Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 by Various
page 16 of 61 (26%)
page 16 of 61 (26%)
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not repeat off-hand after him. Quin then produced the following string of
incoherences:-- "So she went into the garden to pick a cabbage leaf, to make an apple-pie of; and a she-bear, coming up the street, put her head into the shop, and said 'Do you sell any soap?' So she died, and he very imprudently married the barber; and the powder fell out of the counsellor's wig, and poor Mrs. Mackay's puddings were quite entirely spoilt; and there were present the Garnelies, and the Goblilies, and the Picninnies, and the Great Pangendrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they played at the ancient game of 'Catch who catch can,' till the gunpowder ran out of the heels of their boots." L. _Touchstone's Dial._--Mr. Knight, in a note on _As You Like It_, gives us the description of a dial presented to him by a friend who had picked it "out of a deal of old iron," and which he supposes to be such a one as the "fool i' the forest" drew from his poke, and looked on with lacklustre eye. It is very probable that this species of chronometer is still in common use in the sister kingdom; for my brother mentions to me that, when at school in Ireland some fifteen or sixteen years since, he had seen one of those "_ring-dials_" in the possession of one of his schoolfellows: and Mr. Carleton, in his amusing _Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry_, thus describes them:-- "The ring-dial was the hedge-schoolmaster's next best substitute for a watch. As it is possible that a great number of our readers may never have heard of--much less seen one, we shall in a word or two describe it--nothing indeed could be more simple. It was a bright brass ring, |
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