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SECT. III. OF DEPORTMENT AT MEALS.

4. No Inmate shall make any Pun, or attempt at the same, until the Blessing has been asked and the company are decently seated.

7. Certain Puns having been placed on the Index Expurgatorius of the Institution, no Inmate shall be allowed to utter them, on pain of being debarred the perusal of Punch and Vanity Fair, and, if repeated, deprived of his Joseph Miller.

Among these are the following:

Allusions to Attic salt, when asked to pass the salt-cellar.

Remarks on the Inmates being mustered, etc., etc.

Associating baked beans with the bene-factors of the Institution.

Saying that beef-eating is befitting, etc., etc.

The following are also prohibited, excepting to such Inmates as may have lost their faculties and cannot any longer make Puns of their own:

“——your own hair or a wig”; “it will be long enough,” etc., etc.; “little of its age,” etc., etc.; also, playing upon the following words: hospital; mayor; pun; pitied; bread; sauce, etc., etc., etc. See INDEX EXPURGATORIUS, printed for use of Inmates.

The subjoined Conundrum is not allowed: Why is Hasty Pudding like the Prince? Because it comes attended by its sweet; nor this variation to it, to wit: Because the ‘lasses runs after it.

The Superintendent, who went round with us, had been a noted punster in his time, and well known in the business world, but lost his customers by making too free with their names—as in the famous story he set afloat in ’29 of four Jerries attaching to the names of a noted Judge, an eminent Lawyer, the Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions, and the well-known Landlord at Springfield. One of the four Jerries, he added, was of gigantic magnitude. The play on words was brought out by an accidental remark of Solomons, the well-known Banker. “Capital punishment!” the Jew was overheard saying, with reference to the guilty parties. He was understood, as saying, A capital pun is meant, which led to an investigation and the relief of the greatly excited public mind.

The Superintendent showed some of his old tendencies, as he went round with us.

“Do you know”—he broke out all at once—”why they don’t take steppes in Tartary for establishing Insane Hospitals?”

We both confessed ignorance.

“Because there are nomad people to be found there,” he said, with a dignified smile.

He proceeded to introduce us to different Inmates. The first was a middle-aged, scholarly man, who was seated at a table with a Webster’s Dictionary and a sheet of paper before him.

“Well, what luck to-day, Mr. Mowzer?” said the Superintendent.

“Three or four only,” said Mr. Mowzer. “Will you hear ’em now—now I’m here?”

We all nodded.

“Don’t you see Webster ers in the words center and theater?

“If he spells leather lether, and feather fether, isn’t there danger that he’ll give us a bad spell of weather?

“Besides, Webster is a resurrectionist; he does not allow u to rest quietly in the mould.

“And again, because Mr. Worcester inserts an illustration in his text, is that any reason why Mr. Webster’s publishers should hitch one on in their appendix? It’s what I call a Connect-a-cut trick.

“Why is his way of spelling like the floor of an oven? Because it is under bread.”

“Mowzer!” said the Superintendent, “that word is on the Index!”

“I forgot,” said Mr. Mowzer; “please don’t deprive me of Vanity Fair this one time, sir.”

“These are all, this morning. Good day, gentlemen.” Then to the
Superintendent: “Add you, sir!”

The next Inmate was a semi-idiotic-looking old man. He had a heap of block-letters before him, and, as we came up, he pointed, without saying a word, to the arrangements he had made with them on the table. They were evidently anagrams, and had the merit of transposing the letters of the words employed without addition or subtraction. Here are a few of them: