioner's emissaries who crowd the room, and are guests at their own table, where they are helped last, and of which they occupy the top and bottom. I have marked many a lady watching with timid glances the large artificial major-domo who officiates 'for that night only,' and thought to myself, 'Ah, my dear madam, how much happier might we all be, if there were but half the splendor, half the made-dishes, and half the company assembled!'"

To our conception there is something rather tickling to the fancy in the following sage advice as to how to conduct one's self in case of fire: "Whatever may be the heat of the moment, keep cool. Let nothing put you out, but find something to put out the fire. Keep yourself collected, and then collect your family. After putting on your shoes and stockings, call out for pumps and hose to the fireman. Don't think about saving your watch and rings, for while you stand wringing your hands, you may be neglecting the turn-cock, who is a jewel of the first water at such a moment. Bid him with all your might turn on the main!"

Punch once drew an admirable picture of a London "Peter Funk," a sort of character not altogether unknown in the metropolis of the western world:

"The amount that prodigal man must spend every year would drive Rothschild into the work-house. Nothing is too good or too common, too expensive or too cheap, for him. One moment he will buy a silver candelabra, the next a silver thimble. In the morning he will add a hundred-guinea dressing-case to his enormous property, and in the afternoon amuse himself by bidding a shilling for a little trumpery pen-knife. Why he must have somewhere about fifty thousand pen-knives already.

"The article he has the greatest hankering for, are razors: and yet, to look at his unshorn beard, you would fancy that he never shaved from one month's end to another. The hairs stick out on his chin like the wires on the drum of a musical-box. It is most amusing to watch him when the razors are handed round. He will snatch one off the tray, draw the edge across his nail, breathe upon it, then hold it up to the light, and after wiping it in the gentlest manner upon the cuff of his coat, bid for it as ravenously as if he would not lose the scarce article for all the wealth of the Indies. What he does with all the articles he buys we can not tell. Saint Paul's would not be large enough to contain all the rubbish he has been accumulating these last ten years. His collection of side-boards alone would fill Hyde-Park, and he must possess by this time more dumb waiters than there are real waiters in England."

A capital burlesque upon the prevalent affectation of popular song-writers, in making their first line tell as a title, is given in the following: such, for example, as "When my Eye," "I dare not use thy cherished Name," and so forth:

"Oh! don't I love you rather still? Are all my pledges set at naught? Dishonored is Affection's bill? Or passed is Love's Insolvent Court? Is Memory's schedule coldly filed, On one of Cupid's broken darts? Is Hymen's balance-sheet compiled, A bankrupt's stock of damaged hearts? "SECOND VERSE. "I dare not use thy cherished name, Would'st thou accept, were I to draw? The god of Love may take his aim, But with an arrow made of straw Each fonder feeling that I knew A lifeless heap of ruin lies: Yes, false one! ticketed by you: Look here!—'Alarming Sacrifice!'"

We must say one thing in favor of John Bull. He confesses to a beat with great unanimity and frankness. It is in evidence, on the authority of the three gentlemen interested in the race of the yacht America, that the triumph of American skill in ship-architecture was most candidly admitted on all hands, as it was in all the public journals most handsomely. This is as it should be; and we were glad to see, that at the recent dinner given to Mr. Stevens at the Astor-House cordial and ample acknowledgments, for courtesies and attentions from the Queen herself, down to the most eminent members of the Royal Yacht Squadron, were feelingly and appropriate rendered.