with the proverbial invitation of the better feeding English, "Will you
come and take your mutton with me?"

"KAIL, used metonimically for the whole dinner; as constituting among
our temperate ancestors the principal part, _s_.

"Hence, in giving a friendly invitation to dinner, it is common to say,
'Will you come and tak your _kail_ wi' me?' This, as a learned friend
observes, resembles the French invitation, _Voulez vous venir manger la
soupe chez moi!_"

* * * * *

THE RIVER NILE.

Ledyard, in his _Travels_, speaks thus contemptuously of this celebrated
wonder:--"This is the mighty, the sovereign of rivers--the vast Nile
that has been metamorphosed into one of the wonders of the world! Let me
be careful how I read, and, above all, how I read ancient history. You
have heard, and read too, much of its inundations. If the thousands of
large and small canals from it, and the thousands of men and machines
employed to transfer, by artificial means, the water of the Nile to the
meadows on its banks--if this be the inundation that is meant, it is
true; any other is false; it is not an inundating river."

* * * * *

The Jewish children to this day celebrate the fall and death of Haman,
and on that anniversary represent the blows which they would fain deal
on his scull, by striking with envenomed fury on the floor with wooden