was the note:--

"Pride lives with all; strange names our rustics give
To helpless infants, that their own may live;
Pleased to be known, they'll some attention claim,
And find some by-way to the house of fame.
'Why Lonicera wilt thou name thy child?'
I asked the gardener's wife, in accents mild.
'We have a right,' replied the sturdy dame;
And Lonicera was the infant's name."

He stopped reading just here, to look at the evening paper, which had
been brought in. I read something in it, and then we all went to sit on
the piazza, with the street-lamp shining through the bitter-sweet vine,
as good as the moon, and the conversation naturally and easily turned
on odd names. I told what I had read in the paper: that our country
rivalled Dickens's in queer names, and that it wasn't for a land that
had Boggs and Bigger and Bragg for governors, and Stubbs, Snoggles,
Scroggs, and Pugh among its respectable citizens, to accuse Dickens
of caricature. I turned, a little tremulously, I confess, to "him,"
saying,--

"If you had been so unfortunate as to have for a name Darius Snoggles,
now, for instance, wouldn't you have it changed by the Legislature?"

I shivered with anxiety.

"Certainly not," he replied, with perfect unconsciousness. "Whatever my
name might be, I would endeavor to make it a respectable one while I
bore it."